By Karen Peattie

GLASGOW will be ready and prepared to start rebuilding the local economy as soon possible after the coronavirus lockdown, according to the leader of Glasgow City Council.

Councillor Susan Aitken, taking part in a business briefing yesterday with Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, admitted to having “sleepless nights” in terms of the impact on the economy and potential job losses.

But she told the 50-plus participants in a webinar hosted on the Zoom platform by Chamber chief executive Stuart Patrick that Glasgow was ahead of many other local authorities, not just in Scotland but across the UK. “While we are absolutely focused on the here and now of the immediate responses required, we are very, very aware that the medium to long-term impact of this crisis on our city is something we cannot leave to the last minute to address and mitigate against,” she said.

“We have had to develop systems in the past and this stands us in good stead," Ms Aitken continued. “We already know where investment needs to be made because we have already carried out that work.”

However, Ms Aitken warned that Glasgow would be competing with other cities, not just in the UK but globally. “The fact that we are ‘shovel ready’ puts us one step ahead, be that expansion of the Scottish Events Campus (SEC) or other Clyde Mission developments – we have the partnerships and networks in place.”

Stuart Patrick also pointed out that his organisation had formed a resilience group and also joined an international group to “share our understanding of what our cities face as we rebuild our economy”.

Key issues raised by webinar participants included the particular challenges being faced by the construction sector. “When we move towards any relaxation of the lockdown, I think there will be a very strong case to be made for construction being one of the first sectors to get going again in a safe way,” Ms Aitken said.

Construction, she added, would be “hugely important to recovery and economic growth plans for the city". “When things start to move again, our construction industry is going to be essential,” Ms Aitken stressed, recognising that confusing Government advice on site closures had created further uncertainty for the industry.

Fielding questions from participants about business support grant applications from companies, Ms Aitken admitted that there were some “anomalies” which had been fed back to the Scottish Government. “Glasgow has already received over 10,000 applications from businesses and we think there are possibly another 3,500 still to come,” she said.

“We have a team of 60 people working on processing these applications and almost £12 million has already been paid out. It is a huge challenge but we are working at pace to get money out to businesses as quickly as possible.

“We have to be clear that where decisions are being deferred this is because we as a council are following Scottish Government guidelines and where anomalies are emerging and where flexibility is required, we are feeding that back and speaking to civil servants on how we can manage those.”

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