A Royal Highland Showstopper: event staying put for next 30 years

Published on Thursday 20 January 2011 13:26

ORGANISERS of the Royal Highland Show have revealed the event will be staying on its existing site for at least another 30 years, after Edinburgh airport dramatically scaled back its expansion plans.

• The sprawling site on the edge of the airport has been home to the Royal Highland Show for 50 years

The money-spinning agricultural show faced having to relocate elsewhere in west Edinburgh under a previous blueprint for the airport's expansion.

Officials behind the event spent several years and more than half a million pounds drawing up plans for a new site to move on to by 2013, only for BAA to put the relocation date back to 2020 just over two years ago.

However the Royal Highland Agricultural Society of Scotland (RHASS), which runs the showground arena, has now been told that only a fraction of its land is likely to be needed over the 30 years.

It is believed that the airport will need less than 25 acres of the existing 300-acre showground site by then, after deciding to largely develop its land for the foreseeable future.

RHASS chiefs say the news will allow them to plough ahead with a multi-million-pound refurbishment of the existing site at Ingliston, which has hosted the show for the past 50 years.

The 75 million vision includes a 6,000-capacity arena capable of hosting pop and rock concerts, as well as a major new pavilion overlooking the main outdoor showground, a centre for food excellence and a hotel.

A new masterplan mapping out the possible expansion of the airport predicts 20.5 million passengers could be using the terminal, far fewer than the 26m it had been expected to achieve by 2030.

The four-day Highland Show, which dates back to 1822, attracts some 160,000 ticket-holders and is worth about 70m to the economy, although the huge number of other events held on the site itself mean it generates more than 250m a year.

BAA and RHASS had been at loggerheads over the airport's expansion plans, with the airport operator accused of trying to "cherry-pick" pieces of land.

But Ray Jones, chief executive of RHASS, said: "We have a good working relationship with BAA now. We basically now know a second runway is not going to be needed until 2040.

"BAA may need to buy some of our temporary car parks over the next 20 years, but it's nothing like the scale we were looking at a few years ago. We basically know we're going to be on the same site now until 2040.

BAA blamed the global economic downturn for scaling back its expansion plans. A spokesman added: "We have been working very closely with RHASS and our new masterplans now fit together very well."