Outbreak a ‘blip’ in regeneration

and higher unemployment, and a whole series of challenges around poverty, drugs and alcohol that we really needed to continue to tackle.

“None of that has gone away because of Covid-19, we need to actually double-down and make more effort, in terms of trying to support the local economy.”

The Strathmartine councillor said the Waterfront was not the council’s sole focus – regeneration in every single community was.

“It’s the hundred-and-odd houses that are being built in the Hilltown, it’s the new schools that have been built, it’s the new Menzieshill Community Centre – it’s all of that. It’s not just about the Waterfront.”

The £350 million fund from the Tay Cities deal, which brings together public, private and voluntary organisations in the council areas of Angus, Dundee, Fife and Perth and Kinross, would be one of a number of crucial tools to help generate jobs in the aftermath of the Covid-19 outbreak.

He said: “It’s a 30-year plan, so yes this is a blip, it might now be a 31-year plan, but the reality is we need to continue to deliver, because we need the jobs and we need the investment and need people in the city to be able to prosper and thrive and have the opportunities that everyone else wants.”

“In 15 years’ time, (coronavirus) will be a memory that we’ll all have – a negative memory in many ways – but hopefully we will be on the other side of that and deliver the Waterfront project more widely.”

John Alexander