Friday is Hawick Paper day, and in today’s edition (26 June) the “Grumpy Auld Man” asks what’s going on with the railway feasibility study. He writes “I’m told full consultancy work will start ‘soon’…[and] earlier pledges to be more transparent with regular public updates hasn’t materialised, at least so far.”
Peter Heubeck, Campaign for Borders Rail’s Technical Advisor provided an update on progress in the Campaign’s June newsletter.
Scottish Borders Council (SBC) agreed a three-stage approach to the feasibility study with its funders, Transport Scotland and the
Department for Transport.
The three stages are:-
(1) Strategic Outline Business Case (SOBC)
(2) Outline Business Case
(3) Final Business Case
Peter writes :
“SBC issued Invitations to Tender to six major consultancies for two important pieces of work.
The first is the SOBC element of the feasibility study, while the second is an economic development strategy for the study corridor from
the Central Borders to Carlisle. The latter will give a properly researched
economic development context against which options generated by the SOBC can be judged.
The consultancy firms submitted their bids in late April and news of contract awards by SBC is expected soon. This will be a key
milestone and we shall cover the issue in detail in the [CBR’s] next newsletter.”
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