Discrepancy between census statistics and
Borderlands figures has cost Langholm dear
The Borderlands place programme has used population statistics as one of the indicators to allocate funding to towns in
Dumfries and Galloway. A local businessman, on discovering that Langholm is not to get any funding, asked for the information used to rank towns in Dumfries and Galloway.
He then discovered that the programme is using a population of 1475 which is much less than the actual population of the Muckle Toon. In the census of 2011, the population was 2,227 – 752 more people than has been used in the assessment exercise according to a Council report in 2021.
According to Denis Male, Langholm was one of only three communities in Dumfries and Galloway supported by South of Scotland Enterprise and then it dropped without explanation to 13th place. Denis is calling for a high-level meeting with the MSP and the Council’s Chief Executive and Leader of the Council to discuss the situation.
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