Borders businesses are calling on the Scottish Government to work with them to find new solutions to what they term “a perfect storm” brewing in the region.
The Scottish Borders Chamber of Commerce (SBCC) has been canvassing firms of all sizes through 2025 on the greatest challenge they face in the coming years and, ironically, while the green light given to Center Parcs to open its first Scottish venue in the Borders just before Christmas was met with widespread optimism it has also deepened a particular area of concern.
Laura Middlemass is Vice-Chair of the SBCC, and Finance Director for a major engineering firm with significant operations in the Borders. She explained: “We are facing what you might call a demographic ‘perfect storm’. We have a shrinking working age population but are experiencing a surge in demand across our core industries.
“The arrival of Center Parcs will have real benefits for the region, but their expectation of creating up to 1,200 jobs has crystalised the concerns that we have around people who live in the region having the skills to take on those jobs.
“This is not a new concern; across the region, there has been a growing need for technical specialists. This reflects a national trend identified within the Scottish engineering sector, which highlights a strong demand for electrical and electronic technicians.
“We are currently required to send employees up to the central belt to get their training, and other electrical engineering companies in the Borders are too. There is a collective drive to establish this training locally, not only for operational efficiency but as a vital strategy to persuade young talent to stay in the Borders rather than seeking qualifications elsewhere.”
Asked to explain what she means by technical specialists and the skills that are lacking, she continued: “These are the people that build, maintain, innovate and develop our capability in Scotland to keep up to date with how technology is moving and keep our businesses at the heart of that global development.
“People ask about the relevance of AI, and indeed whether it is relevant to us in rural areas. Well, the development of AI is providing foundations for the future development of not just the industries Plexus operates in but across textiles, agri-tech and a huge variety of businesses, from large SMEs to the very small enterprises that are key to the Scottish Borders. And we have lots of youngsters coming through school who love the idea of AI and actually are already developing skills in its development, and they’re going to go where the training and jobs are.”
In 2024, the Scottish Government launched a ‘Supporting and Enabling Sustainable Communities Action Plan’ to address the rising rural depopulation across Scotland. The Scottish Borders was cited in it as an area requiring support, and ‘Regional Spatial Strategies’ and ‘Local Development Plans’ were created as mechanisms for this.
The Government identified a need for “favourable business conditions and aligned local skills provision to address population decline within these areas”. The South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE) was created in 2020 and its five-year-plan launched in 2023 featured ‘Six A’s, which included pledges to advance innovation and improve productivity, awaken entrepreneurial talent and activate and empower enterprising communities.
While a lack of education and skills training is a staple of government reports as a key factor in rural depopulation, and the Action Plan frequently mentioned the University of the Highlands and Islands and its 36,000 students over 70 learning centres it featured no mention of tertiary education in the Borders, which is enduring decreasing investment year on year.
The SBCC is working with SOSE and leading global companies to heighten awareness of the Borders’ attractions as well as help local businesses to grow. It brought in expert speakers from across various areas of tech and AI development relevant to the region for its past two annual conferences, including leaders developing the South of Scotland’s little-known space programme, CGI’s global development in IT and AI, and the use of AI in transport improvements.
The presentations and workshops focused on the increasing use by small and medium-sized businesses of AI tools to automate marketing, advertising, communications and sales. The Chamber will host its third ‘Expo’ conference at Cardrona on February 26th, and AI will feature prominently again.
But to what end? Another SBCC Director is Pete Smith, Principal and CEO of Borders College, and he believes the development of modern skills is key to protecting and growing jobs and businesses, particularly in rural areas. However, he says that reducing investment in the college system across Scotland, which has forced Borders College to tighten its offering, contributing to the ‘perfect storm’.
“We have a wonderful place to live and work, great supportive communities and a lot of vibrant developing business in this area,” he said, “which we, as the local college, are well placed to support. But we have a major funding gap due to a lack of investment from Scottish Government that is impossible to cover.
“The latest Regional Skills Assessment is projecting that our employed workforce in the Borders will increase by 3-4,000 over the next 10 years, with the main increase coming in health and social care. So, we are planning to provide the skills training for that.
“At the same time, we have growing demand across construction to help address the housing emergency, alongside our work with local businesses to support trades such as electrical, plumbing and joinery. And there is the growing demand in the south of Scotland for upskilling in renewable energy as well as modern tech. We would like to support improved and increased training across these areas in the Borders, but we can’t make it happen without government investment.
“We really need support from the Scottish Government now for us to be able to develop our courses with local businesses to upskill local people to meet the demands the Borders is now facing.”
School-leavers in the Borders, as with any rural area, will inevitably leave the region and broaden their horizons, and so the annual exodus will continue, but there are now fears of a similar talent drain that met the withering of the textiles industry, followed by that of a Borders electronics industry that came in the 1980s and largely went within two decades.
The Scottish Borders economy is anchored by long-standing industry leaders such as Farne Salmon in Berwickshire and Plexus in Kelso, both of which have serviced global demand in food production and engineering technology for decades. They are joined by a growing range of firms from pharmaceuticals and recycling to tourism and whisky that continue to launch in the region’s open spaces to address new markets. Despite this established industrial base, the population has seen little growth in recent years, as many residents continue to leave for opportunities elsewhere
Smith said: “There are different benefits from people leaving the area to learn or work, and also from coming to live here with different skills and experience, sure, but if the region is to grow and thrive, we need to grow our talent in the Borders and provide stronger pathways into business.
“We’re not lacking the jobs in the Borders, but we’re not able to train people for those jobs in the Borders. So, they leave to get the necessary skills training and many, inevitably, never come back, and the strain or limits that then puts on our businesses – as you’ve heard from Laura – can be significant.”
The return of the railway to Tweedbank has provided a boost both to businesses recruiting from Edinburgh but also for local people to secure better paid jobs in the capital and further afield. SBCC and Scottish Borders Council are working closely with Borders Buses to develop more local bus routes to support employees get to and from work, and talks have been ongoing with the Center Parcs management – and Borders College – around the skills required for the kind of jobs they will be offering when the facility begins its build phase in 2026 and then opens in 2029, as they seek to employ as many local people as possible.
So, what is the solution?
“We need Scottish Government Ministers to grasp the challenges that the Borders is now facing,” added Middlemass. “That means working with us to invest in the local skills pipeline and regional connectivity, to address the skills shortage, before it’s too late.
“The consequences of not investing in training in the Scottish Borders will be more and more youngsters heading to the central belt, new businesses, like Center Parcs, and old, unable to recruit locally and ultimately businesses leaving the region or closing.
“We need the Scottish Government to follow through on its pledge to find unique solutions for the Borders, where the challenges are different to the central belt. The investment in tertiary education in the Highlands has seen it develop its offering massively. We need similar support for our education and skills training in the Borders if we are to realise the potential that exists in this part of Scotland.”
