Green in Govan: George Square, Area Budget, Connecting Greater Govan

Newsletter #27 - George Square is getting done up, the first allocations from the 2025-2026 Area Budget have been agreed, and some thoughts from the Active Travel Public Meeting

Apr 18, 2025

George Square Revamp

I know I normally rigidly focus on Greater Govan but George Square is George Square!

For a fair few years now, the council have been looking at doing up George Square and after a lengthy consultation period - the work has started this week. Here’s a birds eye view of what’s happening! The downside is of course disruption that will be caused on the square and surrounding streets, this is expected to last around 18 months.

When the work is done, you will see a much greener square, with more trees, areas for play and much better seating across the square. On top of this, we’re going to see the closed roads at the East and West of the square made level, the surrounding roads repaved and some cycle lanes added into the surrounding streets.

You can see the full plans and details by following this link.

Artist’s impression of the completed works [Glasgow City Council]

Area Budget

Every year, there’s a budget made available from the council which the Govan Area Partnership take applications from organisations, charities and groups across Greater Govan who all need some of the pot. The Area Partnership is made up of the Councillors, representatives from the five Community Councils, Scottish Fire and Rescue, Police Scotland, the Health and Social Care Partnership and Local Charities.

This year our overall budget is £90,149 and the maximum for any application is 10% of the fund. The April meeting is normally the big one for applications so here’s a wee snippet of what the money was spent on:

Govan Youth Information Project (GYIP) were funded to continue their work tackling issues that young people face in Govan by taking 16 young people to Ardoyne Youth Club in Belfast. This trip is to learn lessons from them on tackling discrimination, mythbusting and dealing with social media misinformation. When they come back - they’ll be using this experience to teach pupils at St. Saviour’s and Riverside Primaries.

Old Govan Fair were funded for their two annual events, the Govan Fair and Govan Loves Christmas. The Govan Fair will be the 6th of June this year and while the programme isn’t out yet - it’s always the most enjoyable night of the year! Not to worry, as soon as information is out on these events - you bet they’ll be in this newsletter!

St Constantine’s seniors lunch were funded again to support their Thursday afternoon lunch club for seniors between 12noon and 3pm. It’s open to all and from all accounts, is delicious! There’s even some bingo on the go.

Plus loads more!

There are still plenty of funds left which will be allocated at the September meeting of the Area Partnership. If you are part of an organisation or group who could do with some funding - drop me an e-mail at dan.hutchison@glasgow.gov.uk and I’ll get you in touch with the right people.

If you want to read all the applications you can access them here.

Cycle Lane Public Meeting

Tuesday night saw a public meeting upstairs in the Pearce Institute about the active travel measures proposed through the Connecting Greater Govan programme. It was a very interesting meeting and for one pitched as “save Govan from the cycle lanes”, there was a surprising balance to speakers on the night. There are some that were concerned about HGVs getting round a new one way street proposal, others already concerned about parking on Shaw Street, some raised that they don’t feel safe cycling on the road with their teenage kids but don’t want to be a nuisance on the pavement. There was a lot of issues raised at the meeting but a lot of them that I think are complementary to increasing active travel infrastructure but require public bodies to do a better job.

Do we want to reduce car use in the city? Yes, absolutely. I won’t go into the science and economics of this here but the Fraser of Allander Institute have an interesting piece here if you want to learn more about air pollution in the city. The reluctance I felt from people is that it’s something that the council are forcing on them which I understand. The council have for the longest time just made changes and not involved the communities that they impact and this process cannot replicate this. What we need to do to reduce car use in the city by our residents is by carrot, not by stick. We need to bring the buses back into public ownership and make journeys frequent, reliable and affordable. There’s a great piece on Green Left Scotland which go into the detail of what is and should be happening on this front.

Another problem we need to tackle which was raised at the meeting is pavement parking and double parking. Long-time readers will hopefully have understood my utter frustration at anti-social parking and know that this was a primary focus during the budget process this year. Finally we have powers from the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 in place and being used to tackle this. On top of the powers - we’re in the middle of recruiting 100 new parking attendants for the city. If you are facing issues of antisocial parking - please request enforcement here.

The plans as they are were always intended to be a starting point. They do not by any stretch of the imagination reach every single street in Govan and the information from this meeting and from the consultations are essential for reworking the plans before bringing them back to the community in the summer for another round of consultation.

If you are someone with strong feelings - please tell me. There was a lot of comments made during the meeting that people want to speak to their councillors about issues but don’t know how to find them. Thankfully I managed to speak to a few before we left but I am absolutely always open to a conversation. My surgery dates are next on this newsletter and if they don’t work for you - send me an e-mail at dan.hutchison@glasgow.gov.uk and we’ll find a time that does work.

Surgeries

I run advice and support surgeries 3 times a month, you don’t need an appointment, just turn up! Next dates are:

Friday 25th April - 11am - Clyde Community Hall, Whitefield Road
Tuesday 13th May - 4pm - Maslow’s Community Hub, Shaw Street
Thursday 15th April - 5pm - Kinning Park Complex, Cornwall Street

Upcoming Community Councils

Kinning Park - Kinning Park Complex - 21st April - 7pm
Drumoyne - Govan High - 24th April - 7pm
Govan - Pearce Institute - 12th May - 7pm
Ibrox and Cessnock - Clyde Community Hall - 21st May - 7pm
Govan East - Riverside Hall - 20th May - 6pm

These are all public meetings so you can just turn up at your relevant one. They’d all be very happy for someone new to join in! I’m aim to attend at many of them as possible so hopefully see you there!