Sarwar visits £10.5m new housing project
Areas like South Ayrshire need more powers and resources to make the community a more viable place to learn, get a job, bring up a family and retire comfortably, according to Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar.
Mr Sarwar was in Ayr visiting a new £10.5 million council housing project at the town’s Waggon Road on Thursday.
While praising the new builds, Mr Sarwar insisted that authorities like South Ayrshire Council need more resources and powers to build upon such successes.
He said: “I have been spending a lot of time looking at our high streets. Our high streets struggled pre-pandemic and these problems have only been accelerated by Covid.
“How do we revitalise our high streets while investing in the local community so we can get a recovery that works for everyone?”
Ideas like the town’s
Unity Grill and other social enterprises are among those that can play a part in helping the whole country, he insisted.
Mr Sarwar added: “We need to learn from these experiences. Quite often, politicians who are elected to Parliament in Edinburgh think that all
the answers and solutions come from within that tight central belt, when there are actually lots of amazing things happening right across different parts of Scotland. I think we need to learn from, recognise and replicate these ideas across the whole of
Scotland and that is why I am here.”
One specific issue, the future of the A77, is one that will be familiar to the people of South Ayrshire.
For Mr Sarwar it is an area that needs investment, not simply to help the likes of
Ayrshire, for which it is a central artery, but for the South West and the country as a whole.
“The A77 is of huge strategic importance to Ayrshire. It is of huge strategic importance to the South West. But is actually of huge strategic importance to the whole of Scotland.
“We need to make sure these areas don’t become the forgotten parts of our country.
“How you invest in local infrastructure, how you push resources out from the Scottish Parliament to the different parts of Scotland is really important.”
The Labour leader says he is pushing for areas like South Ayrshire to become viable for future generations.
“I want us to invest in housing, skills, make sure people can live local, learn local, bring up a family locally and retire locally rather than be forced to leave wonderful communities like this and have to move to the cities or even go abroad,” he said.
“People need these opportunities in their local communities and that is something we all need to think about.”