THE Scottish Government’s announcement of up to £500million of savings could affect plans for an active travel route on Jura, officials have admitted.

A councillor said that the community was “very excited” about the prospect of the route being devised from Craighouse to Corran Sands.

However, Councillor Dougie McFadzean (SNP, Kintyre and the Islands) raised concerns about the announcement by the Scottish Government the previous day.

It was announced that the savings would involve “implementing emergency spending controls across the public sector, particularly targeting recruitment, overtime, travel and marketing".

And a council officer conceded there was a “definite risk” to the project if funding could not be secured.

The discussion took place at a meeting of Argyll and Bute Council’s Mid Argyll, Kintyre and the Islands area committee on Wednesday, September 4.

Councillor McFadzean said: “You know yourselves that the community is strongly in favour of this. They are very excited about it.

“However, with the announcement yesterday about £500m of savings, and active travel plans being mentioned, the communities are built up to expect this.

“How will you manage the messaging that they might be let down? How much is stage two of the process costing?

“I would hate to think that we would be throwing money away if the funding is not available.”

Colin Young, the council’s strategic transportation delivery officer, responded: “In terms of managing expectation, it is something we endeavour to be as clear as possible on.

“The first half of the funding only covers the first two stages. It also does not cover any construction, so we need to make two more bids to the Scottish Government, or whoever they contract out to.

“This is assuming that the funding is there, and the announcement yesterday looks like it has impacted the funding. This is not a done deal and there is no guarantee of money.

“We go out in the design stages to encourage a high level of uptake. With Jura being quite a small community, numbers were never going to be massively high, but we were seeing 60 per cent of the community responding, which is great.

“But I agree that there is a definite risk around future development and delivery of the project. The first two stages are done and there is no funding available to do any more.”

The committee unanimously agreed to officers’ recommendations, which were to support progress of the project to full technical design, and to instruct officers to identify a single preferred option, subject to funding.