Latest news with #DumfriesandGalloway
Daily Record
15 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Record
Cash paid to ride Dumfries and Galloway Council buses wasn't banked for 10 months
An audit has revealed that when money was paid in, it went into the wrong bank account. Cash paid to use Dumfries and Galloway's buses wasn't banked for 10 months, and when money was paid in, it went into the wrong bank account. The concerns were raised following an internal audit of how cash is handled on Dumfries and Galloway Council buses. The local authority runs 18 bus routes across the region – six out of Castle Douglas, 11 out of Dumfries and one out of Stranraer. The audit was carried out in December and investigators found no money had been banked for bus fares for the Dumfries or Castle Douglas services since February. The Stranraer money had been banked three times – twice in July and once in December. However, no income was found for one route as 'the driver did not have a licence' to charge fares. The report for Thursday's meeting of the audit, risk and scrutiny committee, adds: 'The legality of operating the service was clarified with legal services.' The report calls for cash to be paid in to the bank 'at least every week', which is now being carried out. The report warns: 'If income is not being submitted this would not be identified. Funds could be stolen.' Auditors also found that while money from Stranraer was going to the correct bank account, the Dumfries and Castle Douglas money was going into a catering account. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. This had now been resolved. And the inspectors wanted to see one person made responsible for all cash and bus income given to the transport officer to avoid the risk of 'cash not being handed in in full'.
Daily Record
04-06-2025
- General
- Daily Record
Gretna play park transformed to be inclusive to children of all ages and abilities
The Central Avenue Play Park has been officially opened after a tremendous community fundraising campaign. A new inclusive play park in Gretna has been officially opened. The Central Avenue Play Park has been transformed to offer facilities for children and young people of all ages. The project has been delivered by a sub-group of Gretna and Rigg Community Council, led by local councillor Archie Dryburgh. Dumfries and Galloway contributed £104,000 towards the cost of the park, with £80,000 coming from the local authority's coastal benefit fund. Beck Burn Wind Farm Community Fund provided a further £20,000 with a series of events – ranging from coffee mornings and bingo nights – raising a total of £210,000 for the new park. Chairman of the council's economy and infrastructure committee, Councillor Ian Blake, said: 'This project is a great example of our council and community partners working together to achieve a project that brings huge benefits to the local area and most importantly to our children and young people. "The hard work and determination of the Gretna and Rigg Community Council sub group is to be commended.' Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. Sub group committee chair and local councillor, Archie Dryburgh, added: 'It is brilliant to see the new inclusive play park being used, particularly by children who require accessible equipment. 'It has been a short journey for the team behind this project, and this is absolutely down to their dedication to ensuring they deliver a new play park for the children of Gretna as quickly as they could. "It has been great working with all of the volunteers involved and of course with our council's staff who have been with us every step of the way.'
Daily Record
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Scotland's longest running greenfield music festival faces 'uncertain' future
Organisers of Knockengorroch in Galloway have launched a campaign to raise £25,000 to help it continue. Scotland's longest running greenfield music festival faces an 'uncertain' future. Knockengorroch has been held in the Galloway hills for more than 25 years, with the 2025 version getting under way later this week. But rising costs have led to organisers launching a campaign to raise £25,000 to help it continue. In a statement, they said: 'Through Covid-19 and foot and mouth we have continued, despite the challenges. However in the last couple of years we are facing the most severe threat yet. 'The cost of living is affecting us all and the live music scene and festivals are suffering. The cost of putting on Knockengorroch averages £320,000 and over the last few years has increased all round, from supplies to artist fees to the costs of visa for artists from Europe. Funds are low, costs are high. If we cannot get through 2025 with some funds left to put towards next year then next year is uncertain. 'We've launched a fundraiser to help meet the costs of this year's event. If we can reach our goal of £25,000 – or even exceed it – it will help us get through this year with hopefully something to begin planning for 2026. 'Don't worry - we will be able to pay everybody this year - we wouldn't promise a festival if we could not, but we cannot go forward on zero, or less than zero. 'It feels strange to ask for money when usually we just ask you to buy tickets, but we find ourselves in a position where we feel it is our only option. 'We are asking all of you who care about Knockengorroch Festival, who have experienced seminal moments on the land, to give whatever you can to ensure we can make it through this year so that we can look towards next year and the future. Every contribution – no matter the size – will help.' Knockengorroch first took place in the hills above Carsphairn in 1998. It is Dumfries and Galloway's longest running music festival with an all-star cast of international acts set to perform between Thursday and Friday. They include Rokia Koné from Mali, African Head Charge and Formidable Vegetable from Australia. Also appearing will be Mungo's Hi-Fi, Omega Nebula, Kinnaris Quintet, General Levy, The Fontanas, Moxie, Euphonique and Serial Killaz. This year's festival will have a theme of survival – particularly the survival of live music festivals, community, language, culture, and biodiversity. The organisers added: 'We are working hard towards the festival this weekend, with as much passion and excitement as ever. We can't wait to see these fields come alive as they have done for so many years now. 'Since 1998, we've brought people together in the hills to celebrate music, community and the land. Completely independent and without compromise, with no funding towards festival running costs, we've grown organically from just a few hundred people in a field to thousands. 'We have introduced countless festival goers to music you rarely get to see in Scotland, let alone in a field in the hills. We have given many live bands their first taste of a stage and seen artists grow from teenage start-ups to successful, established acts, playing across festivals and stages across the UK and internationally. As the first eclectic music festival of our kind in Scotland we believe we're inspired many which followed. 'We have created countless numbers of unforgettable and life changing moments. Lovers have found each other, people married, children conceived, and even ashes scattered here. Often three generations of the same family attend together in our multi-generational celebration of life, music and planet.'
