A Paisley football club have hit out after their pristine pitches in Abbotsinch were used as “dumping ground” during a major construction job.
Gleniffer Thistle have demanded answers after agreeing to temporarily vacate the parks – which they lease from the airport – for Renfrewshire Council’s Glasgow Airport Investment Area (GAIA) project only to see them scattered with rubble and left to become overgrown.
The club, who haven’t been able to use the land since the end of 2019, have forked out to hire alternative facilities for training and matches for the hundreds of players in their ranks, which they estimate has cost between £50,000 and £80,000.
Billy Hassan, club chairman at the time of the works, took aim at the local authority’s contractor for the state the pitches have been left in.
He said: “They basically used it as a dumping ground. Everything they were digging up, they put it on our football park.
“That’s where they dumped everything. It was rubble, bricks and boulders, you name it.
“I had a company down and the guy said we were talking about a quarter of a million to get it back to the standard it was at.
“Everybody’s pointing the finger blaming everybody else. Nobody’s doing anything about it.”
Scott McCann, current club chairman, said: “It was Renfrewshire Council that took the land off of us, from Glasgow Airport, to use, so it’s really their responsibility.
“It’s up to them to chase their contractor or foot the bill themselves, one of the two.
“We’re trying to find different lets with schools and sport centres when we’ve got this land ourselves.
“We’ve got about 18 different age groups, more than 400 kids, so every single age group now has to find a let or a space somewhere to train.
“It’s holding us back as a club. They’re down there advertising that it’s open now, it’s all nice and new down there, but we’ve got this land of ours that’s overgrown.
“We’ve been going for 50 years, we’re one of the oldest clubs in Paisley and we gave up that land as a good turn to help them out.
“We could’ve been awkward but we weren’t and now the only ones that are losing here are us.”
The purpose of the GAIA project was to create the connections and infrastructure for the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District Scotland, more commonly referred to as AMIDS.
A council spokesperson said: “We continue to work with our contractor, Wills Bros, and external consultants, Sweco, to ensure works to repair this piece of land are completed.
“A number of ongoing defects had been identified which the contractor is required to rectify under its contract with the council.
“Works to rectify the defects, level and reseed the land are due to begin in the next couple of weeks.
“Once these works are complete, the land will be inspected again to ensure it meets the standards required before being handed back to the club.”
When contacted, Wills Bros said: “We confirm that the work undertaken by us has been constructed in accordance with the specification which we were contracted to by our client and has been certified as complete.
“We believe any remaining concern is between Gleniffer Thistle and Renfrewshire Council.”
Sweco said it would not be providing a comment.
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