Communities across Perthshire, Tayside, Forth Valley and Fife are benefitting from over £500 million of new infrastructure projects delivered by hub East Central Scotland, new figures have shown.

The public/private partnership was established to create a long term development programme for the creation and delivery of high quality community facilities and services at best value.

Across the region over £140m of infrastructure is now open, including new schools, social housing projects, health and care facilities. Projects to the value of £142m are under construction with a further £208m of work currently in development.

Last year, hub East Central Scotland supported 13,000 jobs, 5,587 of which were local residents. Around half (49 per cent) of the new project work is undertaken by local businesses and in the last year the development partnership has doubled its targeted employment and skills outcomes in the region.

Public bodies in the area benefit from a unique strategic development fund established by hub to enable early strategic work to transform initial concepts into real projects. This fund has provided over £1.6m to kick start community projects which might otherwise never have reached development.

Ian Mullen, chairman at hub East Central Scotland, said: “This has been a record year for the delivery of new community infrastructure as our teams continue to deliver high quality buildings designed to meet the needs of the communities they serve.

“That forward momentum will continue with over £200 million of projects in development, many of which will break ground this year. We continue to work closely with our public sector Participants to support and enable new projects that will bring significant long term benefits to communities across the regions.

“With half of our construction projects being awarded to SME’s we are protecting and sustaining thousands of local jobs.”

Recently built projects include:

Fife

Levenmouth Academy (£42.5m)

Ostler’s Way Care Home (£5.5m)

Dunfermline Museum & Art Gallery (£9m)

Forth Valley

St Margaret’s Primary School and Nursery, Cowie (£6.4m)

St Ninian’s Primary School, Stirling (£7.9m)

Fairfield Social Housing, Tillicoultry (£1.7m)

Anne St Social Housing, Tillicoultry (£2.1m)

Falkirk Community Hospital ward upgrades (£2.9m)

Perth & Kinross

Crieff Primary School (£9.6m)

Oakbank Primary School (9.4m)

Tayside

Forfar Community Campus (£39m)

Timmergreen primary School (£4.2m)

Wardykes Primary School (£5.6m)

Brechin High School (£26.5m)

Harris Academy (£31m)