Council housing plan for Lanark baths and Carluke Q&A sites

And South Lanarkshire Council has confirmed to the Gazette that the former Lanark Baths site in South Vennel is also to be redeveloped for new council housing despite the land being bequeathed to the royal burgh in the 1920s specifically for children’s play and leisure.

Although the council is still officially playing its cards close to its chest over exactly where new council homes are to be built in Kirkton Street as part of its 2017-18 new housing programme, the Gazette has learned from a reliable source that the former Carluke Post Office, latterly the council’s Carluke Q&A Centre, is to be torn down to make way for council flats on an extensive site stretching back to Union Street.

The post office was long ago transferred to share premises with a Carluke High Street supermarket and the Q&A Centre was relocated last year to the council’s Lifestyles Centre.

The council has confirmed that the former Lanark Baths site in South Vennel, latterly an overspill car park, is being earmarked for new flats, again as part of its 2017-18 building programme.

This project may yet face some objections from Lanark traditionalists, who, after the baths were demolished several years ago, said that a children’s playpark should be created in the site in accordane with the wishes of the local landowner who bequeathed the site to the old Lanark Town Council 90 years ago.

The Gazette subsequently discovered that, many years ago, council lawyers had the bequest declared null and void, leaving the local authority with the right to do whatever it wishes with the site.