Council cash plans

South Ayrshire Council has allocated around £800,000 to a range of projects aimed at connecting local people and their physical‘place’.

This includes Troon Water Sports Centre, the site of the former Girvan Bingo Hall, Maybole Town Hall and Prestwick streetscapes.

The two largest allocations are £100k for‘town centre vinyls and murals’and £174k for the third phase of the council’s shopfront improvement scheme.

A report to the council’s Leadership Panel stated:“The Council Plan,‘Our People, Our Place’, sets out the council’s ambition to improve placemaking and create local place plans by listening to communities and enabling greater choices in how they lead their day to day lives.

Collin’s Dictionary defines placemaking as“designing or redesigning public places to be more useful, communal, safe, etc, especially with input from the communities using them.”

The report continued:“The pilot place plans for Ayr North and Girvan have been completed and sit alongside those plans previously incorporated for the Troon Together project and the North Carrick Community Benefit Company place plans.”

The allocation of £797,000 comes from the Scottish Government’s £325m Place Based Investment Programme (PBIP).

The programme allows local authorities to‘allocate, working collaboratively with local communities, along with business and the third and public sectors, to support shared local plans and aspirations’.

Following feedback from local members and communities through the placemaking process, officers have shortlisted a number of projects and initiatives.

•Former Burns House, Ayr - £70k

•Domain Youth Centre, Ayr - £25k

• Wallacetown Hub - £30k

•Troon Water Sports Centre - £35k

•Pwik Streetscape - £44.5k

•Town Hall, Maybole - £45k

•Wayfinding posts, Maybole - £10k

•Kennedy recreation park/Dunure castle - £50k

•Former GIrvan Bingo Hall - £70k

•McKechnie museum, Girvan - £43k

•Community Garden, Coylton - £30k

•Supporting community ownership of assets - £50k

•Town vinyls and murals - £100k

•Shopfront improvement scheme phase 3 - £174k

The report to the panel stated that the main objectives of the programme were:

• to link place-based initiatives and establish a coherent local framework to implement

• to support ambitions such as town centre revitalisation, community led regeneration, 20-minute neighbourhoods and Community Wealth Building;

• to ensure that all place-based investments are shaped by the needs and aspirations of local communities

• to accelerate ambitions for net zero, wellbeing and inclusive economic development, tackling inequality and disadvantage, community involvement and ownership.

Draft plans are expected early this year.