Ministers ‘wasted’ £100m on landslip prevention

● New catch pit to stop rubble on the road at Glen Croe revealed

The Scottish Government has been blasted for ‘wasting’ nearly £100 million over 13 years on temporary measures to deal with landslips at the Rest and Be Thankful.

The A83, one of the main transport routes for Argyll and Bute, has been plagued with major landslips which have blocked the road and forced it to close.

Ministers have been accused of ‘wasting’ millions after a new catch pit, to stop rubble reaching the road at Glen Croe, was revealed.

Despite widespread calls to reroute the road, Transport Secretary Michael Matheson has spent £1.9m on the latest attempt to catch any landslip fall. Some £13.3m has already been invested in catch pits and other measures along the road, which the Scottish Government says helped keep the road open for at least 48 days when it would otherwise have closed. A further £79.2m has been spent on its maintenance since 2007. But locals believe taxpayers’ money is being misspent and a ‘permanent solution’ is being ignored.

Iain Jurgensen, chairman of the Argyll and The Isles Tourism Co-operative (AITC) said: “Am I the only person in the world who thinks this is all just nuts?

“It is truly staggering, and irresponsible to spend this amount of taxpayers’ money on mitigation.”

The Rest and Be Thankful is the highest point of a scenic 10-mile route running from Tarbet to the A83’s junction with the B828. The words Rest & Be Thankful are inscribed on a stone near the junction, placed there by soldiers who built the original military road in 1753, now referred to as the Drovers’ road. The road closed for several days in 2014 following a 2,000 tonne landslip, and again in 2016 after a huge boulder threatened the safety of traffic. A controlled explosion had to be carried out on the 150-tonne rock.

In October 2018, the road was shut for nine days after about 2,500 tonnes of landslide debris reached catchfences above the carriageway. Demands for a re-routing of the A83 grew louder after another landslide shut down the route at the end of January, with travellers having to follow a 58.8 mile detour. More than 1,000 tonnes of material reached the carriageway following heavy rainfall, despite catch fences above the carriageway.