Hillend to end?

By Greig Cameron on Mar 23, 10 11:46 AM in News

First off a confession as this blog entry may be slightly skewed by my rose-tinted personal experience.

You see I was one of thousands of primary school children taught to ski at the Midlothian Snow Sports Centre - known as Hillend to everyone - in Midlothian so have some quite fond memories of it.

Learning to snowplow, trying to grab the button tow properly, hurtling down the main slope with carefree abandon and laughing hysterically as friends fell over and hit the mat are all part of my childhood.

I'm not alone in having fond memories as a Facebook campaign with more than 26,000 members is dedicated to saving the facility.

Hillend's future, or lack of, has been on the agenda for the past few months with Midlothian Council struggling to subsidise what is now a loss making venture.

Reports earlier this year suggested the centre faced closure by the end of March due to a loss of around £500,000.

Although that was wide of the mark the latest update is Midlothian Council will embark on a two-month consultation with SportScotland to consider plans for the site.

Options such as staff cuts and putting up prices were being discussed at a council meeting today.

The full impact of the consultation will be considered at a further meeting in August.

While Midlothian Council has repeatedly said it doesn't want to lose Hillend the financial constraints which the public sector is going to be working under over the next few years mean it is unlikely to be able to continue working alone.

Even with notes of interest from the private sector there has apparently not been a viable business plan put forward.

The stark facts is it will cost £1.2m to obliterate Hillend from the landscape and remove all the infrastructure.

Stacked up against potential annual losses for the foreseeable future and it's clear why there is a bit of angst about what happens to Hillend.

What I am not trying to do here is have a pop at Midlothian Council as they are well within their rights to explore every option and indeed would be remiss if they did not.

Still it doesn't mean I can't offer my own suggestions.

Perhaps the other local authorities (East Lothian, Edinburgh and West Lothian), which all have users of the slope, could help out in the financial package.

Leasing out the whole site for a private company to run would also be worth considering if an appropriate partner could be found.

Some form of private and public partnership could also be workable. For instance a private operator could run the leisure facilities and the currently loss-making cafe.

Anyone who has ever visited the Edinburgh International Climbing Centre at Ratho will be able to vouch for the fact it is a nice place to have a cup of coffee or to browse in the Tiso store as well as being an international standard sporting facility.

EICA is perhaps a good example to follow as it had an extremely troubled genesis and it was only with intervention from Edinburgh City Council it survived at all.

But I firmly believe having these type of niche sporting facilities is extremely important to the cultural mix of a region.

Giving children from a range of backgrounds access to skiing also creates the next generation of users at the traditional ski resorts in Scotland.

Hopefully a solution can be found as it would be a shame if Hillend were to be permanently retired.