This week the Scottish and UK Governments signed our £70 million Rural Growth Deal. The 10 year Rural Growth Deal (RGD) for Argyll and Bute will see the Scottish and UK Governments each contributing £25 million to the programme, and the council and its partners providing at least £20 million of match funding.
This funding will support a programme of projects including Rothesay Pavilion, Kintyre Seasports, STEM hubs, UHI Argyll learning facilities, worker housing, Colgrain Business Park, a UAV hub in Oban and various aquaculture innovations. You can read more about the announcement on our website.
The RGD is designed to deliver at least 300 additional jobs, training opportunities for more than 6,000 people, support for business growth, new housing and worker accommodation, and more than 70,000 additional visitors to the area every year.
It has taken a long time to get to this point and you may recall a period after the last election when the deal was in doubt. Monday was therefore an opportunity to celebrate briefly before getting on with the hard work of delivering all these projects that will help our area thrive.
Building on this investment, we also hope to see the announcement of up to £20m investments from the UK Government’s Community Regeneration Partnership next month.
It’s a real time to be optimistic about what we can deliver together for our area.
Have a great weekend.
Pippa
Pippa Milne
Chief Executive
