Glasgow City Council committee backs both sides in land row

The Clouston Street site (left) before locals cleaned it up and renamed it North Kelvin Meadow

Councillors in Glasgow have taken the unusual step of backing a controversial housing development and an opposing plan to keep the land in community use.

Planning committee members approved 60 flats to be built on former playing fields at Clouston Street.

They also backed plans by the North Kelvin Meadow group who transformed the previously derelict land.

If Scottish ministers do not call in the decision, the final say will rest with Glasgow City Council.

Councillors considered two applications - one for a residential development from New City Vision and one from the North Kelvin Meadow group for a community woodland and park.

Ministerial consideration

After conducting a site visit and hearing from both applicants, committee members approved both applications.

BBC Scotland understands that Scottish ministers have made a direction in relation to the site and the council is required to send any relevant details and decisions to them for consideration.

Ministers will now decide whether to intervene by calling in the application.

If they do not, a final decision will rest with Glasgow City Council, which is the landowner.

A council spokesman said: "The approval of this planning application from New City Vision will deliver both much-needed family homes in the west end and improve the North Kelvinside pitches facility as well as a substantial receipt for the public purse in a time of unprecedented financial constraints for local government."

The decision to back the housing development, however, has angered some local people and politicians.

Glasgow Green MSP Patrick Harvie said he was "disgusted by the decision".

"Any local council should be proud to have a community like the people who created North Kelvin Meadow, but instead they are showing nothing but contempt," he said.