hub South West partnership with East Ayrshire Council and Kier Construction hands over £45m Kilmarnock Campus

hub South West, the construction and infrastructure-focused partnership which works with local authorities and private sector enterprises in Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway, has handed over the £45 million William McIlvanney Campus in Kilmarnock to East Ayrshire Council.

The campus – named for the Scottish novelist, who was born in Kilmarnock and started out as a teacher – represents an amalgamation of Kilmarnock Academy and James Hamilton Academy into one campus, along with Silverwood Primary, New Farm Primary and the Early Childhood Centre.

The main contractor was leading property, residential and services group, Kier Construction, and the architect was NORR, the UK arm of the global NORR practice, with support from Edinburgh-based landscape architects Rankin Fraser.



Work on the project started in March 2016, and Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, unveiled the foundation stone in October 2016. £24.5 of funding, representing more than half of the total value of the project, was provided by the Scottish Government.

The campus will accommodate 1,465 secondary and 383 primary school pupils, as well as 80 morning and 80 afternoon early years’ pupils. A centre of excellence for Gaelic language development will be based at the campus.


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