Growth Deal FAQ's

Business Enterprise Hub

• The Business Enterprise Hub is designed to promote inclusive economic development in Moray and the wider region by primarily supporting scale-up of existing small and micro-businesses from all sectors as well as providing support to start-ups, university spin-outs and inward investors.
• Located in the centre of Elgin, the Business Enterprise Hub will inspire existing micro-businesses and smes, as well as attracting potential new businesses to the region.
• It will allow business support agencies to co-locate with Moray College UHI to deliver a more streamlined and co-ordinated offer, with hot-desking facilities and pre-incubation space as well as access to meeting rooms, studios, digital equipment and space for research and development.

Cultural Quarter

A vibrant Cultural Quarter in the heart of Elgin will be created to support inclusive economic growth and cultural expansion within the city and wider region. It will be made up of three key elements:

• Refurbishing the B-listed 18th century Grant Lodge to create a high-quality heritage attraction, complementing existing facilities showcasing the region’s outstanding food and drink offer, textiles, art, culture and heritage.
• Refurbishing, extending, and rebranding Elgin Town Hall to house a multi-purpose theatre/performance space, small cinema, rehearsal rooms and potential gallery space to create an improved cultural offering and support local creative industries, configurated flexibly to accommodate conferences and events.
• A high-quality hotel with 60-100 beds, addressing the gap in the region’s accommodation provision and serving the leisure and business tourism markets, opening up Moray’s growing tourism industry to a market not currently catered for within the region.

Early years STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths)

• The Early Year STEM will provide specialist facilities and learning environments in the eight Associated School Groups within Moray to facilitate STEM learning.
• The facilities will have core learning equipment focused on early years and will allow inter-generational learning to take place, with the expectation that it will attract further industry and sectoral investment to allow the offering to be expanded to other groups of learners.
• It will also address rurality as a barrier to participation in STEM activities, and look to work with other Moray Growth Deal projects to maximise opportunities for innovative fun and engaging STEM learning experiences.

Manufacturing Innovation Centre for Moray (MICM)

• MCIM will bring world-leading research and development expertise in advanced manufacturing to increase productivity, create jobs, attract inward investment and grow the region’s manufacturing outputs.
• It will act as a local focal point to access best practice and identify how businesses can collaborate with universities and other research institutes, and be quickly assisted to access the right support to develop their operations.

Bus Revolution

The Bus Revolution project will see the fleet of vehicles increased to enable bus services to operate an on-demand service 4am to midnight (Monday-Saturday) and 7am-10pm (Sundays) for anyone travelling to or from the Moray area.

The project has two key elements:

• The development of an ’Uber-style‘ app to enable online customers to track the position of buses and book journeys within a reasonable response time (max. 1 hour).
• An investment in quality green fleet (electric buses) to increase the flexibility and hours of operation of on-demand bus provision across Moray, with additional facilities such as on-board Wi-Fi and charging facilities.

Digital Health

• This project will establish a centre for research and innovation in digital health, bringing commercial investments to Scotland and helping to establish new technologies in the health sector including technology for use in smart homes and independent living.
• This will include a state-of-the-art Demonstration and Simulation environment – a physical immersive facility anchored in the Alexander Graham Bell building in Elgin along with technical assets with which simulations can be developed at pace – leading to a range of demand-led Living Labs built in real-world environments tested by the Moray community.
• This will create high-value sustainable jobs, a cluster of leading-edge digital health companies in Moray, and increased research, development and skills base and better, more inclusive and accessible health and social care services across the area.

Housing Mix Delivery

This project will see 300 affordable homes developed with three primary elements:

• Town Centre Regeneration, which involves the acquisition of empty and derelict land and properties in/on the edge of Moray’s town centres and converting into affordable and private homes to encourage more economic activity and support the development of an evening economy, as well as allowing local people to get on the property ladder.
• Creating exemplar sustainable design and construction housing projects at Dallas Dhu, Forres and Elgin City Centre, delivering smart homes, smart places/communities and low-cost self-build opportunities – linked with the Digital Health project with some homes developed to include technology to test assisted living support with leading-edge technology in homes to enable people to live independent lives and showcase Moray at an international level as best practice for rural assisted living.
• Unlocking constrained rural development sites, supporting rural regeneration and helping to keep young people in Moray by acquiring land and providing the infrastructure and first phases of affordable housing on sites where the market is failing to bring them forward for development, with low-cost self-build opportunities and stimulate the local housing market, which will be simplified through Masterplan Consent Areas and design codes.