SRUC criticised for plan to close Ayrshire campus
A senior Scottish politician has lambasted proposals by Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) to close its campus site at Riverside, Ayr as breaking long-term promises as well as abandoning the next generation of rural students in Ayrshire and the wider area.
John Scott has been an MSP since 2000, and is deputy chairman of the rural affairs committee as well as being a hill farmer himself.
He claimed that despite keeping in close touch with SRUC, the proposals which came out last week had been a major surprise.
He said the closure of the Ayr campus will deny future generations from Ayrshire, Renfrewshire and Wigtownshire wanting to follow a career in farming and other rural professions, and that the closure proposal went against promises made ten years ago when the main Auchencruive site was sold off by the Scottish Agriculture College, the previous incarnation of SRUC.
Scott said: “SRUC and its predecessor have assetstripped the site which was given by the Hannah family almost 100 years ago to promote agricultural education in the area.
“That is bad enough, but it leaves a big gap in rural
education in this area at a time when farming and related rural industries have never had a greater need for specialist knowledge.”
The SRUC proposals include a potential £35 million investment on their Barony campus in Dumfries and Galloway, but this did not impress Scott who claimed that location was “difficult to access” with poor road connections .
He said he would be writing to the rural affairs minister raising his concerns.
Yesterday also saw questions raised over claims that SRUC would become a university within four years – first mooted in 2012 as part of the amalgamation of the four rural colleges into the one SRUC body.
This was abandoned two years later when talks with Edinburgh University
broke down and the U in the Scottish Rural University College became silent.
With last week’s announcement the ambition has been revived, but the path towards this goal remains unclear. A spokesperson for SRUC said: “Our path to university status is not the end of the journey, but the beginning of a whole new chapter.”
They promised to outline further details in the near future, as well as a timeline for delivery and further information relating to SRUC faculties in north and central Scotland.
“We will deliver Scotland’s first rural university by 2022 and are extremely confident that existing widespread support for our plans will only continue to grow.”