On Friday 1 June, Ralston Community Council submitted nearly 1200 letters of objection to the proposed community asset transfer (CAT) of Ralston Community Sports Centre to Kelburne Hockey Club. The letters, which were from Ralston residents and Ralston Community Sports Centre users, were submitted to Renfrewshire Council. We know that hundreds more representations have been submitted by email. The presentation of the objections was reported by the Glasgow Evening Times.
As a community we have made the strength of our opposition abundantly clear. We want our community sports centre to remain a community asset and have also consulted on what we would like to see in the centre. We have asked to work in partnership with OneRen to return the centre’s usage to the more than 85,000 visits per year that it was pre- covid.
A decision on the CAT application will be made by Renfrewshire Council’s Infrastructure, Land and Environment Policy Board. We have been advised that this will happen at either the August 2022 or the November 2022 meeting of the board.
The community council would like to thank the many residents who attended the public meetings to give their views on the application for the transfer.
There are many other people to thank for their ongoing support, including: Russell Findlay, MSP; Neil Bibby, MSP; Neill Graham, local councillor; Graeme Clark, local councillor; St Mark’s Church for allowing us to use it for one of the public meetings; and John and the team at Ralston Community Centre for preparing the centre for the first public meeting (and helping with leafleting). Dionne and her team at the Corner Shop did a superb job in gathering representation letters, leaflets with class choices and the signing of the petition. The biggest support in three rounds of leafleting came from Ralston Skills; a big thank-you for that and for their help with the letter collection. Penultimate thanks go to Idgraphiques and Ukprint1 for their design and printing of our leaflets.
However, the biggest thanks has to be the community who have made clear their wishes and helped with leaflet drops. Some even chapped on doors to help in the representation gathering. We couldn’t have done any more.
