No groundworker listed in Dumfries yet.

A groundworker handles the unseen work that supports a building - excavation, foundations, drainage runs, sub-bases, site clearance and grading - everything below ground level before the bricklayers and joiners arrive.

Get a soil and ground-conditions check on any site you don't already know - clay, made-up ground or peat each call for different foundation strategies and ignoring this is the most expensive mistake on a build.

Make sure any drainage work is signed off in writing - groundworks that fail building control later are a nightmare to retrofit once a slab has been poured.

Dumfries is the largest town in Dumfries and Galloway, a red sandstone burgh sitting on the River Nith about 15 miles from the Solway coast.

Robert Burns lived his final years here and the town is rich in Burns heritage - his house on Burns Street, his mausoleum in St Michael's Kirkyard and the Globe Inn where he drank are all preserved.

The Midsteeple, a 17th-century tolbooth on the High Street, is the town's most recognisable landmark and the medieval Devorgilla Bridge across the Nith is one of the oldest in Scotland.

Dumfries has a strong retail and service economy, a theatre, a museum and the Robert Burns Centre housed in an 18th-century watermill on the riverbank.

The town is well connected by the A75 to Stranraer and the A74(M) to Glasgow and Carlisle and has a rail station on the Glasgow South Western line.

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Dumfries and Galloway is the most south-westerly council area in Scotland, stretching from the English border at Gretna to the Mull of Galloway - the southernmost point in Scotland - and from the Solway Firth coast inland to the hills of the Southern Uplands.

Dumfries is the largest town and administrative centre, a handsome red sandstone burgh on the River Nith where Robert Burns spent the last years of his life and is buried in St Michael's Kirkyard.

The region divides naturally into three historic areas: Dumfriesshire to the east, Kirkcudbrightshire (the Stewartry) in the centre and Wigtownshire to the west - each with its own character, landscape and loyalties.

The Galloway coast and countryside have a mild climate influenced by the Gulf Stream, fertile farmland, dark-sky reserves and a string of small harbour towns that attract artists, writers and visitors drawn to the quiet and the landscape.

Despite its size, the region is one of the most sparsely populated in Scotland - a place where community is strong, the pace is slower and the landscape ranges from river valleys and rolling farmland to wild moorland and rocky coastline.