Blow to air link plans as some land sold
24.04.11
The Labour party's hopes of reinstating the Glasgow Airport Rail Link (Garl) plans suffered a fresh setback after it emerged that some of the land it was to be built on has been sold back to its original owners, the Herald reports. Transport Scotland, the Government agency in charge of delivering the now mothballed £200m project, told the newspaper that four plots of land on an industrial estate in Paisley where the branch line was to join with the existing railway have offers accepted to sell them back to their original owners. Negotiations on a further four plots are ongoing.
The sales will make it more difficult for Labour to fulfil its election promise to revive Garl if it regains power on May 5, as the new Government would have to use compulsory purchase powers to buy the land for a second time and offer further compensation to the owners. Labour and the Conservatives reacted to the news by saying the SNP had pursued a ‘scorched earth’ policy to Garl after scrapping it in September 2009 to help plug a funding shortfall.
Charlie Gordon, Scottish Labour’s transport spokesman and candidate for Glasgow Cathcart, told the Herald: ‘We warned about the SNP’s scorched-earth policy to destroy the Glasgow Airport Rail Link and evidence has now emerged to prove that. But Labour is determined to reinstate the project if we are elected to form the next Scottish Government. It was a huge mistake to scrap Garl, which would have created many jobs in the city.’
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