03/09/2026
Today the Secretary of State for Scotland, Douglas Alexander, visited West Lothian College to launch the UK Government's Local Growth Fund, tour the site of our future training facility and meet our students.
The news? A £37.8m award for the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region including £25m to create four new skills training centres.
South East Scotland is the fastest-growing region in the country, with demand for 40,000 new homes across seven strategic housing sites. Delivering that, alongside the retrofit and renewables work central to Scotland's net zero ambitions, takes skilled people. And the numbers are stark: a third of our 57,000 strong construction workforce commutes in daily, and we'll need 21,000 new entrants and upskilled workers over the next decade.
Through a partnership between the four regional colleges; Borders, Edinburgh, Fife and West Lothian, that's exactly what we're setting out to deliver.
As our Principal, Hazel Brady, put it: the training hubs are a defining opportunity for our region and for Scotland, bringing focus, pace and purpose and letting us actively shape change rather than simply responding to it.
We're proud that West Lothian College helped drive this project forward.
Read more: https://www.west-lothian.ac.uk/news-events/latest-news/378m-uk-government-local-growth-fund-provides-green-light-for-major-new-housing-and-green-skills-hubs/
Five new skills training centres across South East Scotland are to be created with £25 million of UK Government funding, was announced today (3 September 2026).
