The campaign has been launched to ensure the removal of debris and logs at a site on Cumberland Avenue, when landowners felled trees at the site in 2011.

The landowners were ordered to clear the site in April last year, but have so far failed to do so.

The Helensburgh Community Woodlands Group (HCWG) wants Argyll and Bute Council to take action under Section 179 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 which requires the removal of leftover debris and logs.

HCWG has also embarked on a public campaign named ‘Clear out that Mess!!’ with members delivering leaflets in the area around Cumberland Avenue urging residents to contact their local councillors and press for immediate action.

Signatures are also being collected on a petition to be delivered to the Council before the April meeting of the Planning, Protective Services, and Licensing Committee. Politicians have backed the push, with Helensburgh and Lomond’s MSP Jackie Baillie telling HCWG that she is ‘happy to support the campaign’, adding she would write to Angus Gilmour, the council’s Head of Planning.

Helensburgh councillor Gary Mulvaney said he ‘agrees with the desire to get things tidied up’ and pledged to take up the matter with council officials.

The group says Councillors Aileen Morton, Maurice Corry, and James Robb have also joined the call for action.

David Adams, HCWG convener, said it was ‘heartening’ to receive the support, and that it was time to get the woodland mess cleaned up.

He told the Advertiser: “It is heartening to receive such widespread political support so early in the campaign. HCWG is, and will always remain, a strongly independent organisation, so it’s important that our campaign to clear up the mess left by the landowners at Cumberland Avenue is not tied to any particular political party, but supported by representatives of them all. We hope the council’s Planning, Protective Services, and Licensing Committee will take note of the growing local support for our campaign when it meets in April to decide the matter.” In the letter to Councillor Kinniburgh, HCWG puts forward reasons why the council should act. They say that what is left is ‘waste material that has no place in a designated Open Space Protection Area’. The group also claim that the debris and logs ‘pose a real danger’. The council took direct action to replant 28 trees last year, and served enforcement notices to secure the removal of building materials stored on the fence – but the group is calling for more action to ‘finish the job’.

They add that there is ‘a very strong determination’ among residents in the area to see the land cleared.

A representative for the land-owner did not respond to the Advertiser’s requests for comment. .

HCWG, which has 100 paid-up members, is one of the largest community organisations in the Helensburgh area.

A spokesman for Argyll and Bute Council said that a report about the land would be going to the Planning, Protective Services and Licensing (PPSL) Committee for their next meeting in April.