Ways of leveraging real economic benefit from Perth’s designation as Scotland’s newest city were on the agenda at a major summit.
Around 60 business leaders, politicians and strategists gathered at Perth Concert Hall on Monday in a bid to flesh out a vision for the city.
Among the speakers at the event organised by Perth and Kinross Council was Stagecoach chief executive Sir Brian Souter, who said the city had to ”raise its game” to ensure prosperity.
”As a resident of Perth, I feel we are at quite a critical stage as a city,” Sir Brian said. ”I feel we are teetering on the brink we could go forward and it could be amazing, but we could fall back and it could be awful.”
Sir Brian said he had seen the adverse effects of economic and political stagnation on towns and cities on his extensive travels and said Perth had to ensure it did not allow a similar fate to befall it.
”We have a great city and we have a whole lot going for us, but we cannot afford to be complacent. We have to fight for Perth’s place again. We need to improve our retail offering and we need to raise our game.”
Planner and economist Professor Duncan Maclennan, of St Andrews University, Rita Waters, chief executive of the urban regeneration body Chester Renaissance, and Royal Scottish Geographical Society chief executive Mike Robinson each addressed the audience, as did Scotland’s Finance Secretary and local MSP John Swinney.
He said he was pleased that Perth was taking steps to capitalise on the renewal of city status.
Mr Swinney said: ”This was an excellent start to the process of designing a growth strategy for the city of Perth. I would encourage Perth and Kinross Council to give clear and decisive leadership to the private, public, third and community sectors to agree a bold vision for the development of Perth and a unified way of achieving that.”
Perthshire Chamber of Commerce chief executive Vicki Unite said the summit was a good first step along the road to mapping out Perth’s future and they were delighted to be part of the ”valuable exercise”.