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The Herald newspaper ran a major series on Dumfries and Galloway recently focusing on some of the issues facing the area. Here our Chair Russel Griggs reflects on the paper's coverage and explains what SOSE is doing to address many of the challenges facing Dumfries & Galloway, and the South of Scotland.

By Russel Griggs:

The Herald is to be congratulated for its comprehensive series on Dumfries and Galloway last week, focusing on this unique and beautiful part of Scotland I am proud to call my home.

While I have been Chair of the region’s economic development agency, South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE), since its inception five years ago, my relationship with Dumfries and Galloway goes back far longer than that.

As someone who has lived here for the last 35 years, the future of Dumfries and Galloway is both personal, and professional for me. 

It is something I and colleagues at SOSE care passionately about, and that includes tackling the big issues the area faces, many of which have featured in last week’s series.

These include housing, transport and skills – all challenges which we acknowledge need to be addressed if this area is thrive and grow. 

To address those challenges we have a strong, cohesive and dynamic Regional Economic Partnership (REP) and the Regional Economic Strategy (RES) that allows us to tackle those ‘grand challenges’ with a single voice locally and nationally.

Those issues and others in the South were why we were set up in April 2020, following a Scottish Government review which highlighted the need for a dedicated economic agency for Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders. 

The creation of SOSE – which had all-party support - aimed to support sustainable economic and social development in the South of Scotland, and help improve its amenity and environment and to exploit opportunities.

We started almost exactly on the same day as the first COVID shutdown which has led to an interesting but hugely positive first five years for us.

Addressing the pandemic, cost of living crisis, and geopolitical instability which has impacted us all has not been straightforward but through working with others, we are beginning to see progress in a number of key areas.  

For example, housing. The South of Scotland faces similar issues to many rural areas, and is expected to need around 9,000 new homes over the next ten years.

Through the South of Scotland REP, a housing action plan was put in place, to help tackle this urgent need for more homes and more choice of homes in the region. 

We have a ten-point plan for the next two years, to attract more people to work and live here, allowing young people to stay, growing the local construction sector and looking at how we can build houses quicker and more sustainably.

Similarly, we are also moving forward positively on how we deal with transport and skills issues.

There is a lot also going on across our communities and businesses that would take a whole newspaper to fill but I was pleased to read the Herald feature the revival of Stranraer on Tuesday.

Led by an ambitious community, there has been significant investment made there, including the works to improve the marina, the launch of a leading marine science programme and Stranraer’s soon to open £7million Watersports Hub.

The town is now home to the annual Oyster Festival, and this year hosted the SkiffleWorlds championship – both bring tens of thousands of people and generating millions for the local economy. 

There is also real innovation taking place in Dumfries and Galloway, demonstrating a rural location should be no barrier to business.

One example of many is The Carbon Removers – a company who operate across the UK and Denmark and is expected to be removing a million tons of carbon before it reaches the atmosphere every year, by the early 2030s.

We came across them during the pandemic. None of us in the UK would have had our first COVID Pfizer jab were it not for their work, as the only company at the time in the UK which had sufficient dry ice to pack the vaccines in to get to us.

They have now grown and diversified into carbon removal and storage internationally - all from their original site in the tiny village of Crocketford. 

There are many other success stories in Dumfries and Galloway in recent years, including internationally renowned cultural events like Wigtown Book Festival and the Big Burns Supper in Dumfries, bringing more visitors and spend to the area. 

The South has recently received the title of Scotland’s Natural Capital Innovation Zone (NCIZ), a label being used by the Regional Economic Partnership to help attract innovative natural capital projects, sustainable investment and collaborative partnerships. 

These partnerships include working with our larger estates to use our land as an asset for the future - helping us achieve the green, fair, and flourishing region we all want it to be.

The NCIZ label has already helped attract forward-thinking companies such as Green Cat Hydrogen - who have submitted plans to create a green hydrogen facility which would generate 50 high-skilled jobs – and has helped increase the number of inward investment enquiries from four in 2020 when SOSE was launched to around 70 in 2025.

We are also starting to capitalise on being one of the world’s leading cycling destinations. We achieved International Cycling Union (UCI) Bike Region status in 2023 and Dumfries & Galloway hosted the first ever sanctioned British Enduro Championships at Ae Forest, and Raiders Gravel and The Gralloch in Galloway Forest Park.

In addition, we have other unique resources like the Crichton Campus in Dumfries, which hosts the only multi-university campus in Scotland including the Universities of Glasgow and the West of Scotland, the award-winning Dumfries & Galloway Campus, Glasgow School of Art and Open University – all offering students an incredible environment to study. 

While we have this good story to tell, we fully accept we still have some big challenges to address. Further positive change will not happen overnight, but we firmly believe that change will come over time.

We are committed to continuing to work closely with local and national partners, businesses and communities to tackle these, seize the opportunities ahead, and create the rural economic powerhouse I know Dumfries & Galloway - and indeed the whole of the South of Scotland - can be. 

I am sure The Herald will not become a stranger after this series. So allow me to invite them to come back to Dumfries & Galloway in the future to see the progress we are striving to make.