The Link was a planned off-road route between Neilston and Uplawmoor along the old railway line, which aimed to provide enhanced access and connectivity between the two communities with increased opportunities for people to walk, cycle and wheel.
Since November 2019, Neilston Development Trust and Uplawmoor Development Trust had been engaged with landowners, community members, designers, funders and East Renfrewshire Council (ERC) to progress the proposal.
This week Sue Scott from the Link working group “sadly” said that the project is “no longer being supported” by ERC and the charity, which looks after main cycling routes across the UK, and so is “now at an end”.
Announcing the news on the Link website, the working group said: “When completed, the path would have allowed people of all ages and abilities safe access to wonderful countryside, away from polluting vehicle noise and fumes.
“Uplawmoor residents would have been able to take a short and safe commute to Neilston, and many shorter daily journeys would have been possible within Neilston itself, to school, shops and the train station.
“The team are dismayed to announce that ERC and Sustrans have withdrawn support for the project.”
The working group conceded that during meetings with senior staff at ERC over the past year, several reasons for the council’s reservations about the future of our project were put before the working group.
The group said it accepts the severe pressures on local and central government budgets, with implications for capital programming and long-term staffing capacity.
They also said they accept that “revenue funding is the poor relation of public finances” and that “short-termism is of little use in sustaining services and estate”.
Despite the above, the working group also stated that they believe it is reasonable to feel anger and frustration at this outcome for the Link project.
“What happened with the Link, in our view, is that, contrary to all appearances, it was never an equal player,” added the statement.
“We thought we were playing by the rules, backed by our patron ERC, which was represented at all our deliberations.
“We were encouraged by the strategic status of our project and local elected representatives were enthusiastic.
“We thought that our prosecution of the project was thorough, and mindful of Sustrans’ due process with regard to the deliverables required for each stage.
“Here you have a community-led project, with financial and political endorsement for its efforts… but when push came to shove it failed.
“Why? To use the sporting analogy, the Link was a promising extra who reluctantly had to go when the budget got tight and the coach already had too much on his plate.
“Put simply, if we had been ‘at the table’, we could have been appraised of basic impediments to the project’s survival much earlier.
“In our view, the Link is the victim of faulty process but also of a culture which fails to understand the energy and commitment of local people for change in their place.
“Sometimes those aspirations need the input of skilled professionals, and out of that can come a very rich product which has more chance of being locally ‘owned’ than one visited from above after some ‘consultation’ process.”
An East Renfrewshire Council spokesperson said that they were unable to take the development of the project forward in its current form due to “a number of complex challenges associated with this proposed link”.
“A number of active travel links are identified in the Council’s adopted Local Development Plan 2, but remain an aspiration, as we don’t have the resources to progress them at this time,” they added.
The funding previously awarded to support the project was received from Sustrans’ our Places for Everyone programme, an active travel infrastructure fund backed by Transport Scotland.
“As communicated to partners in 2024, the Places for Everyone programme will close in December 2025 as Transport Scotland move to a model of awarding funding directly to local authorities through the Active Travel Infrastructure Fund,” explained a spokesperson for the charity.
“As part of this managed transition, it is now at the discretion of local authorities, in this case ERC, to decide whether to progress with existing, community-led projects.”
