SCOTTISH Power has made a commitment to provide £5 million worth of sponsorship over five years to an urban regeneration project run by entrepreneur Marie Macklin.
The Halo Scotland project, which is currently under construction, will transform the site of the former Johnnie Walker bottling plant in Kilmarnock into a low-carbon development that will include key worker private rented homes as well as an enterprise and innovation hub for business start-ups, a renewable energy centre and commercial and leisure units.
Scottish Power has committed to working on projects at the site up to the value of £5m, including offering support to the start-up and scale-up businesses using the hub. The utility firm will also play an active role in a digital training facility being created at the site.
A spokesman for the business said it is in the process of identifying the projects it could support once the development is up and running so that it can “hit the ground running” when construction work completes next year.
Last year the Scottish Government announced that it was investing £5.3m in the site, with £3.5m of that going into the development itself.
The remaining £1.8m of the investment has come from the Government’s Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme and will be spent on a geothermal heating system that will provide low cost, renewable energy to the homes on the site.
Ms Macklin, who set up Halo to revitalise vacant industrial land in communities experiencing economic challenges, said the Scottish Power sponsorship would help support “an urban regeneration project that is going to change the lives of young people”.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here