Work on the Crossroads Community Hub is well underway with the superstructure up and the building now wind and watertight and heading towards completion.

The Crossroads Community Hub group was formed in 2011 when the local primary school was closed down. The Ayrshire Food Hub, which is being built on the old school site following a successful Investing in Communities grant, will include a community café, farm shop, teaching kitchen and event space, as well as a gardening and growing area outside.

Kilmarnock and Loudoun MP Alan Brown visited the site for a tour recently hosted by Hadden Group and was impressed with progress.

“This project has taken eight years of dedication and hard work to bring about,” he pointed out.

“It’s exciting for everyone involved that the finishing line is in sight for the construction work and then the next phase can begin in earnest.

“I was also pleased to hear that the building is being constructed in a way to minimise its carbon footprint with the use of solar panels, insulation and air source heat pumps.”

Mary Laidlaw, secretary of Crossroads Community Hub trustees board, said: "it’s been a labour of love.”

The farm shop hopes to showcase an array of produce from local growers and the café plans to use predominantly local produce to create its seasonal menus.

The group is currently calling on local suppliers to get in touch, and welcoming enquiries from practitioners of health and well-being activities.

The hub will also have an event space to host workshops, and health and wellbeing activities, as well as social events music and theatrical productions.

Ms Laidlaw also pointed out that they have preserved a line of trees which were planted by the school pupils for the millennium as a lasting nod to the primary school which was on the site previously.

Plans are being put in place to invite the former pupils, many of who are now in their 20s, back to see the progress of the new community space at some point in the future.

Pictured above outside the new Crossroads Community Hub are Morag Blackley Community Outreach Coordinator, Connon Penrice, Site Manager Hadden Group, Alan Brown MP, Stuart Lyon, Chairperson, and Mary Laidlaw, Secretary.