An Inverness community stalwart has called new sports facilities to be developed across the city and not just in the area affected by the West Link road.
David McGrath, who was chairman of Smithton and Culloden Community Council before it went into abeyance earlier this year, made the call after Highland Council submitted plans for new sports pitches at Canal Park, because he feels facilities in other areas are in danger of being neglected
The new £3.6million facility, which will include pitches and a new clubhouse for Highland Rugby Club, is needed because of the route of the controversial West Link road.
The council also submitted plans last year for a new Torvean Golf Course at a cost of £8.2million, while a massive new sports centre including a velodrome, indoor running track, tennis courts and gymnastic halls is also planned for the west end of the city.
The route of the road agreed by the council was known as option six – and Mr McGrath said that it had “distracted” the council from the need to develop facilities across the city.
He said: “There is more to Inverness than this need to justify and facilitate option six, which seems to be an obsession with Highland Council.
“There are large areas of the city that don’t have access to sports facilities locally which desperately need them.”
He added that he felt that the money would better spent on improving sports facilities at schools across the city.
He added: “In my area Smithton Primary isn’t able to use its sports fields because its quite often waterlogged. Culloden Academy has a large grass sports area but it has really serious drainage problems and is often unusable too.
“I know that this is a problem across the town.
“All of this money is being spent in one area. Why should all of the attention be focused on the west end of the town when the rest of Inverness is crying out for new facilities?”
However, Councillor Thomas Prag, chairman of the council’s planning, development and infrastructure committee, said: “We gave a commitment that as part of the overall project we would enhance the existing facilities that were going to affected by the route of the road and that is what we are not doing.
“That doesn’t prevent us from developing other sports facilities across the city. It’s not an either, or situation.”