SCOTTISH Borders Council will be asked later this month to approve the transfer of several key features of Galashiels – including beautiful Bank Street Gardens – to the town’s Common Good Fund.

The gardens, gifted to the former town council after the Second World War, are due to be removed from the asset register of the Newtown-based local authority.

Also set to transfer are the income-generating Old Gala House in Scott Crescent and Ladhope Golf Course with a combined book value of £315,000.

In addition, a major review of 170 “heritable assets” in Galashiels – from industrial units to sports fields, from car parks to schools – has concluded that other lands at Ladhope along with landmarks including The Mercat Cross should be returned to the ownership of the town and its people.

A report recommending the reclassification has already been approved by the Galashiels Common Good Fund Sub-Committee, comprising the town’s four elected members on SBC, and now awaits ratification by the full council.

With regard to Bank Street Gardens, gifted by the proprietors of neighbouring properties, the report noted: “The gift was for the purpose of a town council scheme of improvement and some donors stipulated it was a condition of gift that the ground was to be permanently used as open space.

“In the absence of any statutory purpose on the part of this council, the ground should be categorised as being common good.” More cut and dried is the rightful ownership of the golf course and the adjoining woodland, car park, recreation ground and Glen Park, the report conceding that the Ladhope bequest of 1945 states clearly that the land should be “held in trust for the community of Galashiels as part of the common good of the same burgh”.

Old Gala House, a museum, gallery and meeting place, was gifted in 1975 to the burgh by Galashiels Art Club “for the benefit of the public of Galashiels”.

Apart from The Mercat Cross, which dates back to the town’s charter of 1559, historic landmarks with no book value – the Sir Walter Scott statue (acquired in 1932) and the Old Town Cemetery in Church Street (gifted to the burgh in 1955) – will be included in the transfer. Other assets identified in the review as being part of the Common Good are the playground at the corner of Leabrae and Woodside Place (1933), the amenity ground at Halliburton Place (1931) and a small area of the Netherdale playing fields (1951).

The reappraisal represents a boost for a fund which, at March 31 last year, had a cash balance of just £25,000 and no fixed assets – in contrast to the common good funds of Hawick and Selkirk which had tangible assets of £2.5m and £2m respectively and resultant large cash balances.

The report explained how in 2010, in response to “significant and continuing pressure from residents and others”, SBC had appointed a solicitor to review the titles of all properties it held in the region’s eight former burghs. The Galashiels audit is the fourth to have been completed.

The report states: “All income from and expenditure relating to these assets will now rest with the Galashiels Common Good Fund and not with the general fund of the council.” Although the administration of common good funds is currently vested in the trusteeship of the 34-elected members of SBC, a new Community Empowerment Bill in Scotland is, if enacted, expected to extend control to community representatives of the former burghs.