Legal battle at tiny boat club over rights to landing bank

Pic. Jim Gillespie at the Dumbarton Club's site
Legal battle at tiny boat club over rights to landing bank
YOU will find no expensive yachts or speedboats, nor extortionate joining fees for the privilege of taking to these waters.
For members, there is only one request: just £2 a week, half of it for electricity, the other half for teabags.
But now a community boating club which has been based in one of Scotland's most deprived areas for generations faces eviction after being taken to court by an offshore company in what one MSP describes as an act of "grand land theft".

Beriston Ltd, based in the British Virgin Islands, is behind plans by Turnberry Homes for housing on the banks of the River Leven, in Dunbartonshire.

The company owns the strip of riverside land, but the title deed is one of a several granted erroneously by a Scottish Executive agency.

The club says the ground belongs to the townsfolk under a charter granted to the burgh of Dumbarton by King James VI in the seventeenth century. It is now contesting the case in the Court of Session.

Members of Dumbarton Motor Boat and Sailing Club say that, should the land be sacrificed for housing, it will sound the death-knell for the last affordable boating group in the region.

Beriston has already served an interdict ensuring the club's members are not allowed access to the yard, with fences cordoning off the area.

One member, Jim Gillespie, 49, who retired from marine engineering due to ill-health, said the club counts "pensioners, retired folk, disabled people, kids" among its 50 or so members.

It is an area with a proud shipbuilding heritage where, he stresses, the people are inextricably connected with the river.

Our members can't afford to use a private marina to go sailing," he said. "If this goes ahead, it'll take away the river from working-class people." He added: "Some of the kids have wee cheap boats. They're only worth a couple of hundred pounds, but they think they're priceless.

"We've been here since the 1960s, and people have been going down to the river for generations . . . My great-greatgrandfather was involved in the-then Dumbarton Boat Club and my father won cups for rowing."

The fault, Mr Gillespie believes, lies with the Registers of Scotland, an executive agency responsible for land and property registers. He is trying to press West Dunbartonshire Council to cite the charter to reclaim the title deeds.

It is understood register officials were unaware of the royal charter's existence, when they registered titles to portions of the Leven in recent years. The charter stipulates that the local community has full rights to the Leven and its banks. It is understood there are at lease 10 erroneously registered titles to the area, including one wrongly attributed to Scottish Enterprise for its Loch Lomond Shores development.

The Herald has revealed that about £1.8bn of common good assets have been "lost, illegally alienated and neglected" by local authorities.

Frances Curran, Scottish Socialist MSP for the West of Scotland, said that were the court to find in Beriston's favour, it would be tantamount to "grand land theft". She said: "It's unbelievable how these tide deeds have fallen into the hands of companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and big business."

Cameron Fyfe, a partner at Ross Harper specialising in human rights, has taken on the case of the club's members, "We believe the charter from i 1609 is still in force today." The executive confirmed that officials at Registers of Scotland are holding discussions with the council over titles on the Leven. The local authority has even floated the possibility of using compulsory purchase orders to regain possession of certain title deeds.

A spokesman for West Dunbartonshire Council said the "ball is in Turnberry Homes' court just now. "They have been asked by the council to define exactly where and what they are proposing to do and the council will then consider that proposal."

John Heath, land and development director for Turnberry Homes, said as the matter had been taken to the Court of Session, "Turnberry Homes is unable to comment further". Aileen Low, the solicitor representing Beriston at the Court of Session, declined to comment.

Source Martin McLaughlin Herald Jan 28