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The Scotsman Bulletin Tuesday October 22 2024 #Business #Money
The Scotsman
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22/10/2024
Scotsman head of business Joshua King, talks to Dale about a new round table series on the Scottish economy. #Economy #LocalCouncil #Scotland
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00:00
Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Tuesday.
00:05
My name's Dale Miller. I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman.
00:08
I'm joined by our Head of Business, Joshua King.
00:12
Hello, Josh.
00:14
Good morning.
00:15
We are here to talk about the front page of the Scotsman firstly.
00:19
And we led on ministers being urged to end a threat of a nationwide school strike.
00:24
We know that John Swinney's constituency has been specifically targeted.
00:29
School strikes ever since COVID seem to have become an annual thing.
00:34
There's obviously increasing pressure on pay and public sector's pay deals.
00:40
There's been a lot of focus on over the past 12 to 18 months.
00:44
Again, pressure coming in here.
00:46
And a lovely picture on the front of the Scotsman from Raising Day as well,
00:53
the annual event up at St Andrews.
00:56
Josh, I've got you on, however, to talk about business and specifically money.
01:03
Now, we're doing the first in a series of articles this week linked to a roundtable
01:09
that the Scotsman hosted.
01:11
There was really some key figures from across various areas of the industry,
01:16
including the Edinburgh City Council Chief Executive that was on.
01:20
Can you just talk us through what the roundtable was about
01:24
and the first part in the series,
01:26
which is basically about the fact that none of us have any money at the moment?
01:30
That's right, yes.
01:31
So the event was the Scotsman Leaders Forum,
01:34
and it was hosted at the Balmoral by us Scotsmen,
01:37
and it was sponsored by Turner & Townsend,
01:39
who are a global consulting firm.
01:41
And it was leaders from Scotland from public and private sectors
01:45
about the challenges that are facing the public sector in terms of financing
01:51
and also in terms of kind of the infrastructure projects
01:54
and the services that people need.
01:56
So the first in the series, which will run throughout this week,
01:59
was about money and the fact that nobody has any governments, councils,
02:03
organizations.
02:05
There's not a huge amount of capital around at the moment.
02:08
So it was really interesting to be in the room with people you mentioned.
02:11
Paul Lawrence, he's the Chief Executive of Edinburgh Council.
02:15
Susan Miller from Glasgow Council was also there, as well as Sebastian Burnside.
02:19
He's the Chief Economist from NatWest.
02:22
A big group of people, there's about 12 of us,
02:24
looking at those challenges.
02:26
It was really interesting to hear how keen the leaders are
02:31
to increase the amount of money they have to deliver services
02:35
but the challenges they have.
02:37
They're looking a lot to the budget.
02:38
Obviously, next week, Rachel Reeves is delivering the UK budget
02:41
and hoping that there might be something for councils in there.
02:45
But I think the message was that they're realistic
02:47
that they can't rely on government grants and handouts
02:51
and they need to find a way to work with the private sector.
02:54
As an example, talk through the St. James Quarter,
02:57
which was a billion-pound investment in the east of Edinburgh City Centre.
03:03
It was a challenging development across a number of years,
03:06
but if you've been in, it's absolutely flourishing
03:09
in terms of the businesses that are there and the interest it's attracting.
03:12
That was a public-private sector joint offering.
03:18
So a lot to listen to from the leaders there.
03:21
There's a lot more coming this week,
03:23
so tomorrow we're going to be looking at the housing crisis
03:26
that a lot of councils are facing and the fact that that's having
03:29
a knock-on effect on business and creativity,
03:32
on education and on health.
03:34
So that's to come tomorrow.
03:36
Josh, I'm interested.
03:38
I know, I think it was Catherine Hay, our rural affairs correspondent,
03:42
wrote about the merging of some services the other day
03:46
on the Western Isles and how they're looking at that,
03:49
the council there, as a way to actually save costs.
03:53
Were there things that came up on the roundtable
03:56
about progressive ideas too?
03:59
Because we're basically looking at all councils needing
04:02
to cut back costs heading into next year,
04:06
and what we don't want is widespread cutbacks in actual services.
04:10
No, absolutely not.
