NICOLA Sturgeon has announced an extra £1.6m for the troubled Scottish Canals quango after accusations it was neglecting its core purpose.
The First Minister told MSPs the capital grant-in-aid would be used to repair the closed Bonnybridge and Twechar bridges on the Forth and Clyde Canal.
Scottish Canals recently announced it might not be able to keep its network open to traffic because of a lack of cash, leading to fears of canals becoming “stagnant ditches”.
Tory MSP Edward Mountain said Scottish Canals had recently been “more interested in investing in shops, holiday lettings and commercial ventures than in repairing waterways”, despite a £70m repair backlog.
Ms Sturgeon said the Scottish Government, as the body’s main funder, raised its budget £1.6m to £11.6m last year, and would now provide another £1.6m.
“We are aware of the financial difficulties that Scottish Canals has faced due to the enforced closure of the bridges on the Forth and Clyde canal,” she said.
But she said Mr Mountain’s criticisms were “completely misguided” and “utterly wrong.”
Scottish Canals interim CEO Catherine Topley said the extra funding would also help repair Ardrishaig Pier.
She said: “We have been in dialogue with the Scottish Government for a number of months about needing additional investment to fix these assets and this injection of money will enable a long-term repair that ensures the bridges and the pier fully operational once again.
“We are managing a complex portfolio of 250 year old heritage assets which hold a large percentage of Scotland’s water and are under increasing pressure from climate change. With a repairs backlog in excess of £70m, we continue to work with Ministers to find a way of addressing this challenge.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here