PROGRESS is being made in efforts to transform and bring the Cumbrae Watersports Centre back into use.

Councillor Alan Hill, who chairs the new working group for the project entitled The Cumbrae Wave, has thanked the community after a great response to the recent online survey.

He has also revealed more good news as the ambitious project gets ready to move into the next stage.

Cllr Hill said: “We have been successful in a bid to the North Ayrshire Venture Trust for an employee to work part-time and take things forward.

“We have finalised our constitution and set up our bank account, so our next intention is to work through the enormous pile of responses to our online survey.

“We had almost 400, which were almost all positive, so we want to look through those and see if we can grow the committee.

“At the moment we are short of members who can commit lots of time to the project, so we are looking for more volunteers.”

Concerns have been raised that the centre’s assets, include boating equipment, will be moved elsewhere by owner sportscotland.

Cllr Hill explained: “We have appealed to sportscotland to leave the canoes, kayaks and paddle-boards there.

“It would make it much easier for any local groups to deliver watersports activities in the future."