Making Places Success for Wester Hailes Community Trust

The Wester Hailes Community Trust is amongst 19 projects across Scotland receiving a share of around £312,000 to regenerate their neighbourhoods.

As part of the Making Places Initiative, the 19 projects will receive funding to bring people together to agree priorities for their area and shape future planning and design.

The Trust received £20,000 funding, which it will match with £20,000 of its own funding from the STV Children’s Appeal, and will use it to carry out a range of imaginative participatory activities led by local residents and including architects, planners and other relevant individuals and organisations (sometimes known as a “Charette”) to develop a master plan for Westside Plaza with the aim of creating a civic square at the heart of Wester Hailes town centre.

Local resident and vice-chair of the Trust, Eoghan Howard, said

This is great news, there have been increasing concerns about the Westside Plaza area for some time and local residents will now be enabled to have many of their own ideas for improvements captured in the design process. Thanks must also go to the STV Children’s Appeal who have provided the Trust with the funds necessary to attract the Making Places grant.

Announcing the funding the Minister for Local Government, Kevin Stewart said:

I am pleased we received so many applications from a mixture of local authorities and community groups, keen to get local people involved in plans to improve their area.

This scheme and every project supported by it creates more opportunities for communities to choose what works for them.

Each project has its own design challenge, whether it is a plan to regenerate an area of a city centre or looking at a smaller site in a rural community. All of these projects should lead to improvements that will create benefit for hundreds of people.

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