Changes to be made to Glasgow park to make it safer

The park is a small remnant of the huge site, which hosted the Garden Festival in 1988, which attracted millions of visitors to the city.

But in recent years it has fallen into decline, with concerns over “serious anti-social behaviour”. An 18-year-old girl was allegedly raped in the park last year.

Glasgow City Council’s liveable neighbourhoods plan for Greater Govan, Ibrox and Kingston puts forward proposals for the wooded area including improved lighting and safety of visitors.

A council plan said “important improvements” would aim to “increase use and tackle serious anti-social behaviour” in the Govan public space.

There is also a bid to improve entrance areas to the green space and surveillance of the area.

Govan councillor Dan Hutchison, Scottish Greens, said there are problems with people drinking in the park.

He said: “The park is really dark at night. The plan is to make it more open and nicer.”

The Festival Park improvement bid is just one in a long list of projects presented in the liveable neighbourhood programme for the area.

Some of the potential liveable neighbourhood plans for Festival Park:

• Improve lighting and safety of visitors to Festival Park.
• Establishment of Friends of Festival Park as steering group.
• Improve access points to the Park.
• Bid for active travel through Brand Street industrial blocks through Festival Park and connecting to Pacific Drive and Clyde walkway.

Liveable neighbourhoods form part of the council’s strategy to help it achieve net zero carbon targets and reduce 30 per cent of car kilometres travelled by 2030 among other goals.

Projects are to be taken forward in stages with areas across the city due for transformation as funding becomes available.