Center Parcs plans first Scottish holiday village

Holiday village operator Center Parcs has unveiled plans for its first site in Scotland.

The new resort near Hawick in the Scottish Borders would represent a £350m investment and could create up to 1,200 jobs.

Center Parcs currently attracts millions of visitors a year to its six sites across the UK and Ireland.

Proposals are said to be at an "early stage" with a planning application for about 700 lodges intended to be submitted in 2025.

It will offer a range of indoor and outdoor activities including an indoor water park.

Chief executive Colin McKinlay said: "This is a tremendously exciting project and offers the opportunity to transform leisure and tourism in the Scottish Borders.

"Center Parcs is an exceptionally popular destination for families in the UK and Ireland and there is robust demand to support a seventh village.

"Throughout our history, we have demonstrated that a Center Parcs village provides significant economic benefits locally, regionally and nationally."

He said many Scottish families already visited their sites in England and this would bring the offering "closer to home".

The site is on land to the east of the A7 between Hawick and Selkirk which is owned by the Buccleuch Group.

Its executive chairman Benny Higgins said the project promised an "outstandingly positive impact" on tourism and leisure in the Scottish Borders.

Center Parcs has been operating in the UK since 1987 but it started with a holiday village in the Netherlands in the late 1960s.

Its first venture in the UK was at Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire followed, in 1989, by Elveden Forest in Suffolk.

It now has six sites in total at Longleat Forest in Wiltshire, Whinfell Forest in Cumbria, Woburn Forest in Bedfordshire and its first Irish site - Longford Forest - in County Longford.

They attract more than two million visitors every year and are particularly popular with families - offering a range of on-site activities and facilities.

Last year Center Parcs announced it had dropped plans for a new village at Oldhouse Warren , West Sussex, after concluding it was not suitable for the project.