Heartlands Redevelopment - Polkemmet Colliery

The Heartlands Development involves the rehabilitation of the Polkemmet Colliery site near Whitburn. The site will be excavated, by opencast methods and then reinstated with a new Business Park, 2,000 houses and two championship golf courses. A new junction with the M8 Motorway was approved by Transport Scotland in July 2006.

The £10 million Business Park will be built on old farm land at Cowhill between the M8 and the B7066. It will focus on state of the art but environmentally friendly buildings with the hub being the new 2000 sq m multi-occupancy Business Centre that should be constructed by late 2007. This futuristic but dramatically elegant building targeted at the electronics sector will employ all the latest technology to make it as eco-friendly as possible.

It will be particularly targeted at the reverse logistics/WEEE market. Under the recent Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, producers will be made responsible for WEEE and from January 2006, producers must finance collection of WEEE, meet recovery/recycling targets and finance the waste of products put on market before then.

The 2000 new homes constructed will include two areas of affordable and community supported housing, recognising the growing difficulties facing first time buyers, a number of detached, semi-detached and terraced villas and apartments will also be built to create several interesting micro-communities. Finally the proposals include for the building of a number of executive houses, overlooking the golf courses, the substantial bespoke houses will have exclusive access and commanding southern views of the courses.

The motorway junction located at the west end of Whitburn between J4 and J5 of the M8 will also include a Transport Interchange in the Business Park that will facilitate linkages between local bus services and the strategic Glasgow - Edinburgh services and preliminary discussions with Scottish Citylink have identified that the company would be amenable to diverting its services to the proposed facility.

Two spectacular golf courses are also being constructed and are named after one of the greatest golf course designers of all time, Scotland's finest, Donald Ross. The courses have been designed by PGA Design Consulting (PGADC) with the West Course being a testing course designed to host international golf competitions such as the Ryder Cup. The courses will be part of the Donald Ross Memorial Golf Resort which will have, a state of the art clubhouse, a five star, 150 bedroom luxury golf lodge hotel and a conference centre.

For more information go to Heartlands - Polkemmet Colliery Project website