DUNDEE EAST MSP Shona Robison last night reiterated her demand for “a piece of the cake instead of crumbs from the table” on being told only 1.1% of civil service jobs in the Scottish Executive’s administration are based in Dundee.

The information, given to Ms Robison by Tom McCabe, minister for finance and public service reform, equates to 0.1% of the city’s population.

The figures prove Dundee is firmly at the bottom of the league for cities that are home to civil service jobs.

Edinburgh has a whopping 49.3%, well ahead of Glasgow with 13.2%.

Aberdeen has 3.6%, Stirling has 2.3%—and then there’s Dundee.

“From the figures given to me, I see very little progress in Dundee in the percentage of civil service jobs—a growth of a mere 0.3% since 1999. Edinburgh, the city where the posts were meant to be dispersed from, has increased the number of jobs 11-fold.

“It’s just not good enough to have far more jobs in Edinburgh than anywhere else. It simply exposes that the Executive’s rhetoric and the reality are not the same thing at all.

“They have a lot to do to prove they’re serious about dispersal to other cities. Dundee wants a piece of the civil service cake and not just crumbs from the table.”

The figures have emerged a fortnight after the Scottish Executive announced it has tentatively pinpointed four sites in the city that could prove suitable if and when it carries out a civil service relocation exercise.

The Executive told Dundee-based MSP Marlyn Glen last month that the city council has identified the city centre, the cultural quarter campus, the east waterfront development, and Claverhouse Business Park as areas that would prove suitable for Executive agencies in any civil service jobs relocation.

Ms Glen wrote to the Executive advocating Dundee as the best place to relocate Scottish Executive-funded bodies, such as the Scottish Arts Council or its successors.

Ms Glen also asked that Dundee be considered as the new home of the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council along with the Scottish Court Services HQ and the offices of the Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman.

However, it looks as if Ms Glen could have a long wait before more jobs are dispersed to Dundee.

The minister for tourism, culture and sport, Patricia Ferguson, was quick to put the Arts Council idea on the back burner.

“The Scottish Executive is not yet at the stage where it can decide to relocate the new home of the Scottish Arts Council to a city outside the capital, such as Dundee,” she said only days after Ms Glen told The Courier the growth of civil service jobs in Dundee will “reinforce the city’s new image.”

Ms Ferguson agreed it made sense for Scottish Ministers to look at the issue of location in the context of outcome of the review of the structure of the cultural sector.

But in the meantime, she added, as a first step in rationalising its accommodation, the Scottish Arts Council vacated its annex building in Edinburgh producing an annual saving of £130,000 and has been consolidated in its main building in Manor Place.