New Petitions

Mrs O'Donnell will make the opening statement.

I am the chair of Prestwick marine neighbourhood watch. We have three reasons for raising the petition on behalf of the residents and visitors who come to Prestwick. The first is the state of our beach. As the petition says, the state of the beach was shocking before Easter. There was a dead sheep and a dead seal. Rats had been spotted and reported and there were syringes. That is definitely a health and safety issue.We raised the matter with South Ayrshire Council, but it told us to ask the residents of Prestwick to clean their own beach. I am sorry, but we pay council tax to get such a service and we would not be covered by liability insurance if somebody was cut or pricked with a needle and ended up with HIV or AIDS. A supervisor in the South Ayrshire Council beach-cleaning department told me that, if he could keep the four men that he has besides himself for the whole year, the beach could be kept clean and supervised—there would be no litter or anything on it during the winter months.We were promised that the beach would be cleaned up for the Easter weekend. The council is on the record as saying that the beach was cleaned up for Good Friday, but it was not. The council sent a chap to clean the beach on the Saturday of the Easter weekend, but the photograph that I have given the committee in evidence shows that the state of the beach was so bad that he could not clean it up on his own—100 men could not have cleaned it up.We contacted South Ayrshire Council, as it has asked us to clean our beach. The beaches at Ayr and Troon are cleaned five days a week—Monday to Friday—but Prestwick beach gets two hours of attention on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We were told that damage to the environment happens at Prestwick, but why does it not happen at Ayr and Troon, where the beaches are cleaned five days a week?The second issue is vandalism. South Ayrshire Council has paid more than £7,000 to deal with one incident of vandalism and antisocial behaviour. There were two sets of toilets on the esplanade, but there is now only one. South Ayrshire Council wants to close the toilet seasonally, which means that we would lose it for seven months of the year. There will be no toilet from 1 October to 30 April. What should young children or old-age pensioners do? Should they cross their legs and hope that they can get back up to the town, where there is a black box in which people must put 20p? The box will take the money but not open the doors half the time and the toilet has been vandalised three times in the past year.We have asked for closed-circuit television cameras. Ayr and Troon have had problems on their esplanades and Prestwick has a major problem. We asked for cameras because youths are running wild and there is underage drinking, which is a big problem, but we were told that there was no money. What is good enough for Ayr and Troon should be good enough for Prestwick. We have contacted the community safety department and the antisocial behaviour team of South Ayrshire Council and the police, but we have got nowhere. Prestwick's death certificate for seven months of the year will be signed if South Ayrshire Council continues to give Prestwick what it currently gets.

South Ayrshire Council stated that the act requires it to clean the beach only from 1 May to 30 September. We are asking for that period to be extended from 1 March to 31 October. I have a business—a hotel—on Prestwick's seafront. Our family has been in business for 70 years and I know from the passenger profile that people do not start to come to Prestwick on 1 May and go home on 30 September. March and April—the Easter months—and October are just as important as the period from May to September. We are asking for the beach to be kept free of litter and clean from 1 March to 31 October and for monitoring at least in the winter months. We cannot remove dead animals and trees by ourselves. If the beach is properly kept, it will not take six weeks from 1 May until the middle of June—as it did this year—to get it into a fit state so that people can walk safely on it. We are merely asking for the act to be amended to cover a more appropriate period. The beach could then be free of litter from 1 March to at least 31 October and safe for people who come to Prestwick.

I am simply asking for work not to cease on 31 October and for the beach to be regularly monitored at least once a week so that animals are not left to rot for three or four months. Dead animals attract rats, for example. Somebody should go down to the beach at least once a week and report what must be lifted. If there is nothing on the beach, that is fine, but there should at least be regular monitoring during the four months of winter. Such monitoring would alleviate our problems at the beginning of the season.Members will see from our correspondence with South Ayrshire Council earlier this year that we have been told half-truths at best; at worst, the council does not even respond to us. Brian Davidson, who is South Ayrshire Council's director of environment and infrastructure, has asked, "Who goes to Prestwick anyway?"The Civil Aviation Authority has released figures that show that Prestwick airport is one of the fastest-growing airports in the United Kingdom. More than 2.5 million passengers will be delivered to it this year alone. Proportionately, Prestwick airport delivers more inbound tourists to Scotland than any other airport does. Those who come into Prestwick by air include golfers, who will come for two to five days and stay in the area. Other people will arrive, hire a car, spend a night in Prestwick and go to Oban, Inverness, Aberdeen or Edinburgh. Such people deliver economic benefits to the whole country. Moreover, VisitScotland is exhorting hotels and bed and breakfasts to improve the standard of their catering and accommodation. We are asking that South Ayrshire Council at least improve the standard of the beach. It is letting us and Scotland down. The matter is not just about residents, because health and safety issues are just as important to visitors.

