Plans to save the UK’s original big downhill ski centre at Hillend, the Midlothian Snowsports Centre above Edinburgh in Scotland, are taking shape.

Hillend was the training centre where most of Britain’s most successful downhill racers trained over the past three decades and more and has one of the world’s longest artificial slope surfaces. But earlier this year it was announced the centre, which is publicly owned, was under threat with operational losses of about £500,000 per year.

More than 27,000 people subsequently joined a Facebook campaign to save the ski slope and a special meeting of Midlothian Council, which owns the facility, was told it may be able to obtain £600,000 of investment from SportScotland.

The meeting was told that the investment, coupled with efficiency savings that had already been made, should see the centre break even within two years. However some councillors questioned the investment the council may still need to make in the centre to bridge the shortfall at a time when it is being asked to make multi-million pound savings and have requested more funding from the Scottish Government for the country’s "national snow sports centre".

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