THE retired businessman who petitioned against Scottish Borders Council’s decision to spend £3.5m on a £6m visitor centre for the Great Tapestry of Scotland at Tweedbank has issued a warning to councillors seeking re-election next May.

“The public have long memories, especially at the ballot box, on matters such as this when the views of the Borders public have been so patently ignored,” said Brian McCrow.

The Innerleithen community councillor said he was “dumbfounded” at the findings of a working group of four elected members set up by SBC’s scrutiny committee to review how the spending decision was made.

As reported last week, the probe concluded that details given to councillors, based on information available at the time, was sufficient to allow them to make their decision.

But it also stressed that councillors should be given better information by their officers when considering future major capital projects.

There is no mention in the report of the 4,400-signature petition which Mr McCrow presented to SBC’s petitions committee in October last year.

Nor is there any allusion to the presentations given by opponents of the Tweedbank project when a four-member SBC planning committee gave it the planning nod later the same month.

Instead, the working group focused on the full council meetings in May and December 2014 when, respectively, the decisions were made to plump for Tweedbank to the exclusion of any other site, and then allocate £3.5m – repayable at over £200,000 a year for 30 years – towards the construction of the new facility.

Ironically, all this was before the Scottish Government announced in February this year it was subjecting the business case for Tweedbank to a process of “due diligence” before releasing its funding share of £2.5m, and June’s announcement that a site in central Galashiels had now emerged as a likely alternative.

Mr McCrone said it was “ludicrous” for the working group not to have taken account of either his petition or the dissenting views expressed at the planning meeting.

“I am dumbfounded that there is no recommendation from the working group that wider community engagement should be carried out in the future on major projects.

“It is one thing to make a decision and quite another to stick with it in the face of powerful evidence that the public you are paid to represent are clearly not on side as reflected in media stories, letters to the press and views expressed at community council meetings across the Borders,” said Mr McCrone.

Meanwhile, SBC is due to decide at the end of next month whether to progress with the Galashiels or Tweedbank site options or to abandon the project altogether.