Consultants advise closing leisure sites in Borders
Consultants have recommended closing a string of leisure, cultural and community sites across the Scottish Borders, including libraries and swimming pools.
Integratis Consulting were brought in by the council to examine the future of the charity Live Borders, which runs certain facilities on the council's behalf.
The proposals, intended to map out a sustainable future for the charity, would also see more than 50 full-time jobs lost.
Scottish Borders Council (SBC) leader Euan Jardine said no final decisions had been made and stressed that they were recommendations by consultants.
The local authority will meet to discuss the findings on Thursday.
More stories from South Scotland
Listen to news for the Scottish Borders on BBC Sounds
A trust was established in 2003 to run sports and leisure facilities on behalf of the council and has expanded since then.
However, it has experienced significant financial issues since the Covid pandemic.
Last year, SBC took back control of some services Live Borders ran on its behalf.
Now a report into the sustainability of its operations has suggested dozens of different sites it operates should close.
Among the facilities recommended for closure are Selkirk Swimming Pool and the Queen's Leisure Centre and Tri Fitness gym in Galashiels.
The report also advises that Jedburgh's Laidlaw Pool should remain closed.
Libraries in Earlston, Eyemouth, Coldstream and Hawick are also recommended to be shut or consolidated with other services.
Old Gala House, Abbey Row Centre in Kelso and Sir Walter Scott's Courtroom in Selkirk are also on the closure list while the bowling hall at Tweedbank and sports hall at the Gytes in Peebles are proposed to be turned into fitness gyms.
SBC leader Euan Jardine stressed that no decision had been made by the local authority.
"This is not a council report this is a consultant's report and I think we need to get that fact very clear," he said.
"This is not that the council has decided to do any of this - this is a consultant's recommendations.
"We will be going out for consultation before we make any decisions."
Council agrees way forward for struggling sports trust
One in three leisure sites spark condition concerns
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hamilton Spectator
19 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Speech from OPEC head to kick off Global Energy Show in Calgary
CALGARY - More than 30,000 people from 100 countries are expected to descend on the white-collar heart of Canada's oilpatch next week for the Global Energy Show, which is to kick off with a keynote address from the head of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. OPEC secretary-general Haitham al-Ghais is set to deliver remarks on Tuesday morning, as recent output increases from his group's members and other producers have put pressure on global crude prices. Among the other speakers are 20 chief executives from major Canadian and international energy companies and several political leaders, including Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. Energy show organizers say Calgary is expecting a 30 per cent increase in hotel bookings for the conference and trade show, and that exhibition space has been increased by one fifth year-over year. Nick Samain, senior vice-president at DMG Events, said as of two weeks before the event, pre-registrations were 78 per cent higher than last year. He says the show is seeing a big turnaround since the oil bust of 2015 and the COVID-19 pandemic. 'There's a sense of optimism that the show really hasn't had in a long time,' Samain said in an interview. 'Operationally, we've been going crazy to make sure we've got enough room for everybody.' The exhibition hall in the newly refurbished BMO Centre on the Calgary Stampede grounds is to feature a record 11 country pavilions and 500 company booths. The event was called the Global Petroleum Show until 2020, when it was rebranded to highlight the growing number of non-oil-and-gas participants in the energy space, such as nuclear and renewables firms. Samain said at the trade show, oil and gas makes up about 70 per cent of exhibitors, with other forms of energy making up the rest. The conference comes as U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff war throws global trade into disarray, raising the prospect of a global downturn that could dampen energy demand. The trade strife has driven calls for Canada to diversify its export markets for its energy products beyond its biggest customer, the United States, and remove some of the logjams that have prevented infrastructure from being built over the past several years. Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised to speed up and simplify the regulatory process for projects deemed in the national interest. Samain said the show is an opportunity for people to hash out competing views about Canada's energy future. 'We're just big proponents of people meeting face to face,' he said. 'We find when people get together at an event like this, it really does (give) the opportunity for people maybe to see a different perspective.' A week after the Global Energy Show, another major event drawing dignitaries from abroad is to take place in a popular recreation area in the Rocky Mountains an hour west of Calgary. Canada is to host leaders from the United States, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy and the European Union at the G7 summit from June 15 to 17 in Kananaskis. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 6, 2025.
