Fife continues to contain Scotland’s largest concentration of coalfield deprivation nearly 30 years after the end of the miners’ strike, a damning report has claimed.
The Coalfields Regeneration Trust paper uncovers a “stark gap” in deprivation levels between Scotland’s coalfield and non-coalfields areas. Its publication comes as the death knell sounded for one of Fife’s last opencast sites.
The collapse of Scottish Coal and the loss of 600 jobs including the demise of St Ninian’s and Blair House in Fife was described as a “body blow” to those already suffering higher levels of deprivation than the rest of the country.
At its peak the Scottish coal mining industry employed 150,000 in 500 pits; by 1914 in Fife alone 30,000 men worked in the mines, an astonishing one 10th of the region’s population.
By the late 50s, it still gave work to 85,000 miners in more than 150 Scottish pits but it stuttered in the 60s and 70s and the once proud industry was reduced to a rump by the time of the bitter 1984 miners’ strike.
King Coal’s glorious reign was finally over with the loss of Scotland’s last deep mine, Longannet, in the early part of the new millennium.
With the latest job losses, men employed in the industry across Fife can be counted in double figures.
Now the Coalfields Regeneration Trust has shown a “stark gap” in deprivation levels between Scotland’s coalfield and non-coalfields areas, even before the latest job losses.
Fife, once home to Scotland’s highest concentration of pits, is now the worst-hit mining area, with one third of its coalfield communities within the 20% most deprived areas in Scotland.
Tom McAughtrie, Scottish trustee of the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, said: “The pressure these latest job losses will put on our mining communities just doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“Our report showed they were already lagging behind other communities in critical areas like jobs, income levels and transport links and this is a real body blow.”
The report, by think tank the Social Value Lab, highlights that some coalfields communities experience particularly acute and multiple forms of deprivation on a par with Glasgow’s worst hit housing estates.
It added: “By some way, Fife continues to contain the largest and most pronounced concentration of coalfield deprivation.”
Parts of Fife and East Ayrshire are in the top 100 most deprived areas in the country, out of 6,500 areas surveyed.
Mr McAughtrie went on: “The Coalfields Regeneration Trust works tirelessly to improve the quality of life in former mining communities, and the report notes there have been improvements over the last six years, but the deeper the recession bites, the more our most vulnerable communities suffer, and that includes most of Scotland’s former mining areas.”
With St Ninian’s having recently gained permission to extract a further 70,000 tonnes of coal from the site near Kelty, trust vice-chairman Nicky Wilson added: “What’s really galling is that we still produce 40% of the electricity in this country from coal-fired generation by importing 60% of the coal, even though there is plenty of coal under the mining towns and villages that are still feeling the pain of losing their local pit.”
The legacy of St Ninian’s could have far-reaching repercussions not only for the industry but for communities with the potential scaling back of a massive land arts project and a question mark hanging over its controversial plans to drain Loch Fitty to exploit swathes of coal lying underneath.
Admitting the news was “a worry”, Fife Council leader and Lochs councillor Alex Rowley said bonds were in place for progressing the arts project site.
“Clearly there are major concerns around the restoration. I have concerns and will continue to work closely through our lawyers and planning officials.”
As far as Loch Fitty was concerned, no planning consent had yet been released.
SNP councillor Douglas Chapman said the council needed to act swiftly and he has written to Lesley Laird, Fife’s Economy Policy Advisory Group chairman, asking for a Scottish Coal Task Force to be established to speak to the receivers and to the Scottish Government about what can be done in the short term to secure jobs and in the longer term if a buyer cannot be found to continue opencast operations.
“There are also huge concerns about what happens to the opencast sites and the resultant environmental impact if there is not a plan of action put in place,” he said.
Blair Nimmo, joint provisional liquidator of the Scottish Coal Company Ltd and head of restructuring at KPMG in Scotland, said: “It is too early to comment on specific sites but we will continue to work with local authorities, Scottish Government, the Scottish Mines Restoration Trust and other current stakeholders in the sites to try to reach acceptable solutions to restoration issues.”