FORTHSIDE DEAL STALLS

Council demand MoD site is cleaned up

Questions yesterday (Tuesday) continued to surround the issue of who will meet the cost of decontaminating Ministry of Defence land at Forthside.

Plans for cleaning up the site have been a major talking point since the heads of terms for the City Region Deal were signed last Thursday.

The Westminister Government have agreed to purchase the site from the MoD and hand it over to Stirling Council.

But Stirling Council leader, Councillor Scott Farmer, told the Observer that the local authority wouldn’t accept the land unless it had been decontaminated first.

And Stirling MP Stephen Kerr said that the MoD “simply cannot” hand over contaminated land and must ensure it is cleaned up. The Observer previously reported that, at a meeting of the Local Authority Working Group held at the Scottish Parliament on December 19, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Lord Duncan was reported to

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have given assurances that decontamination issues would be addressed before land was handed over.

The land at Forthside was previously named as one of several in Scotland that could have been left contaminated by military activity. This was in the wake of the row over radium pollution at Dalgety Bay in Fife. The MoD were asked by the

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