Boston Globe
41 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
U.S. hiring likely slowed to 130,000 new jobs last month amid uncertainty over Trump's policies
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up For the most part, though, any damage has yet to show up in the government's economic data. Advertisement The U.S. economy and job market have proven surprisingly resilient in recent years. When the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve raised their benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023, the higher borrowing costs were widely expected to tip the United States into a recession. Instead, the economy kept growing and employers kept hiring. But former Fed economist Claudia Sahm warns that the job market of 2025 isn't nearly as durable as the two or three years ago when immigrants were pouring into the U.S. job market and employers were posting record job openings. Advertisement 'Any signs of weakness in the data this week would stoke fears of a recession again,' Sahm, now chief economist at New Century Advisors, wrote in a Substack post this week. 'It's too soon to see the full effects of tariffs, DOGE, or other policies on the labor market; softening now would suggest less resilience to those later effects, raising the odds of a recession.'' Recent economic reports have sent mixed signals. The Labor Department reported Tuesday that U.S. job openings rose unexpectedly to 7.4 million in April — seemingly a good sign. But the same report showed that layoffs ticked up and the number of Americans quitting their jobs fell, a sign they were less confident they could find something better elsewhere. Surveys by the Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, found that both American manufacturing and services businesses were contracting last month. And the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level in eight months. Jobless claims — a proxy for layoffs — still remain low by historical standards, suggesting that employers are reluctant to cut staff despite uncertainty over Trump's policies. They likely remember how hard it was to bring people back from the massive but short-lived layoffs of the 2020 COVID-19 recession as the U.S. economy bounced back with unexpected strength. Still, the job market has clearly decelerated. So far this year, American employers have added an average 144,000 jobs a month. That is down from 168,000 last year, 216,000 in 2023, 380,000 in 2022 and a record 603,000 in 2021 in the rebound from COVID-19 layoffs. Advertisement Trump's tariffs — and the erratic way he rolls them out, suspends them and conjures up new ones — have already buffeted the economy. America's gross domestic product — the nation's output of goods and services — fell at a 0.2 percent annual pace from January through March this year. A surge of imports shaved 5 percentage points off growth during the first quarter as companies rushed to bring in foreign products ahead of Trump's tariffs. Imports plunged by a record 16 percent in April as Trump's levies took effect. The drop in foreign goods could mean fewer jobs at the warehouses that store them and the trucking companies that haul them around, wrote Michael Madowitz, an economist at the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Intel draws a line in the sand to boost gross margins — new products must deliver 50% gross profit to get the green light
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Intel will not be entertaining any projects that do not promise to double its money going forward. Michelle Johnston Holthaus, CEO of Intel Products, announced at Bank of America's global technology conference that Intel is no longer approving new projects that cannot be proven to earn at least 50% gross margin "based on a set of industry expectations." Holthaus explained Intel's new risk-averse policy as "something that we probably should have had before, but we have it now so that product doesn't move forward; you actually don't get engineers assigned to it if it's not 50% or higher gross margins moving forward." Holthaus also clarified that while Intel is not expecting or projecting 50% gross margins across all operations, it is a number the company is aspiring toward internally. All of Intel's future roadmap operations, including Panther Lake and Nova Lake, are also currently expected to reach the 50% gross profit number that the rest of the business aspires to. The drive behind this initiative is reportedly coming from Intel's new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan. Tan is reportedly "laser focused on the fact that we need to get our gross margins back up above 50%." To accomplish this, Tan is also said to be investigating and potentially cancelling or changing unprofitable deals with other companies. Intel's margins have slipped to new lows for the company in recent months. MacroTrends reports Intel's trailing 12 months gross margin for Q1 2025 was as low as 31.67%. Intel's gross margins had hovered around the 60% mark for the ten years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, falling beneath 50% in Q2 2022 and continuing to steadily fall ever since. Holthaus predicts a "tug-of-war" to ensue within Intel in the coming months as engineers and executives reckon with being forced between a rock and a hard place. "We need to be building products that... fit the right competitive landscape and requirements of our customers, but also have the right cost structure in place. It really requires us to do both." CEO Lip-Bu Tan has done much to streamline Intel's operation and right a rocking ship inherited from previous Intel chief Pat Gelsinger. Another major round of layoffs, potentially up to 20% of the remaining workforce, is coming in Q2, arriving after a major leadership change-up to remove middle management between Tan and other team leads. Tan is also quoted as wanting to turn Intel into an "engineering-focused company" again under his leadership. To reach this, Tan has committed to investing in recruiting and retaining top talent; "I believe Intel has lost some of this talent over the years; I want to create a culture of innovation empowerment." Maintaining a culture of empowering innovation and top talent seems, on its face, at odds with layoffs and a lock on projects not projected to gross 50% margins, but Tan seemingly has Intel investors on his side in these pursuits. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
