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There are high-profile winners and losers when it comes to securing money for projects from the Town Centre fund in Bathgate.

Principal winner will be the Art Deco Regal Theatre which will have a facelift repaint and improved external lighting to make the building a stand out feature of the town centre. The work will also include refurbishment of stained glass windows and a new advertising banner system for the front of the building which will cut the costs of regular changes. This project has been awarded £45,580.

Another big winner is the Voluntary Sector Gateway team who have been awarded £39,000 to help redevelop new public space for the community within the old Courier building in King Street.

Bathgate Rotary Club has won £6300 to build a town gateway with a granite sign promoting Rotary and welcoming all to the town. The money will also cover acquisition of market stalls for community access, to develop a

monthly trade market.

Another town centre feature which will be introduced, with £12,000 of funding is permanent “LED pea” street tree lighting in George Place and The Steelyard.

However, Bathgate Community Council’s proposal to restore and adapt the McLagan Fountain in the Steelyard at a cost of £50,000 was rejected,

The community council’s proposal was to facilitate drinking water; and provide local primary school children with stainless steel water bottles for re‐use.

The fountain was given to the town in 1878 by the wife of the local MP, Peter McLagan, to provide free clean gravity fed water. Peter McLagan was an advocate of the Temperance cause which made the donation of a drinking fountain meaningful.

In their rejection officers suggested the project would “be unlikely to be deliverable in time line prescribed to funding. There would be notable ongoing revenue costs that would require to be met, and may perhaps be project prohibitive. ”

Another proposal by the community council for £50,000 to pay for the re‐opening former rail station car park behind Bathgate retail park; and the creation of a shared footpath/cycleway to link this to the (new) rail station car park, was also rejected as the site has been agreed to be sold.

The Bathgate projects were agreed by West Lothian Council’s Executive after local councillors agreed they could not consider the proposals at the Local Area Committee because of their need for their impartiality.