BBC News
16-05-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Artists celebrate gardens in new Dundee V&A exhibit
The first planted gardens in Scotland arrived with the Christian monks in the 6th Century. They were practical places, full of medicinal herbs and nourishing vegetables. But they gave root to the huge range of spaces we have today, from formal parklands, to community allotments, and seaweed all celebrated in a new exhibition, Garden Futures, which opens at the V&A Dundee this weekend. "It's an ancient idea and the origin of human life in many cultures. Think of the Garden of Eden," said Francesca Bibby, one of the show's curators."Gardens represent society, culture, art and design. "They can also be political, therapeutic, environmental, nourishing, practical, aspirational and we tell those stories in the 400 objects in the exhibition." American architect Charles Jencks designed one of the most spectacular gardens in Scotland in the grounds of his home in Dumfries and Galloway. His extraordinary Garden of Cosmic Speculation is open to the public just one day a year and is dedicated to his late wife Maggie Jencks, with whom he created the concept of the Maggie's first one came about when Maggie, a keen gardener writer and designer, was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 47. She received the news that her cancer had returned five years later while she stood in a windowless corridor in the Western General Hospital in that, she and her husband vowed to create a better space for people with cancer to go - outside, but near the hospital. Dundee was the second of their 24 centres to open in September 2003. Designed by Frank Gehry, the gardens were added later to link the centre with Ninewells Hospital. At their centre is a huge labyrinth designed by Arabella Lennox-Boyd."What looks like a puzzle is actually quite straightforward ," said Karen MacKinnon of Maggie's Dundee."It can be quite symbolic for how you navigate life when you have a major illness like cancer. How you manage is one step at a time."The gardens on the other side of the three-acre site offer privacy and peace as well as spaces designed to share. For many staff at the hospital, it's also a welcome breathing space."Through different seasons, these places can work their magic without us knowing it," said Karen. Other parts of the exhibition show the artistic inspiration of gardens and gardening, and how that inspiration can come full artist Duncan Grant, born in Rothiemurchus in the Highlands in 1885, was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, which included famous British writers and artists like Virginia Woolf. Like many in the group, he was unable to be open about his his garden in Charleston in Sussex became a sanctuary for the entire group where they could meet, express their art and be themselves. That garden in turn inspired Kim Jones of the fashion house Dior to create a collection of menswear for summer 2023, one of which features in the show.V&A Dundee are keen that the show seeds interest in gardening way beyond the their projects is a "knit and natter" event which will create seeded squares for a garden will be planted along the Dighty Burn in Dundee to restore the vegetation. The commission is by Alice-Marie Archer, a British artist and designer who uses traditional craft techniques to create knitted hydroponic sculptures in which plants can grow. Using natural undyed sheep's wool, which absorbs and retains rainwater, she adapts knitting patterns to suit the germination needs of different plants. "We hope this exhibition is the launch pad for people's interest in garden," said Francesca Bibby."If you're a seasoned gardener, you might learn something new, but equally people who've never gardened and never had a garden can get out there and start planting themselves."Glasgow designers Andrew Flynn and Eilidh Cunningham never imagined they would be leading the way in 21st Century gardening. Their company POTR focuses on sustainable design and their most successful product is a flat pack self-watering plant pot made from recycled material. "One of the main materials we're using is discarded fishing nets from around the UK," said Andy."We have the potential to clear up hundreds of tonnes of this material from our oceans."We can use one eco-system to help another."The flat pack plant pots are both ancient and modern, inspired by Japanese origami but using modern technology to pinpoint the exact location the material has been gathered from. Last year, they secured a major distribution deal in Japan."We weren't just non-gardeners," said Eilidh, POTR's chief marking officer. "We were people who struggled to keep a plant alive."We come from a design and engineering background, an industry which has a lot of innovation in it - but the humble plant pot has not seen its format change in hundreds of years. "So we've designed something from the ground up to make gardening and plant care simpler." Indoor gardeners These self-confessed former "plant killers" say they're delighted to be given space in the show's final section, which is devoted to gardens of the future."We're interested in urban spaces," said Andrew."To give opportunities to people who don't have access to a full garden and give them opportunities to grow not just ornamental plants but food. "Sustainability starts in the decisions you make in the household."And has the experience turned them into gardeners?"We definitely appreciate plants and the routine you get from caring for a plant," said Eilidh."We've just moved into a top floor tenement flat and we're in the process of creating an indoor garden. So it's definitely turned us into indoor gardeners."
