Community Council
of the Royal Burgh of Peebles & District
Community Council
of the Royal Burgh of Peebles & District
Now SBC's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) has commented, this follow-on from PCC's June 2025 Live Borders (LB) briefing (see News/20250612.html) will be considered at PCC's 7pm Thu 12 Feb 2026 meeting (see our email and her reply).
SBC meeting 29 Oct 2025
SBC's 29 Oct 2025 meeting considered this LB report by SBC Director Resilient Communities and LB CEO containing up-to-date financial figures for LB:
"7.11 Since 2019 Scottish Borders Council has provided Live Borders with budgeted Management Fees, capital investment and additional, one-off payments. Members will be aware that as well as the budgeted management fee, additional payments of £6m have been approved by Council since 2022/23 to address the increased costs detailed above and maintain Live Borders position as a going concern."
However, the financial figures do not match the commentary. For example, £1m of the £6.384 “additional payments” is a loan.
Even when ignoring the impact of inflation, except for a single year in 2024, every year since 2016 shows a decrease in the management fee SBC paid to Live Borders – even when including the "additional payments" (
The real picture is very different. Inflation must be taken into account when comparing financial figures across years.
Adjusting the management fee for inflation (to the equivalent in
2016£) we see a very different picture (
We see a steady and substantial decrease in the management fee offered to LB (blue), reducing by 45% (almost halving) compared with 2016. Even when including "additional payments" (orange), the average reduction in those years compared with 2016 is 25%.
The claim that LB has received "substantial additional funding" is not true in real terms (adjusted for inflation) – and is only true in nominal terms (ignoring inflation) in 1 out of the past 8 years.
SBC meeting 20 Nov 2025
SBC's 20 Nov 2025 meeting to decide LB's future considered this report by SBC Director Resilient Communities and LB CEO containing multiple references to LB being financially unsustainable and having received substantial additional funding in recent years.
Responding to Cllr Begg, SBC CFO Suzanne Douglas said
“I think the numbers will show that we’ve not in any way provided a disproportionate reduction over the years to the Live Borders funding, but actually, certainly over the shorter term provided significant additional funding.”
In fact, SBC’s latest financial figures show that even after “significant additional funding”, the Live Borders management fee has substantially reduced since 2016, with the baseline management fee currently 55% of the 2016 figure in real terms.
The report on Live Borders' future was approved (with Cllrs Tatler & Pirone's amendment to consider CATs).