04:12
One of the big challenges that the councils have
04:14
is that they have statutory obligations to deliver some of their services
04:17
but not others.
04:19
So, for instance, economic growth is not a statutory requirement for them,
04:22
whereas delivering on things like housing and homelessness
04:25
are obviously priorities for them.
04:27
What it means, though, is that in terms of delivering economic growth,
04:30
which helps benefit the area and can help bring in cash
04:33
into council coffers, it's restricted for them.
04:36
So they were looking at what they can do to generate more money
04:40
from the private sector and businesses in their areas
04:42
and that they can use to invest into services.
04:45
Housing is a really big one, and that's what we'll be looking at tomorrow.
04:48
And there was universal agreement around the table
04:53
that if we cannot solve the housing crisis we have,
04:56
there's simply not enough homes for people in several councils,
04:59
and they're officially in crisis,
05:01
then it's really difficult to do anything else.
05:04
So we were talking about teachers, for instance.
05:07
Education services are really under pressure,
05:09
attracting teachers, classroom and class sizes,
05:12
all huge challenges, which parents out there will know about.
05:16
One of the big problems was that young teachers were struggling,
05:19
new teachers were struggling to actually move close to their schools
05:22
because there isn't enough housing supply,
05:24
and that's affecting all the way down the chain,
05:26
people wanting to even join the education sector.
05:29
So delivering houses was the service that people believed,
05:34
once they did that, it would unlock being able to deliver
05:36
a lot of these other services.
05:39
That's interesting, Josh, because we had the head of crisis
05:42
here in Scotland, I think a couple of weeks ago,
05:44
wrote for us about, you know, really the devastating impact
05:48
of the lack of housing and how it's increasing homelessness.
05:52
But as you point out, really the lack of housing stock
05:55
is having issues all across the chain of people
05:59
in professional jobs as well that may want to, you know,
06:02
either move to Scotland or set up in a different area
06:05
and they're having trouble finding somewhere to live.
06:09
Absolutely.
06:11
Right off the top of the meeting, the council leaders agreed
06:14
that inequality, poverty, homelessness were among
06:18
their number one priorities of things that they have to solve
06:21
and challenges they face every single day.
06:24
But that those things don't exist in isolation
06:27
and that solutions to those require solutions
06:30
to other problems as well.
06:32
If we take Edinburgh as an example, one of the big problems
06:34
that Edinburgh has kind of demographically,
06:36
housing in Edinburgh is incredibly expensive
06:39
and the housing market is very affected by the fact
06:42
that there's a huge amount of student population.
06:44
Now, there are regulatory reasons why it's easier
06:46
to build student housing at the moment than it is
06:48
to build social housing or domestic properties.
06:52
What it means is a lot of people who work in Edinburgh
06:54
live in the Lothians.
06:56
I, for instance, live in East Lothian, but East Lothian,
06:58
Mid Lothian, West Lothian, even across in Fife.
07:01
That has a knock-on effect to the council because many people
07:04
who access the services in Edinburgh don't live in Edinburgh
07:08
and that means that they pay their council tax elsewhere,
07:11
they potentially spend their money elsewhere.
07:13
And all of that kind of comes back to housing
07:15
and the fact that housing in Edinburgh has skyrocketed
07:18
in its cost and at the moment the council
07:21
and the private sector are struggling to deliver more houses.
07:25
Josh, it's interesting.
07:26
I'm out in Fife, much as you are, you know, on the borders of Edinburgh
07:31
and the housing that's been built here in a short space of time
07:36
in and around Dalgety Bay where I live and into Dunfermline
07:39
has created existing pressures as well on school catchments
07:42
and other basic resources as well.
07:46
You can read that piece from Josh from the roundtable,
07:51
the first in the series at Scotsman.com.
07:53
You can find all the latest on business in the business tab
07:57
and in the navigation bar.
07:59
There'll be a series of articles to run throughout the week
08:02
from that roundtable, so it's one to look out for.
08:04
And also please go and pick up a copy of the Scotsman tomorrow
08:09
where you'll have all business coverage,
08:12
including each part of the series throughout the week.
08:15
Josh, thanks to you and thanks to all our readers
08:18
and viewers for joining us.
08:20
Thanks, Tim.
Recommended
1:30
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