A PEEBLESSHIRE resident has raised concerns about mountain bikers parking their cars in "really hazardous" areas near his home.

In a letter sent to Innerleithen Community Council chairman Marshall Douglas, John Paterson, of The Ley, said that during the weekends and summer months the layby adjacent to his driveway and the green spaces along the B709 are “rammed” with vehicles which have flocked to the region.

At a meeting of the community council on Monday (December 6), Mr Paterson shared his concerns and requested that action be taken to tackle the issue, described by one councillor as “hellish”.

“We’ve always had issues with camping, we’ve even had some trees chopped down by people camping there, litter, people urinating and defecating either on my property or at my entrance which is pretty unpleasant as you can imagine," he said. “And it just seems to have reached a real pitch in recent times.

“I know it’s been very bad for some while now at the likes of the Cauld and the golf club used to have a lot of problems with people parking there as well.”

Mr Paterson has spoken with Police Scotland about the issue and it was suggested to put up bollards or reflector posts around the bend to discourage people from parking on the verges.

Tweeddale East councillor Robin Tatler (independent) said he would look into solutions.

He said: “I absolutely sympathise with you. I can understand that this must be absolutely hellish.

“In the short term we need to do something immediately about trying to discourage people from parking in inappropriate places and I’m more than happy to take that forward to the community action team (CAT) with the police.

“I think in the medium term we need to be trying to encourage people, when there are peak times, to not park there but to park down in the town.”

Also at this week’s meeting was Emma Guy from Enduro World Series (EWS), who formerly worked as project coordinator for the Tweed Valley Tourism Bid.

She said: “I’m well aware of this issue and some of us [from Tweed Valley Tourism Bid] did try and tackle it on the ground about a year and a half ago with putting signs up near the Cauld.

“So around the event at the beginning of October we had shuttles so people wouldn’t park in these hotspots, we cordoned off areas, we spoke to the golf club and we had marshals in place to police any bad behaviour, so tat worked quite well.

“Our kind of feeling is that this is an ongoing problem and it does need solutions, there needs to be some kind of visitor infrastructure investment and certainly in my role with the Tourism Bid we were pushing really hard for that.

“From an EWS point of view, with regard to events, we worked quite hard to manage that problem because we know how disruptive and how unpleasant that can be.

“In my role with EWS we would support and put our weight behind any proposals to the council to SOSE (South of Scotland Enterprise) to try and alleviate this.”

Tweeddale East councillor Shona Haslam, of the Conservatives, added: “In terms of the long term [solution] obviously we’ve got £40 million coming into mountain biking infrastructure into Innerleithen and £40 million for a town the size of Innerleithen is pretty significant.

“So, we’ve got the Mountain Biking Innovation Centre that is moving forward in the background, obviously there’s a lot of commercial stuff in there that we’re not allowed to talk about, and there is the bike park as well. There is going to be significant parking and infrastructure and resources.”