Communities across East Ayrshire could become all the colours of the rainbow after the success of a scheme to brighten one former Scottish mining town.
Council houses in Bellsbank have been repainted in vibrant pastel hues as part of a plan to tackle poverty and ill-health in one of the most deprived locations in Scotland.
The idea for painting the houses was based in part on sound scientific research, and in part on an effort to be more like the Mull town of Tobermory, which attracts thousands of visitors to its brightly-coloured buildings each year and was better known to a generation as TV’s Balamory.
In September it emerged that a similar plan had been hatched in North Korea’s capital Pyongyang, in an attempt to make the hulking Soviet-style office buildings and housing blocks look less like something built by a brutal dictatorship.
