Scottish Casino Vision Thrown Into Doubt

The only proposed Casino licence in Scotland has been put in doubt after a House of Lords decision.

Stranraer was one of the group of sites across the UK which was earmarked for a gambling development.

All of them were linked to a planned super-casino in Manchester but the plans were voted down in the Lords by 123 votes to 120 on Wednesday night.

The Stranraer development was intended to play a major role in the heart of the town's regeneration plans.

Dumfries and Galloway Council's regeneration officer, Tony Fitzpatrick, said it was too early to say how it might hit the town.

"We need to make sense of last night's decisions," he said. "Obviously the government has to ponder the implications and the local authority likewise."

However, he said it was just a part of wider plans for the ferry town.

"This was never about just a casino for us," he said. "From a regeneration point of view what we are talking about here is the regeneration of Stranraer, the waterfront, the town centre and, in fact, Loch Ryan."

Opponents to the casino plan have welcomed the outcome of the vote.

Local campaigner David Weston helped raise a 600-signature petition against the proposals.

He said the benefits of a casino development were debatable.

"It doesn't provide really creative jobs - a lot of them are 'Mickey Mouse' jobs anyway," he said. "Furthermore it has the effect, we know, of money being sucked out of the community and going elsewhere. We have seen that happen in a number of cases."

Dumfries and Galloway MP Russell Brown said the delay in the progress of the project helped nobody.

"I'm extremely angry about the Lords' rejection of these regulations," he said. "It now means that the position of the Stranraer casino proposal is completely up in the air."

Mr Brown said that meant a delay to the matter being discussed properly in Stranraer.

"It should be a local decision if the casino development goes ahead," he said. "With this decision taken we could then have had a debate locally on whether we want the casino or not. But we have been denied this opportunity by a group of unelected Lords, amongst whom only a third actually bothered to vote on the issue."

It is now expected that the plans will be brought back to parliament after local and Scottish parliament elections on 3 May.