SPENDING of a further £170,000 on upgrade works at Scottish Borders Council’s “under-utilised” headquarters has been questioned by a senior councillor.

The issue of improvement works at the Newtown St Boswells building was raised at a meeting of the local authority’s Executive Committee on Tuesday (March 12).

Leaderdale and Melrose councillor David Parker said: “Could somebody tell me what the additional £170,000 funding on the HQ building is?

“We’ve spent about £2m on the HQ campus since 2019. It remains about 50 per cent full about 30 per cent of the time and I’m just keen to understand what we could be possibly be spending another £170,000 on, given all the things that are going on in the building, which is not being utilised as it should be.”

In response, John Curry, the council’s director for infrastructure and environment, said: “We’ve done quite a lot more than we said we would in 2023/24 in the building but one thing we didn’t manage to carry out was the training suite for group training.

“The plan was to bring that into the main body of the HQ building and we haven’t been able to progress that piece of work yet, that has been carried over to 2024/25.”