“We have spoken to individual landowners and we are putting together a package to buy the required site lock, stock and barrel,” said Adrian Britton, commercial director of the Westerleigh Group Ltd.

“We have shown continued interest in coming to the Borders for many years and we are now in a position to deliver,” he added.

The Bristol-based firm already owns or leases 11 crematoria in England and is currently constructing a facility for West Lothian Council in Livingston.

In the Borders, the regulation of the region’s first crematorium will lie with Scottish Borders Council which, in amendments to its Local Plan, has already identified Wairds, along with land at Yair Road, between Rink Farm and Lindean near Selkirk, as the two preferred sites.

According to Mr Britton, if councillors plump for Wairds this summer after considering the public responses to the Local Plan amendments, his company could begin construction work in October, with the crematorium up and running by the summer of 2010. If there were planning impediments, a start would be delayed until next March with the opening in December, 2010.

Westerleigh’s interest in coming to the region was revealed in correspondence emanating from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to SBC by Save Scott’s Countryside (SSC), the heritage group which strongly objects to Wairds being even considered.

Along with Scottish Natural Heritage and a large number of local residents, SSC stresses that Wairds, on the lower slopes of the Eildons, is in a designated National Scenic Area and an Area of Great Landsape Value. It is claimed the Eildons are an iconic attraction, drawing many people to Melrose and that the crematorium would be visible from Gattonside and the Southern Upland Way.

The FOI papers show that Westerleigh was engaged by SBC in “pre-market intelligence” work early last year and that Mr Britton and the council’s bereavement officer Robert Mathieson toured eight potential sites in the central Borders last spring.

It now seems clear that Mr Britton’s assessment of their suitability informed the decision to narrow the search to just two sites in the Local Plan amendments.

In May last year, he wrote to Leslie Gill, a management accountant with SBC’s environmental services department, telling him the best sites were “unquestionably” Wairds and Yair Road, although the better option was “probably the former as the further east the crematorium is located the more likely one is to getting the coastal areas”.

“Given that the numbers overall are relatively small, 50 to 100 cremations a year may be the difference between viability and otherwise,” wrote Mr Britton.

Of Wairds, Mr Britton enthused: “It has a beautiful setting that does not impose itself on any of the surrounding landowners. Costs of construction would be cheaper than many of the other sites as road improvements would not be needed.