On Monday 28th May, two of Argyll and Bute’s five major towns jointly topped a list of Scottish towns most at risk of a destructive spiral of recession.
This research was done by the Scottish Agricultural College’s Rural Policy Unit and featured in its second biennial report, Rural Scotland in Focus 2012, released that day.
Ironically, this analysis came on a day when each of these two towns produced evidence which, in one case, challenged the prognosis and in the other appeared to confirm it.
Campbeltown was celebrating, in ministerial company, a community company’s buyout of the 1,000 acre former RAF base on the edge of the town, with potential, if well and imaginatively managed with entrepreneurial flair, to contribute strongly to the economic sustainability of the area. It’s businesses had, days earlier, come together to launch a determined marketing group.
Dunoon was dealing with another murder and an arrest following an incident at Cowal Place on its western periphery; and a serious separate assault in Kirk Street at the heart of the town.
These are towns with individual character, endemic difficulties, opportunities, needs and potential.
For Argyll has been taking time to produce considered responses to the risk these two towns are vulnerable and is working on separate analyses of each, which will be published from links below. We will signal the arrival of each with an update notice at the head of this piece.
- Campbeltown and the spiral recession risk
- Dunoon and the spiral recession risk