Renfrewshire Council has changed the arrangements for bins that were due to be collected on Thursday 2 June. The council did not make this known until the morning of 2 June.
Grey bins will now be collected on Sunday 5 June. Brown bins will not be collected until the next scheduled date, Thursday 16 June.
A public meeting to discuss Kelburne Hockey Club’s application for a community asset transfer of Ralston Community Sports Centre to the club will be held at 7:00 pm on Tuesday 31 May in St Mark’s Church.
If you want the sports centre to remain in public ownership, you should make a representation against the application. You must do this in writing, stating your name and address. The closing date for representations is 1 July 2022.
Representations (for or against the application) should be sent to communityassettransfer@renfrewshire.gov.uk with the title “Ralston Community Sports Centre CAT Request Representation”. Please email a copy of your representation to admin@ralstoncommunitycouncil.org to keep the community council informed about the progress of represenatations against the application. A copy of each representation will be given to the Community Transfer Body (CTB) and will be published on Renfrewshire Council’s website along with any comment from the CTB.
The community council has set up a petition against the transfer which can be signed in the Ralston Corner Shop. (You can sign this and still make a representation against the transfer.) Please follow Ralston Community Council on Facebook or look on this website for updates over the next few weeks.
We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday 31 May.
Kelburne Hockey Club is planning to hold a public meeting about the application at 7:00 pm on Monday 6 June in Ralston Community Centre.
Friends of Barshaw Park have submitted a planning application to turn the disused donkey paddock in Barshaw Park into a community garden. The plan for the new garden has been made possible by the Royal Horticultural Society who are awarding the Friends of Barshaw Park £50,000 to create the new community garden. In addition, RHS has appointed leading garden designers to create the garden, and will support the new garden over the next 3 years with a grant of £15,000.
Community gardens can be of great value to an a local area. They can improve soil and air quality, increase biodiversity, increase economic opportunities, and improve the mental and physical health of those who use them.
Details of the application can be found on Renfrewshire Council’s website.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Over the past month, several residents have reported incidents of motorbikes being ridden in the Honeybog Hill area. At times there have been four or more bikes driving at high speed around the fields, causing worry amongst walkers using the hill and creating noise that has been very intrusive and annoying for residents living near the area.
Renfrewshire Council has been notified of the problem and has requested that residents who aware of motorbikes being ridden on Honeybog Hill should telephone either the police at 101 or the Renfrewshire Wardens service at 0300 300 0380 ( option 1), preferably at the time of the incident.
Renfrewshire Council will be carrying out work to clean the pond within Barshaw Park, beginning on Friday 1 April.
The aim of the work is to remove the silt that has gathered in the pond over a number of years, as well as removing some invasive weed species, which will protect the health of the pond.
To do this, the council will require to drain the pond and then remove the silt, which will be kept at a location near the pond to dry out before being disposed of safely by the contractor.
There will be a fishing specialist on site to assist in keeping any fish in the pond safe and they will be stored in a bunded area within the pond until the work is complete. There are no swans nesting at the pond; so no nests will be disturbed by the work.
During the work, the pond will be fenced off to stop anyone entering the area while it is drained. The council anticipates that it will take around 3 weeks to complete the work and refill the pond to its previous level.
The community council is organising a silent auction in aid of Ukraine. The item being auctioned is an acrylic painting, tilted Highland Way, 28 x 34 cm, framed with glass. The proceeds of the winning bid will be donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Ukraine humanitarian appeal.
Bids should be emailed to admin@ralstoncommunitycouncil.org. The closing time for bids is noon on Sunday 24 April. The winner will be notified shortly after the bids close.
The painting will be on view at the art stall at the Ralston Community Games, which will be held at Ralston Sports Centre on Saturday 23 April.