Scottish Center Parcs could open by 2029, says boss

Scotland's first Center Parcs holiday village could be open by early 2029, the company's chief executive has said.

Colin McKinlay told BBC Radio Scotland's Drivetime programme the £400m project should have major benefits for the area - both during construction and once it was up and running.

Center Parcs wants to put up 700 lodges and accompanying tourist facilities on a site to the north of Hawick in the Borders - creating about 1,200 jobs.

The company hopes to submit its planning application this summer in order to allow building work to start in 2027.

Mr McKinlay was speaking ahead of the company's latest information day in the area being held in Selkirk.

Center Parcs currently attracts millions of visitors a year to its six sites across the UK and Ireland.

Its chief executive said they had identified the Borders as a "real opportunity".

"It fits so many of our criteria in terms of the area, in terms of the demographic profile of people around the area," he said.

He said the company already had a large number of Scots going to holiday villages in England.

"It was staring us in the face as the obvious place to look to put our next village," he added.

Mr McKinlay said they would look "wherever possible" to employ locally and offer opportunities to stop people leaving the region.

"We've found in our other village areas that lots of young people who've typically left an area in search of career opportunities have actually stayed in the area," he said.

"That was our experience in our last village we built in Ireland."

He also defended Center Parcs from criticism that it generated little spending in the wider community outside its villages.

"Once we open, we look to procure as many goods and services as we can locally - that has an impact on local business," he said.

He added that people coming to stay would often stay for three or four nights and then go on to "explore the area as well".

Mr McKinlay also stressed that an assessment of the traffic and environmental impact of the scheme would be carried out as part of the planning process.

If all that goes as the company hopes, the first visitors could be staying at the holiday village within four years.

"All being well, we'd like to submit a planning application by the summer," he said.

"Once that's done, we are a little bit in the hands of the process.

"But, if we're successful, I would envisage us moving forward to a programme that would start building probably early in 2027 and hopefully opening as early as spring 2029."