LOCAL councillors have approved the award of £833 to the Helensburgh and District Twinning Association to further links between the town and its ‘twin’ community of Thouars in France.

Members of Argyll and Bute Council’s Helensburgh and Lomond area committee agreed to grant the money at a meeting in Helensburgh last week.

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Lomond North councillor George Freeman said twinning was unnecessary in a time of straitened council budgets, but committee chair Ellen Morton said no objections had been raised when the cash was included in the council’s spending plans for 2019-20 at its budget meeting in February.

The two towns have been twinned since 1983, with Thoaurs' link to Scotland established because of the presence in a church in the latter town of the ashes of Marguerite of Scotland, who married the future King Louis XI in 1435 but died ten years later at the age of 22.

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