Location and Community
Situated within an engaged and innovative community, relocation opportunities are available for our partners.
Location
The Usher Building is part of a wider strategic vision to create a world-leading health innovation district at Edinburgh BioQuarter for 2030 and beyond.
Find out more on the Edinburgh BioQuarter website
Community Benefits and Engagement
Local community connections are important to Usher and other organisations and individuals at Edinburgh BioQuarter. The new Usher building is located in the south of Edinburgh, close to the neighbouring communities of Craigmillar, Niddrie, Moredun and Gilmerton.
Community engagement was initially developed and spearheaded by the Centre for Regenerative Medicine (CRM), a University of Edinburgh medical research centre based at Edinburgh BioQuarter, where it was pioneered by Dr Cathy Southworth. Over time, the project and its activities continued to develop and grow, involving more people from many different organisations across the wider campus. The programme is now led by Edinburgh BioQuarter and sits at the very heart of our vision to provide a welcoming place where people from local neighbourhoods can walk, relax and influence projects that are revolutionising local and global health and wellbeing.
Information on Being Good Neighbours
The City Region Deal is committed to ensuring there are benefits to the local community as part of the wider programme of work. One of the ways in which this is achieved is via 'Community Benefits' - the method by which local communities and good causes are encouraged to receive additional social value from the supply chain of businesses delivering publicly funded contracts and developments. A 'Community Benefits Portal' website allows community groups and good causes to submit requests for Community Benefits.
As principal contractor for the Usher Building construction, McLaughlin & Harvey have already made strong progress in delivering community engagement and activities for the benefit of local good causes. Early on, two social enterprises were successful in winning a place within their supply chain - Move on Wood Recycling and All Cleaned Up. Move On are a charity which works with vulnerable young people and those affected by homelessness to help them direct themselves to more positive destinations. They deliver a range of services to these individuals such as mentoring and befriending, schools' outreach, finding routes into employability and training as well as targeted signposting to other services. One of the largest sources of income to support this provision is through their social enterprise Move on Wood Recycling. Their team includes those with lived experience of the issues Move On seeks to address, and collects waste wood from commercial and domestic customers, sells quality timber and provides volunteering, training and work experience opportunities.
Information about the Usher Building's community benefits