THE MERCURY Inn situation in Moffat is ‘no further forward’ after council officials gave up after nine months.
Moffat and District Community Council secretary (MDCC) Mick Barker has been on a mission to get action at the derelict hotel, located near the town’s entrance, since August last year
But after numerous meetings between Mick, council officials and the site’s developers, communication has now stalled, and officials have stopped applying pressure to the owners of the site.
Mick gave an update on the situation at Tuesday’s meeting of MDCC, he said: “We’ve done a lot of work to get Dumfries and Galloway Council to take responsibility for management of the situation given their weight of resources and legal powers. And for nine months now we’ve had monthly meetings with council officials who have reported to us their aspirations and expectations regarding progress from the developers.
“We had a meeting with the relevant council officials, as well as Annandale North Councillors Stephen Thompson and Lynne Davis, and basically the council officials have said ‘you know how we told you that there would be a plan by the end of quarter from the developers, guess what, it doesn’t look like there is going to be one and we can’t extricate a plan from them so we’ve given up.’
“So nine months in from having the full weight of the council, we are no further forward than we were at the beginning. It’s very disappointing because we have been stressing to them to at least clean it up before the start of the season, but that’s not happened.
“So we are going to have to retrench, rethink and develop a new strategy because the council have not done what they were briefed on to achieve.”
Since closing in 1999, a string of local campaigns have failed to see the eyesore inn demolished, but the community remain determined to see something done about the building.
MDCC chairperson Liam O’Neill added: “The problem is that the statutory powers of the council has are limited in matters like this. It’s only when a building becomes dangerous that they can step in and demolish it or carry out works to make the building safe. So the only thing we can really hope for is that the thing starts to fall down.
“But this isn’t going away and neither are we.”