Daily Record
06-05-2025
- Sport
- Daily Record
Dumfries swimmers hold their own against the best in the sport at London's Aquatics Centre
Amber Rigg, Amber Hinton and Finlay Nelson competed against top names in the Aquatics GB British Swimming Championships in London . Dumfries ASC swimmers Amber Rigg (17) and Amber Hinton (15) competed in the Aquatics GB British Swimming Championships at the London Aquatics Centre last month. The pair were joined by fellow Dumfries and Galloway swimmer, Finlay Nelson (18), who is a Dumfries 2nd club swimmer and races for the University of Stirling. This competition is also the qualification event for the World Championships in Singapore as well as a host of international teams across age-groups including the European Juniors so it attracted all the top names in British swimming, including Duncan Scott, Freya Anderson, Matt Richards, Amelie Blocksidge and many more. To make the tough qualification times for these championships was a brilliant achievement for the swimmers and the experience they will have gained swimming in an environment such as the Olympic pool will be invaluable moving forward for the remainder of the season and indeed for the seasons ahead. This was Finlay and Amber Hinton's first time qualifying for these Championships. Amber R qualified for five events and started day one with a 50m breaststroke where she finished 67th in the rankings. In day two, Amber raced the 100m backstroke and after a super heat swim made the junior final where she finished in sixth position with a time of 1.04.05. The 50m backstroke was Amber's third event where she finished in 48th place with a time just over the 30 second mark. The 200m backstroke was her penultimate swim where she swam a solid heat to earn herself a super reserve spot for the junior final. Amber's final swim was in the 200IM where again another good swim in the heats earned her second reserve spot for the junior final that evening, highlighting her consistency in competing against the best senior and junior swimmers in Britain. Amber H qualified for five events, but due to a clash in the schedule, chose to swim four. She kicked off her swims on day one with a 200m free where she swam a new pb (2.06.89), moved up 16 places in the rankings to 64th and finished as second 15-year-old girl in the event (age at end of year). Day two was the 1500m free where she further lowered her pb by more than two seconds (set the week before in Aberdeen 17.31.28) in a brilliant race to finish inside the top 30 in 29th place, with only four of the other swimmers in the event swimming faster than her in the last 50m. In the 400m free she again moved up the rankings with a very solid swim. On the final day of racing, Amber swam the 800m free which was another good race where she finished just outside her pb and moved up 12 places in the rankings to 41st, demonstrating her ability to keep up with the best in the country. Finlay qualified for the 50m fly event and swam a good race in a time of 25.85 seconds and finished in 85th position, showing his continued progression while studying in Stirling. The club is very proud of the three swimmers for their achievements competing against the best swimmers in the country and the girls would like to thank coach Anthony Ryan for all the support he gave them in London and over what had been a very busy two weeks of racing. East Kilbride meet Fifteen club swimmers travelled up to the Dollan Aqua Centre in East Kilbride to compete in the long course age group meet last month. The group had great fun showcasing their talents, producing great racing throughout and achieving some personal best times, 50 top 10 placings including 13 medals along the way. Lauren Dunlop, swimming in the 14-15 year age group, had a good swim to take silver in the 400IM. Struan Henry also secured silver in the boys 14-15 yrs 100m backstroke event. Both of these swimmers were back in the medal hunt in the 200m backstroke with Lauren securing a super silver in the girls and Struan swimming a brilliant pb to take bronze in the boys 14-15 year age group. Thirteen-year-old Carter Jones swam a great new pb time in the 100m free to secure a bronze medal and Struan concluded the medal haul for day one with yet another pb in the 50m butterfly to take silver. In day two, the swimmers were ready for another day of racing in the long course pool. Struan was first in with a medal, taking another silver in the 14-15 yrs 50m backstroke event. This was quickly followed up with a trio of medals in the 800m free with Lauren taking gold in the 14-15 yr old girls' event, Carter taking silver in the 10-13-year-old boys and Ali rounding it off with a bronze in the 16yrs+ age group. Millie Colvin swam a solid race to claim a bronze in the 16yr+ girls 100m butterfly and Iona Kellock did the same in the girls 14-15 yrs 200m breaststroke. Carter finished off the medal count on day two with another bronze, this time in the boys 10-13 yrs 50m free. Well done to all the swimmers and the club would also like to thank all the volunteers, including coach Ailsa Nelson.
