South Lanarkshire could be world beaters in our economic recovery
Last week I took part in the first meeting of South Lanarkshire Council’s “Recovery Board”.
The new board is looking at how the council and its services can get back to something like normality after the coronavirus crisis.
In many instances, the need for social distancing and the risk of a second wave of Covid-19 means that council services will continue to be limited.
So, indoor sports centres remain closed for the time being, daycare centres can’t re-open, grass around tenements can’t get cut and there are lots of issues affecting schools and childcare.
I hope to see action on all these fronts but it will clearly take time.
However, the biggest challenge is to restart the economy.
Many thousands of people in Rutherglen and throughout South
Lanarkshire are losing their jobs, not least skilled workers and young people in the hospitality and tourism industries.
A Lanarkshire Economic Forum is likely to be set up to support business recovery – involving the two councils, the enterprise agencies, business, university and college interests, the voluntary sector and others.
But I strongly believe that the council and its partner agencies must be allowed the powers and funding to do the job properly.
A joint approach is needed to identify those sectors which are struggling and those, like some of the green industries and some home delivery services , where there are fresh opportunities to develop new products and services, retraining people for new roles, and support invention and innovation.
The lead in all this must come from local business and communities, and from the voluntary sector and the elected councils – not from the sometimes deadening hand of central government.
Too often during the crisis, we saw bold announcements from the First Minister – on testing, on care homes, on PPE equipment for front line staff – on which local councils were caught unawares and had to pick up the pieces.
South Lanarkshire could be world-beaters in this if we get it right.
In recent years, the Scottish Government has taken enterprise and economic powers away from councils.
Now is the time to reverse that, to give councils and local communities their head, to lead our muchneeded economic recovery which matches the new situation we are in.