West Lothian Council has unveiled plans for a major housing investment across the region.

At a meeting earlier this week, Councillors agreed over £123 million will be spent on delivering a housing service and improving council homes next year.

This includes a £77m investment in the local authority's housing capital programme, which is delivering 1,000 new homes across all nine council wards.

Planned improvements in existing housing will total over £6.7m, while investment in major refurbishment and repairs will total over £5.3m, including a £1.2m investment at Mayfield in Armadale.

Major works will also take place at Bathville Flats, Armadale and at Harrison House, which forms part of the Loch Scheme in Whitburn.

Planned programmes include an energy efficiency measures and replacing central heating systems to help reduce fuel poverty. Further works will be carried out in addition to planned maintenance programmes, as well as kitchen and bathroom replacements and window refurbishments.

A £100,000 fund has also been set aside to trial a District Heating project in Westfield for a Heat Exchange Pump system.

In addition, housing tenants will see a freeze in both their rent and garage rents for 2017/18, remaining at 2016/17 levels. Service and support charges for Sheltered Housing properties and rent and support charges for Homeless properties have also been frozen.


Cllr George Paul said: "The freeze on council rents will help many of our tenants who are experiencing tough times in terms of their finances, with prices rising and below inflation increases in their pay packets.

"We are also investing an unprecedented amount to build 1,000 new council homes in West Lothian. The £77 million of spending on new homes for rent planned for 2017/18 is the largest ever investment in our housing stock in a single year.

"This continuing investment allows us to provide excellent value for money and meet the needs of existing and future tenants. The council is committed to providing new, affordable, high quality council homes in West Lothian and we are already starting to see the positive impact of our new build programme on communities across West Lothian."

Also at the meeting, the council unanimously approved to invest £50m in local services this year through its capital programme.

Key highlights include:

• £2.5m to be spent on improving the school estate, with a further £6m on general school projects including work on the new £32m West Calder High School and extensions to Torphichen Primary, St Mary's Primary, Bathgate, new nursery accommodation at Mid Calder Primary, and £600,000 to extend Boghall Primary nursery.

• £4.1m to improve West Lothian's roads

• Over £3m to be spent on flood prevention and drainage works, as well as £1.2m to be invested in the Broxburn Flood Prevention Scheme.

• Over £550,000 is being invested in cycling, walking and safer streets projects with £270,000 being spent on road casualty reduction schemes.

• £2.3m to be spent on improvements to bridges and £1.5m invested in improvements to West Lothian's town centres and villages.

• Over £3m to improve open spaces, sports facilities and children's play areas including Drumshoreland Park, Craigspark and Marrfield Park.

• £6.3m investment to upgrade the council's Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure, including £1.3milllion in school ICT infrastructure, improving connectivity within schools and upgrading ICT hardware.

• Over £12m to be invested in community buildings and council depots, including ongoing delivery and development of Partnership Centres throughout the area (Linlithgow, East Calder, Whitburn, Armadale and Blackburn) and completion of a new service centre at Whitehill, Bathgate.

Council Leader John McGinty said: "The council has invested over £207 million in Capital investment over the past four years and this additional £50 million for 2017/18 will ensure that our ambitious and exciting capital investment programme will result in more improvements to important local services."

(LM/MH)