The Unkindest Cut of All

Economy

The unkindest cut of all

Alf Young

Greenock
Photograph by Islay McLeod

For nearly five years I’ve been trying to put something back into the communities of Inverclyde where I grew up half a century ago. Greenock helped shape who I am. So when, in 2006, I was invited to participate in an initiative aimed at breathing new life into a crumbling stretch of waterfront on the Lower Clyde, I didn’t think twice about accepting.
     I was asked to chair the board of Riverside Inverclyde, a pathfinder URC or urban regeneration company being set up with a significant commitment of public funding over 10 years to turn around the fortunes of semi-derelict docks and harbours and find new uses for listed buildings like the vast brick sheds that once fed raw cane sugar from the Caribbean into the area’s long-gone refineries.
     Once before, in the 1980s, I had done some work with a similar project in north-east England on the Rivers Tyne and Wear. I had seen what a concerted but time-limited programme of physical renewal in an area of post-industrial blight could do for the morale and life-chances of waterfront communities in Newcastle, North and South Shields and Sunderland.
     Place building and place rebuilding have played a significant role in public policy for many many decades. From new towns to enterprise zones, from town centre regeneration schemes to community land buy-outs, there has long been a recognition that, in terms of economic destiny, people and place are inextricably inter-twined.
     Maritime communities feel the breaking of that bond more acutely than most. When the last ship is launched or the cargo quays fall silent, the physical shock is almost unbearable. Inverclyde still has a busy container port and plays host to a steady stream of cruise ships each season. One small shipyard is still in business. But 25 years after Scott Lithgow closed down, the communities on this stretch of the Clyde need to to find new ways of connecting with their river.
     Riverside Inverclyde was the vehicle chosen to help make that happen. URCs like ours – there are others at Irvine Bay, Clydebank and Clyde Gateway on the Glasgow/North Lanarkshire border – are backed by the Scottish government, Scottish Enterprise and the relevant local authorities, in our case Inverclyde Council. Their boards have members drawn from their funders but also a number of independents, like me. We are not paid for what we do. Nor do we want to be.

     But since I took on this challenge I have been asking repeatedly for one thing. Physical regeneration on this scale can never be a quick fix. It takes years. The 10 years we were given at the outset is the right kind of timeframe. But a decade is a very long time in politics. It can also span more than one economic cycle. I wanted clear assurances from our funders that their commitment to this kind of regeneration would outlive the next election and would not be torpedoed by the next funding squeeze.
     Over the past four years, all of them have, by their actions, delivered on that. When, in 2007, the new SNP government at Holyrood transferred responsibility for more local regeneration from Scottish Enterprise to local authorities, an agreement was reached between SE and Cosla that £12.5m of annual funding for URCs like ours would continue to be ring-fenced within the enterprise agency’s budget. Indeed page 30 of SE’s current business plan shows that £12.5m for URCs continuing, still ring fenced, right through to 2012/13.
     That meant an SE contribution of some £2.5m a year to our programmes in Inverclyde. In the current financial year that is augmented by funding of £7m from the Scottish government, making a combined contribution of £9.5m. But two weeks ago, on 13 January, we were told that, ‘because of the most dramatic reduction in public spending imposed on Scotland by any UK government’, what we can expect from the government and Scottish Enterprise in the year starting this April is just £2.9m.
     That represents a cut of 69.5%. It couldn’t be much more dramatic. Indeed I have asked the chairman of Scottish Enterprise and Scottish ministers if any other body is being asked to take a bigger cut. It is out of all proportion to the squeeze being imposed from London. In cash terms, the overall Scottish budget is being cut by 4.5% next year. The enterprise, energy and tourism budget, which includes overall funding for SE, is down by 5.9%.
     I have asked of an explanation of why the cut we are facing at Riverside Inverclyde is an order of magnitude or more greater than any of these. But so far no explanation has been forthcoming. Our other funder, Inverclyde Council, could have decided that it too would cut its contribution next year. Like all Scottish local authorities, it is also facing a squeeze. But it has confirmed its planned contribution of £2.1m.
     Beyond March 2012, we simply have no idea what money, if any, will be forthcoming from the Scottish government and Scottish Enterprise. We have been told this is a one-year settlement and no commitments can be made after that. There is even talk of a review of regeneration policy. We will do what we can to deliver on our reduced budget. But the long-term commitments we were given when this regeneration challenge was first offered and accepted don’t now look worth the paper they were written on.

Alf Young is an award-winning journalist who writes regularly for the Scottish Review