Council in £200k land purchase

Jun 5 2008 by John Rowbotham

COUNCIL bosses this week agreed to pay more than £200,000 for a tiny site required for a road scheme.

Land measuring less than one-tenth of an acre, belonging to builders Robert Reid and Sons, 12 Wellhall Road, Hamilton, is to be acquired.

At a meeting of South Lanarkshire estates committee on Tuesday, councillors approved a recommendation to buy the .086-acre site for £190,000 exclusive of VAT.

The committee also agreed to meet the cost of the £1900 Stamp Duty Land Tax and any reasonable legal and surveyors fees.

Councillors were told that officers had been negotiating with surveyors Whyte and Barrie, the company’s agents, to buy the workshop and sales office and adjoining concrete yard.

The land is required for a £3.51m scheme to improve traffic flow at the Peacock Cross bottleneck.

A key element of the project is the creation of a 125-yard link road between Burnbank Road and Wellhall Road.

The road will cross land previously occupied by the council-owned depot at 23-31 Burnbank Road, which was bulldozed last October.

The council has to set aside a budget of £1.4m to buy properties they need for the scheme.

They include 8-16 Wellhall Road and part of the verge at the junction of Peacock Drive and Wellhall Road.

Another property facing demolition is the Shell filling station next to Reid’s.

The scheme also includes plans to re-introduce two-way traffic to Clydesdale Street and the 100-space park and ride project for Hamilton West commuters.

A temporary car park for rail travellers was opened last November on the site of the council-owned depot in Burnbank Road.

Work on the roads scheme is not expected to start until 2009 at the earliest.

Council highways officials believe the changes are necessary to cope with the extra traffic associated with the 2000 new homes earmarked for land west of Hamilton between 2011 and 2018.