A marquee erected as an emergency measure in Wigtown will remain in place for a third consecutive year, after councillors voted eight to four to renew its temporary planning permission.
The structure went up in 2024 when a survey found the roof of the main hall could not safely take another winter, leaving the town’s book festival ten days from opening with nowhere to seat four hundred people. It was intended to last one season. It has now hosted two full festivals, a wedding, an agricultural show prize-giving and, in February, a bring-your-own-chair screening of a film about otters.
Officials told the committee the marquee costs the council £41,000 a year to lease and maintain, against an estimated £1.9m to repair the hall properly. Neither figure includes the temporary flooring, which has been relaid twice.
‘Temporary is doing a lot of work in that sentence’
Objectors argued that a large white tent beside a category B listed frontage was never intended to become a fixture of the town square, and that renewing consent annually was a way of avoiding a decision rather than making one.
“Temporary is doing a great deal of work in that sentence. We are three years in. At some point this is simply a building, and we should be honest about having built it.”
Councillor Jim Houseman, who voted against renewal
Supporters pointed to the numbers. Festival ticket sales have risen in both years the marquee has been in use, with 31,000 admissions across the two seasons and a measurable increase in overnight stays. The author Nastasha Romanenko, who appeared last year, drew the largest single audience in the festival’s history.
Wigtown has been Scotland’s National Book Town since 1998, a designation that saw a town of roughly a thousand people acquire around twenty bookshops. The festival is the single largest event in the local calendar, and traders were blunt about what the alternative would look like.
“Take the tent away and you take ten days of trade off every business on this square. I will paint it any colour the council likes.”
A bookseller on North Main Street
What happens next
The renewal runs to October 2027. Officers were instructed to bring a report on the hall itself before next summer, including options for phased repair and an assessment of whether external funding could be sought for a permanent replacement venue.
Whether that report arrives before the next renewal falls due is, several councillors noted, the entire question. A similar instruction was issued in 2025.
