60-bed care village in Hawick is agreed

A ground-breaking £11.2m dementia ‘care village’ was today, Thursday, January 26, endorsed by members of Scottish Borders Council.
The site at Hawick's Guthrie Drive, which will become the new dementia care village.The site at Hawick's Guthrie Drive, which will become the new dementia care village.
The site at Hawick's Guthrie Drive, which will become the new dementia care village.

Full council has agreed an outline business case for a new 60-bed complex on land in Guthrie Drive, in the Stirches area of the town.

Go-ahead will also require the closure of the 30-bed Deanfield Residential Care Home at Roadhead in Hawick.

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The move is part of a near-£23m shake-up in residential care for the elderly across the Borders, with plans also for a separate care village on the Lowood Estate at Tweedbank.

The care village concept, based on a model developed in the Netherlands, is a move away from institutionalised care to create a “neighbourhood that is part of a broader society”.

Among the aims of the care village – developed after council officials paid a visit to a complex in the Netherlands in 2020 – is to retain independence and allow couples with differing needs to stay together.

Councillor David Parker, the council’s executive member for Health and Wellbeing, said: “The council has an ambitious aim to improve the quality of care provision for our elderly resident across the Scottish Borders. We have done that over the years by providing excellent extra-care housing but the new care villages will be a different dimension to look after older people with dignity in their old age and there is no doubt the projects we are looking to deliver will deliver high quality, improved care and in a way which I think will be ground-breaking in Scotland.”

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Councillor Stuart Marshall, who represents Hawick & Denholm, said: “To say that I’m absolutely delighted that we now have before us an outline business case is a complete understatement.

“For those that don’t know Stirches very well, it is a large housing scheme set in a very desirable and popular area of the town. It already has a fantastic school, a playpark, a private care home and much more on its doorstep. The large undeveloped space in Guthrie Drive will complement all of this and the site itself has, for many years, lain dormant and will now become the location for this exciting development.

“The proposed area is in very close proximity to many homes which skirt its perimeter and my plea this morning to officers, to the planning department, to Eildon and everyone else involved in taking this forward is to make sure that those constituents of mine, who will be immediately impacted by the construction of the village, receive the best communications throughout. We must get the communications and the consultation absolutely right and take those residents with us every step of the way.”