That is difficult to answer. I can only say that, over the Easter period, Good Friday was a particularly good day and the beach was busy. That is why we know that it was not cleaned, because people who came in for a meal were saying, "We can't go on the beach. It's in a disgraceful state." They wrote letters.We became frustrated by the lack of response and accountability from South Ayrshire Council. We said that the beach was not cleaned before Easter, but the council said that it had been and that the litter had been picked up. We said that that had not been done until the Saturday morning. Why was it necessary to put a council worker on the beach on Saturday morning to clean a beach that the council said had been cleaned on the Thursday? The council said, "Oh no, it wasn't done on the Saturday morning."When we took the petition on to the streets, people from the central belt said exactly the same thing—that the beach was in a disgraceful state. Where do they go? I cannot put a figure on how many people are on the beach; I can only look out and say, "Beautiful day, there are lots of people there."

Burgh Road toilets have been shut because of the amount of vandalism or antisocial behaviour—whatever you want to call it. More than £7,000-worth of damage was caused in one weekend. There is no intention to open the toilets. We have been told that if and when the council has the money, the toilets will be bulldozed. Because of vandalism, we have lost a small pavilion that was there for hundreds of years.People keep attacking the only toilets that we have left. The council has had to put metal gates on them. It does not help that the toilets are opened at 9 o'clock in the morning but shut whenever the man sees fit, even though he is paid until 9 pm. They could be closed at 4 o'clock in the afternoon when the beach at Prestwick is jumping with young children. Why does that happen when the man is paid until 9 o'clock? It is our only toilet on the shorefront. As Sandra Clarkson said, she owns a business on the front and she gets a lot of people asking to use her toilets. It is not fair on her or her guests when people come in and start shouting and bawling, "Where is the toilet?" because there is no toilet for them to use.

The picture that I am holding shows the situation on Prestwick beach on Easter weekend.

We have done that.

It is a bit of both. Ayr beach was recently voted one of the 33 dirtiest beaches in Scotland. Unfortunately, when the tide comes in, the water from there comes round to Prestwick, so we get whatever Ayr throws at us—afterwards, it goes on to Troon and right down the coastline. I do not know how to fix that. However, if the beach was kept clean, people would use it. The beach is so bad that I do not let my grandchildren on it and I do not go on it. It is shocking that South Ayrshire Council asked residents to clean up the beach. There is a scheme in North Ayrshire in which people who are doing community service and so on clean the beaches. I asked South Ayrshire Council why it could not organise something similar, but all I got was a blank expression.Despite going through every department and despite contacting our councillors, our MSP and our MP, who took a petition to the House of Commons for us, the state of the beach is still ridiculous.

The problem is also the lack of response from South Ayrshire Council. I wrote to the provost twice in June, but I have yet to get a response. Our MP, Mr Donohoe, contacted South Ayrshire Council three times over the weekend, but as at 10.15 pm last night he had had no response. There has been a continual lack of response or we have been fobbed off with claims that there is no money in the budget, for example.The committee will have heard of the problems last year of vandalism on the beach. We got a new chief inspector of police in early spring this year and he said the same thing: he had limited resources. However, having a fresh pair of eyes, he has managed to redeploy his men. There is now a police presence on Prestwick seafront and the vandalism has been reduced. Surely South Ayrshire Council can find resources in its budget to redeploy men to clean Prestwick beach at the same time as Troon and Ayr beaches are cleaned.

I have been on to the society several times and we have e-mailed back and forth. Basically, it told us that residents need to help with clean-up. Unfortunately, litter is dropped not only by residents, but by visitors. There is a lack of bins on the beach. For the past two years, we have asked South Ayrshire Council to provide more bins to ensure that there are plenty for visitors to put rubbish in, instead of throwing it on the beach. Unfortunately, extra bins have not appeared.The existing bins are bolted down, but vandals rip them out and throw them on the beach, which does not help the situation. We were told to get as many people as we could to clean up the beach. I asked our local councillor to find out what council in Scotland had had help to clean up beaches in the past five years—the answer was that none had. Therefore, do we start cleaning up our own beach? If we do, what will South Ayrshire Council ask us to do next? Will it ask us to brush the esplanade or empty the bins? The council is asking residents to find funding this year for civic flower planting in Prestwick next year, because the council does not have the money for it. Where does it all stop? The beach is a main asset of Prestwick.

At the weekend, the sewerage pipes burst at Prestwick airport. The cars were under sewage all weekend.

They were pumping it out on Monday.

Thank you.

Thank you.