Kelburne Hockey Club has now submitted its application for a community asset transfer (CAT) of Ralston Community Sports Centre to the club. Renfrewshire Council’s CAT Panel will meet in early May 2022 to decide if the CAT application is valid. If it is judged to be valid, it will go to the council’s Infrastructure, Land and Environment Policy Board for consideration at its next meeting in August 2022.

If the application is considered valid, the council will issue a public notice that the request has been received. The notice will be placed on the council website and displayed within a public area near the sports centre. The notice will contain details of whom the application has come from, the details of the request and confirm that representation can be made to the Council for a period of not less than 20 working days. Should representations be received they will be sent to Kelburne Hockey Club, which will have 20 working days to comment on them. A period of discussion will then follow when the detail of the request will be discussed and consideration be given to all the documentation submitted. The council has a period of six months to reach a decision on the request. Further information about the asset transfer process can be found on Renfrewshire Council’s website.

Kelburne Hockey Club is planning to leaflet the community in the near future with details of the application. It then plans to hold a public meeting about it, probably in May.

A petition against the application has been set up and is available to sign in the Penilee Road Corner Shop.

Update on the community asset transfer application

At the community meeting about the community asset transfer (CAT) application from Kelburne Hockey Club (KHC) held on 4 October last year, an overwhelming majority of those present were opposed to the transfer of this asset.

KHC has now been granted charitable status, but its application is still to be ratified before it can even be considered by Renfrewshire Council. If it does proceed, the community council will have to work within legal guidelines to raise objections. Renfrewshire Council’s Petitions Board is also investigating the application. In addition, Gleniffer Thistle Football Club has apparently confirmed its interest in the sports centre and is likely to submit a CAT in the future. We will let you know of any developments when we hear of them.

How we can support the sports centre

The community council is preparing objections to be raised in the event of the application being validated and moving to the first stage. However we can’t fight for something that we are not using. So part of our strategy is to work with Renfrewshire Leisure (rebranded as OneRen), who are responsible for the running of the centre, to help us make full use of this resource in our community. The community council has already met with OneRen to discuss this, and we now need to hear from the community and current users.

Gym

Covid has greatly impacted on the usage of all gyms, and Ralston gym has been no exception. However, if we want to retain this gym, then the number of memberships needs to increase.

Classes

The current operating model is for the pavilion to be open in evenings and at weekends, but as soon as Covid restrictions are lifted we can arrange classes in the centre.

We can book our own self-employed instructors to run classes at the centre. Each class needs a (volunteer) class coordinator to arrange who will be attending and to confirm the time of the class with the instructor and the sports centre. So please let us know (in the comments box on this form)  if this is something you would be interested in supporting.

Possible new activities

  • We would like to tie in with the current walking group.
  • We have recently met with ROAR and have another meeting arranged to discuss how we can work together to make better use of our facilities.
  • We have had a suggestion that parents would like a class to be run in the pavilion whilst their child/children are playing football on the pitches.
  • We would like to hear from everyone, across all age groups, about how we as a community could use this facility better than we are at the moment.

Survey form

Please let us know your suggestions, thoughts, ideas, preferred classes and times using this form. The form should be returned by 30 April 2022, either to the counter of The Corner Shop or or by email to admin@ralstoncommunitycouncil.org.

 

The community council has become aware of problems caused by some residents feeding foxes, which then go on to leave uneaten food in other residents’ gardens. This food includes pieces of chicken with bones, which can be extremely dangerous to dogs.

Renfrewshire Council advises residents not to feed foxes. The council’s website
has a page about foxes, which contains the following advice.

“We would like to stress the advice to members of the public to refrain from feeding foxes.

“It is very important that no attempt is made to try to tame foxes, to encourage them to feed from the hand or to encourage them close or into houses using food.

“This is not fair on the foxes and is only likely to cause problems later for people and the foxes themselves. Urban foxes are wild animals and should be treated as such.”

Renfrewshire Council’s grass cutting programme will restart on Monday 4 April. The council’s teams will work to a 14-day cycle and will tackle a different area of Renfrewshire each day, although they will return the following day to finish any section that they weren’t able to complete.

This means that the teams will cut grass panels, open spaces, school playing fields, public parks, cemeteries, and provide their grass and hedge cutting assistance scheme for council house tenants, at the same time in each area.

If the teams are unable to complete an area because of the weather, theyvwill retain some of their resources to complete that area when the grass is able to be cut as normal.

The fortnightly timetable can be seen on the Renfrewshire Council website.

Hedge cutting will continue to be provided twice a year and will operate in line with the grass cutting model, with communities seeing their first cut between May and July and their second cut between August and October.