History

Save Scott’s Countryside was set up in 2003 by members of the public who saw the Scottish Borders as being under threat from poor planning decisions likely to lead to the over-development of environmentally sensitive areas of great landscape beauty in the central part of the Tweed Valley.

The immediate threat was the Local Council’s proposal to develop a New Town at one of the main approaches to Scott’s Managed Landscape to the east of Abbotsford House.

That threat was seen off but the Council, instead of searching for a better site for a new town in the central Borders, reverted to relying on the expansion of existing, local settlements to meet the considerable increase in commuter housing they had committed to in securing the promise of a Borders Railway linking Edinburgh to Tweedbank, just beyond Galashiels.

The topography of the landscape and its settlements means that delivering substantial extra housing, particularly when its form is largely dictated by developers’ plans for estates rather than a more natural and incremental growth, can only be problematic.

Hence the continuing need for an action group such as ours.