Pier plan uses outdated maps

With services across Scotland in dire need of investment, we need new boats and new piers to ensure islands’ connectivity and everything that brings.

Meanwhile Argyll & Bute Council are spending £10 million on a pier project for Kilcreggan to Gourock – when island communities are cut off regularly.

However, Kilcreggan pier is at risk as the new pontoon-style pier, with associated 150-metre sea wall, will change the character and setting of the village for ever.

If not used daily, like other listed piers in the west of Scotland, Kilcreggan pier will crumble into the sea and be lost forever. The investment would be better placed in a harbour style pier – similar to Carradale – to the east of the current pier.

The design from Transport Scotland, following Transport Planning Objectives and Scottish Transport Appraisal Guidance, using old maps, has influenced decisions that prioritise moorings that are long gone over dwelling houses that have been missed off the map. Indeed one building labelled ‘police station’ is now a private home.

It is no wonder that our island services are so bad when so much money is about to be wasted on a plan using out-of-date maps, with a budget that has increased in cost by £9 million before it’s even started and will destroy the last Victorian pier in daily usage on the Clyde.

Tom Walker, Kilcreggan, Argyll.