This week we highlight a problem when it comes to the provision of some affordable social housing.
It appears developers of such schemes are not always obligated to contribute funds towards play parks, no doubt helping to make the provision of such badly-needed affordable homes feasible, especially when these projects are small in scale.
Yet, there seems some bizarre assumption that the families who occupy such homes will not have any children.
Take Stichill as an example. Almost three years to the day since Scottish Borders Council agreed to cough up nearly £700,000 to assist Eildon Housing construct eight new affordable homes in the village, thus swelling the number of local children to record levels, residents are still in limbo over whether they will ever get help from the council to replace their existing ageing, and inadequate, two small swings and tiny slide.
The new homes were officially opened recently amid a fanfare of publicity and have since won an award.
But that hasn’t placated villagers who feel they have been fobbed off and forgotten, despite offering more than a year ago to help raise matching funds towards the costs of new play equipment.
Existing Stichill residents have welcomed the newcomers into their community. Time for someone else to show a similar generosity of spirit.