GLASGOW councillors have agreed on a final offer in “lengthy” negotiations with a music and arts charity over the sale of a youth centre.

Beatroute Arts applied to the city council for an asset transfer of the Balornock East Youth Centre on Wallacewell Road in August 2018.

It was agreed by the council in August last year but, due to a dispute over the terms of a £45,000 sale, the charity requested a review.

Beatroute, which had initially offered £1 for the centre, believed conditions included by the council could put off future funders.

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The deal now hangs on a pre-emption condition, which would give the council the first option to buy back in the future.

The charity, which believes the purchase would provide long-term security, had suggested a five-year limit on that term but councillors have now put forward a 25-year time limit.

A council spokesman said the principle of a pre-emptive right had been agreed but the length of the condition had yet to be accepted. He said the council's final position is 25 years but talks are ongoing.

In August, the charity's solicitors said there had been a "lengthy period of unproductive discussions" and claimed the council had not provided a "meaningful response" to their alternatives to "overly onerous" conditions.

A letter stated some conditions were "not only unnecessary" but "completely unacceptable to proposed funders".

Last month, councillors continued the review "with a view to both parties making concessions".

There had been no agreement over a standard security to prevent a future sale "without consultation with the council" or a clawback of 100 per cent of any uplift in the value of the property, minus the cost of any improvements, if permission is granted for residential or commercial use.

The council has since proposed to remove the clawback and standard security conditions but keep the first right of refusal on a future sale.

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An email to the council, on behalf of the charity, from Joyce Moss of law firm Mitchells Roberton, stated the clawback was "disproportionate, unnecessary and inappropriate".

It said Beatroute had "compromised at every step of this lengthy and tedious process".

The email also demanded the council pay a contribution £2,500 towards the charity's legal fees for "the time and effort wasted on this matter by GCC over the past year".

"Clearly, conditions that had been previously insisted on by GCC with no explanation or rationale in the face of overwhelming evidence as to their detrimental effect on the property and the transaction, have now simply been dropped," it added.

The council's submission stated: "We do not accept the characterisation of the discussions with Beatroute Arts as set out in the email.

"However, we do not believe that a detailed response to this would assist the committee in its consideration of the review."

The response did not agree to pay the legal fees.