Steel hub to ghost town, will this be Scunthorpe in 4 years?
REDCAR has a lot in common with Scunthorpe. Both have a proud, centuries-long tradition of steelworks, and you can’t enter either town without seeing the massive industry dominating the horizons.
Yesterday, British Steel in Scunthorpe fell to its knees in insolvency; the difference is that the Redcar plant is already dead and buried.
It has been empty for four years since a grim day in 2015 when the furnaces were extinguished, costing nearly 3,000 people their jobs. Redstreet seems almost empty considering how many people it was built to hold. A large empty shopfront contains the fading words ‘Marks and Spencer’, and the Regent Walk Shopping Centre isn’t the only premises with a big ‘To Let’ sign above it.
The topic of the steelworks is still emotional and deeply felt. Person after person that I spoke to confirmed that the collapse of its thenowner, Thai-based SSI, had a devastating effect on the community.
‘My son and I both lost our jobs in 2015,’ said one man who asked not to be named. ‘I’d worked at the steelworks for 20 years and luckily I could retire on a small pension. My son was young and could learn new skills and change jobs, but that wouldn’t happen for everyone.’ Phil Stapley, a former British Steel employee, said the loss of jobs had a big impact on the town centre. ‘It’s all charity shops and budget shops. I shouldn’t imagine many jobs will be coming back to Redcar,’ he said. Redcar’s Labour and Co-operative MP Anna Turley has spent the last few years dealing with the aftermath. She said: ‘The town had been built on steel for 175 years. A huge number of people had to go on the dole. We set up a task force to retrain people or help them to set up their own businesses, but the reality was the best-paid jobs had already gone. The average income dropped by £10,000.’ She added: ‘It’s going to have longterm consequences for many years.’ In Scunthorpe, British Steel’s liquidation has put 5,000 jobs directly at risk and endangered another 20,000 in the supply chain. Receivers will search for a buyer after talks between owner Greybull Capital and the government broke down over emergency funding.