Agency under fire for £25m Inverness campus investment

Storm as HIE reveals education hub plan

By Iain Ramage

Published: 18/09/2009

PLANS REVEALED: Journalists at Inverness study the plans for the new campus at Beechwood. Sandy McCook

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The north’s development agency is to spend up to £25million – a record amount on a single project – to lay the foundations for an ambitious higher education hub in Inverness, with the promise of thousands of jobs.

But yesterday’s announcement was met with an unprecedented tide of protest from Western Isles Council, north politicians and Old Town retailers in Inverness.

Criticism ranged from Highlands and Islands Enterprise having “misguided priorities”, to a claim the project would kill existing city-centre businesses and leave Inverness a ghost town.

Given planning consent, the agency will invest the money over five years in infrastructure for a 120-acre site beside the A9 – currently a bull stud, half a mile east of Inverness – that it bought earlier this year.

Speaking from Glasgow over an internet link to journalists at HIE HQ in Inverness, HIE chairman Willie Roe said: “This is the biggest project HIE has undertaken. It stands to attract many millions from other sources over the next 20 years and to have a huge economic impact on the city and region.”

He said the long-term rewards would include the retention of talented young people to help expand the local population.

The vision is of a campus shared by the UHI Millennium Institute, Inverness College and the Scottish Agricultural College, attracting businesses and other organisations and potential foreign investment.

HIE believes it would support up to 6,000 jobs by 2030, attract about £300million of investment and ultimately generate more than £38million a year for the regional economy.

Western Isles Council leader Angus Campbell urged HIE to attend a council meeting “to explain what strategy they have for fragile areas such as the Outer Hebrides”.

He said: “I make no comments on the merits or otherwise of this project and, whilst it may be appropriate to invest in educational facilities, I am increasingly concerned that HIE’s approach is fundamentally flawed. It should be seeking to spread opportunity to the more fragile parts of the Highlands and islands rather than consolidating in the Inner Moray Firth and pouring ever-increasing levels of resource into the already-booming economy of Inverness.”

He claimed investment and activity in the Outer Hebrides had “collapsed”, with only £350,000 of HIE funds approved for Western Isles projects so far this year.

Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross Liberal Democrat MSP Jamie Stone asked: “Why is all this money to be spent in Inverness, which has a stronger economy than many remote parts of the Highlands, rather than on local campuses like Thurso and Dornoch?”

His party colleague, Orkney MSP Liam McArthur, said: “HIE risks putting too many eggs in one basket. The implications of that for projects elsewhere in the region could be serious.”

Inverness Old Town traders warned the centre would be left a ghost town if HIE was successful in its concerted campaign to lure Inverness College to Beechwood from its current base in the down-town Longman Estate.

Charles Leakey, who owns Leakey’s bookshop in Church Street, said: “The heart of the city is the Old Town. If you allow that to wither and die, any development you might make on the periphery is not going to be well founded.

“It’s been happening in stages over the last decade. If the process is allowed to go much further, we will have a ghost town without any decent businesses.”

However, HIE had fresh support from Highland Council, which offered its unanimous backing earlier this month for the Beechwood project.

Speaking yesterday, convener Sandy Park said: “Delivery of this major scheme should provide a welcome boost to the construction sector and renewed confidence for the region as a whole.”

Inverness Chamber of Commerce chief executive Stewart Nicol said: “We all need to recognise that the Highlands and islands need a successful Inverness and a successful UHI. That success is integrally tied into the Beechwood campus.”

Responding to the critics, HIE acting chief executive Sandy Brady said the “scale of the opportunity to develop the campus” would ensure the benefits of the investment would be realised across the whole region.

And he insisted the agency had supported many transformational projects in the Outer Hebrides.

“In the last five years, this has included major investment in the community purchase and management of the South Uist Estate, the upgrade of Arnish yard and the continuing roll-out of broadband coverage,” he said.

The Inverness College board meets next Monday, but no decision is expected just yet on its choice of site.