Building Briefs - March 30th

• Advance Construction Scotland makes £10k donation

William McGowan, head of fundraising, was welcomed to the site to receive the cheque from Colin Sinclair, transport manager.

Colin said: “It was a pleasure meeting William and we’re delighted to be supporting this worthwhile charity and look forward to working with the fundraising team in the future.”

William added: “We would like to share our thanks with Advance Construction for this incredibly generous donation. We rely entirely on fundraising and donations to fund life-changing hospital projects to make sure that young patients and their families continue to receive the extra special care they deserve during these challenging times.

“Thanks to generous support of businesses and individuals across the country, we can continue our life-changing, charity-funded play and events programmes, family support services, wellbeing support for NHS staff and paediatric research to give children and their families the best possible hospital experiences.”

• JR Group creates Eggstra special Easter for local charities

The JR Group has donated hundreds of Easter eggs to a selection of local charities ahead of the holiday weekend.

A total of 800 chocolate eggs from the Paisley-based company, were donated by kind-hearted staff from across the business, as well as suppliers and contractors.

The haul of chocolate Easter treats was distributed amongst six different charities in Glasgow, Renfrewshire and Fife – to ensure as many children as possible don’t have to go without an Easter treat.

The donation was shared between Kindness Homeless Street Team in Glasgow, Glasgow City Mission Child & Family Centre in Govan, Jeely Piece Club in Castlemilk, Kirkcaldy Foodbank, Glasgow North East Foodbank and Beech Avenue Children’s Home in Paisley.

• Saint-Gobain UK & Ireland commits to electric and hybrid car fleet

To support its net-zero carbon commitment, Saint-Gobain UK & Ireland is targeting to move its entire car fleet to electric & hybrid vehicles by the end of 2023.

As part of this journey Saint-Gobain has recently taken delivery of 100 new Volkswagen 1D.3 all-electric cars to help colleagues to reduce their carbon footprint and reducing car related emissions.

This one-off agreement is part of Saint-Gobain UK & Ireland’s target to switch its entire company car fleet, of more than 3,000 vehicles, to fully electric & hybrid cars by the end of 2023. The all-electric ID.3 is a golf-sized hatchback – the first Volkswagen delivered with a net-carbon-neutral balance.

Last year Saint-Gobain made a global commitment to be net zero carbon by 2050 and meet interim 2030 targets validated by the Science Based Initiative. Since then, roadmaps are being developed by each of its UK & Ireland businesses to set out how it will achieve this goal.

Further measures to support its transition include the formation of a Net Zero Carbon Colleague Assembly, made up of more than 40 colleagues who will each engage and challenge the business to meet their commitments and help inform investment decisions made by the business to reduce emissions.

• An extra £100k investment in Skye and Raasay’s roads announced

Isle of Skye and Raasay Area committee members have welcomed a near doubling of its annual roads maintenance to help repair the islands’ roads which were badly affected by winter.

The entire Highland Council capital roads budget has been set at £17.2 million.

The Isle of Skye and Raasay revenue budget allocation is now £1.1m, which is primarily to cover labour, plant and materials (including salt) for roads cyclical maintenance and winter maintenance activities for the 2021/22 season.

The capital budget allocation is now £1.07m and will be used to undertake surface dressing and surfacing schemes. A Ward Allocation of £100K was included in the Capital Budget allocation.

The capital plan includes approximately 4,000m of surface dressing for the A850 Carbost to Glenbernisdale junction, 3,000m of surface dressing on the C1244 Ardvasar to Aird of Sleat and 2,750m of surface dressing on the A863 Sligachan to Drynoch Junction phase one.

Other surface dressing projects planned include 1,500m of the C1235 on Raasay, 2,500m on the A850 Clahamish to Bernisdale road, 2,400m on various roads in the Marrisshadder and Maligar spur and 1000m on the U4892 Old Corry road.

Other projects include regulate/overlay work on the C1225 at the Quiraing, the C1231 at Vatten, the C1229 at Claigan and various roads in Portree village, including Home Farm.

• Galashiels Campus consultation boards installed at Transport Interchange

Exhibition boards outlining the various proposals for the new Galashiels Community Campus have been erected at Galashiels Transport Interchange.

The boards have been installed to allow all members of the community to view the proposals in their entirety and feedback their views to Scottish Borders Council.

It includes details of the five possible options to replace Galashiels Academy, including the council’s preferred option to build a 1,000+ pupil school built largely within the existing school boundary and a portion of the town’s Scott Park.

That option would see extensive landscaping undertaken to expand and improve the usable area in Scott Park. This would include the establishment of a community orchard and new pathways for both school and community use.

The boards form part of the wider online informal community consultation currently taking place on the proposals for the campus, which has been taking place virtually because of COVID-19 restrictions.

On the platform are various videos outlining the vision for the proposed campus, with animated fly-throughs of what the facility may look like and interviews with pupils and members of the community.

Since its launch on 17 March, the consultation website has recorded over 750 unique visits, with visitors spending an overall total of 11 days, 23 hours and 50 minutes on the site at an average of 22 minutes per visit.

The informal community consultation website can be viewed at www.scotborders.gov.uk/galacampus.

The current aim is for the new campus to open in 2025.

• Bancon Homes to launch new Aberdeen development

Bancon Homes will launch sales of its new development, The Reserve at Eden at 10am on Saturday 3 April 2021.

Located opposite Dobbies at the Western Edge of Aberdeen, The Reserve at Eden is a development of 172 two, three and four-bedroom homes, all featuring designer kitchens, stunning finishes and different characteristics. House styles include apartments, terraced, semi-detached and detached homes. The Reserve at Eden follows on from the company’s hugely successful Roses at Eden development which has only one property left.

A variety of different house-styles are included in the first release of homes, each of which will be built with contemporary design, versatile interiors and quality craftsmanship throughout.

• Hebridean distillery in Raasay affordable housing call

The founders of the Isle of Raasay Distillery are calling for more affordable housing on the island as they submit plans to help provide staff with stable accommodation.

The Hebridean distillery is striving to secure additional housing on the island in an effort to sustain workers.

It’s understood around 20% of staff at the Hebridean distillery reside in long term accommodation, whilst the remaining 80% are currently renting.

Alisdair Day, co-founder of the distillery, is now calling on the local government to solve the problem and build additional affordable properties in the area. His pleas come just weeks before they prepare to take on additional staff ahead of bottling their first legal single malt whisky.

Production at the Isle of Raasay business is now set to recommence in May as they begin bottling their first single malt whisky. The distillery’s inaugural release in September sold out via pre-orders, with 7,500 bottles snapped up by consumers and trade partners, The Press and Journal reports.

Distillery bosses are also preparing to take on several new members of staff to commence the decanting process and meet demand.

• Stirling ranked top in mainland Scotland for home-grown green energy

Stirling Council is the best performing local authority on mainland Scotland in the rollout of carbon-cutting small-scale renewables, according to a new report.

MCS, the national standards organisation for renewables, highlighted Stirling’s progress in this key green technology in their study, Renewing Britain: The Changing Landscape of Home-Grown Energy 2008 – 2021.

Using data it had collated over the past 14 years, MCS described Stirling as a ‘forest’ of small-scale renewables and showed that the Stirling Council area ranked the highest on the Scottish mainland, and the fourth across the whole of the UK, for small-scale renewable installations as a percentage of households (14.10%). Stirling also leads the way in Scotland and is second in the UK for the concentration of homes with solar panels (12.4%), and bucked the national trend for high installations of small-scale renewables in local authority areas with predominately rural populations.