Foreign firms urged to set up in East End
Regeneration agency looks to world market
FOREIGN firms are being encouraged to set up UK bases in Glasgow’s East End.
Government officials are recommending the area to potential employers at home and abroad as a result of an ongoing regeneration programme.
Millions of pounds have been spent on transforming the East End, with the Clyde Gateway Urban Regeneration Company spearheading the development of new office blocks, new industrial estates and establishing commercial units in empty rundown shops.
Clyde Gateway was launched six years ago and is run by chief executive Ian Manson.
He told a breakfast event organised by Glasgow Chamber of Commerce that extra funding by government agencies meant more projects were in the pipeline.
He said: “We can continue to achieve much on our own but the support of the inward investment arms of government at Holyrood and Westminster will make a real difference.
“We know that influential agencies such as Scottish Development International and the UK Department of Trade and Industry are aware of the ongoing transformation under- way in the East End, Rutherglen and Shawfield because we have not been slow at bringing our progress to their attention.
“And we know that Clyde Gateway’s offer is now on the table whenever those agencies are responding to inward investment enquiries.”
He said “for far too long” delivering inward investment to the East End had been “mission impossible”, because of a lack of appropriate sites which had made it difficult to attract new businesses and retain existing firms which wanted to expand.
Stuart Patrick, chief executive of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, which represents around 2000 businesses, said: “Clyde Gateway has been changing the face of the East End, providing space for new businesses to come in and jobs to develop in an area that has been transformed in the years leading up to the Commonwealth Games.”