Last week a meeting of Dumfries and Galloway Council was told that the signing of the Borderlands Growth Deal, which had been due to take place in March, has been pushed back to the end of this year. The deal is a collaboration between Dumfries and Galloway Council, Scottish Borders Council, Carlisle City Council, Cumbria and Northumbria county councils and has been in development for almost two years.
Funding for the deal will come from both the Scottish and UK governments, with £150 million allocated for Scottish projects. Among the projects put forward by Dumfries and Galloway Council is the transformation of the former Chapelcross nuclear power station into a state-of-the-art energy park. A number of towns in the region will also receive direct regeneration funding through the Borderlands Place Programme.
And although the signing has been delayed, elected members were reassured that work on these projects has continued despite the pandemic. The local authority’s Borderlands lead officer Chris Travis told the meeting: “We have been reassured by both governments that there is a strong commitment to taking forward the deals in development to deals in delivery. The delays have quite simply been capacity, both within the councils and within both governments, as a result of the Covid-19 emergency, but we are beginning to see some easing of those challenges and we are progressing the consideration of business cases.”
Asked about the risk of a delayed signing, Mr Travis said: “The risk is we can’t deliver sufficient business cases but I am confident that risk is in mitigation. I don’t foresee any issues about getting to the point where we have completed all business cases and reached an agreement with both governments.”
Dumfries and Galloway Council leader Elaine Murray said the leaders of the five councils had expressed similar concerns at a recent meeting. She said: “There is a strong view that we want it signed by the end of the year, because if it slips into next year we have got Scottish Parliament elections and various other things to think about. There was a request that we lobby MPs in particular, and possibly MSPs, and ensure both governments are brought to the table for the final signing before the end of the year.”
