£14m Tweedbank Care Village moves a step closer reality

A £14m pioneering Borders care village moved a step closer to reality this week.

The Tweedbank Care Village on the Lowood Estate would incorporate three new two-storey residential buildings for the provision of elderly care residents, including amenity facilities, associated car parking, landscaping, bike/ bin storage and an energy centre.

The plans for the care village first surfaced in 2020 after council representatives paid a fact-finding visit to the Hogeweyk dementia village in the Netherlands, to look at new ways of providing care services.

Scottish Borders Council this week submitted a request for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to its own planning department, to help assess whether the application was likely to have a significant impact on the environment.

An earlier report on the proposal said it represented “a paradigm shift in care”, adding: “It is an alternative model for traditional nursing, residential and intermediate care, which is based on de-institutionalisation and transformation, where people live in small, homely settings, with like-minded peers and are supported by family, staff and volunteers to live as normal a life as possible.”

One benefit of the Dutch dementia village concept is the amount of time residents can spend outdoors.

Meanwhile, SBC is holding a community engagement session to give the local community and other interested stakeholders the opportunity to have their say on outline plans for the development.

The session is to be staged on Monday , September 25, between 4pm and 8pm, at the Inspire Tweedbank Digital Centre of Excellence building, adjacent to the train station.

Information being presented will include the proposed site and building plans as well as 3D images of the development.

Members of the project team will be available to provide an update on progress generally and answer any questions that attendees may have.

There is no need to book, but if anyone has any queries or would like to provide feedback via email, please contact: [email protected].

The local authority had earmarked a budget of more than £22.5m for the provision at Tweedbank and also Hawick Care Village, on land south-east of Guthrie Drive at Stirches.

Both Waverley Care Home in Hawick and Garden View Intermediate Care Home in Galashiels are earmarked to close in order to allow the plans to progress.