The Fear for Glasgow City Centre: Social barriers and cultural suicide.
As speedily and recklessly as the local authorities have thrown barriers up around the huge, man-made gouges in the city centre, so they are relentlessly throwing up economic barriers around the realms of hospitality and entertainment. You will have a hard time finding a pedestrian not perplexed by a protracted campaign of perverse urban vandalism masquerading as development. Behind that disruption and aesthetic violence lurks a series of forces slowly driving business and persons from less privileged economic backgrounds out of that city centre space. Away from opportunities and stratifying the centre of Britain’s third-largest city, famed for its working-class credentials.
Glasgow was always the ugly duckling compared to Edinburgh. Certainly, the city does have its beauty spots, but it also lacks the immediate picturesque gothic vennels, copious bagpipes and tartan outlets of its East Coast rival. To make up for that, Glasgow became the thinking-person’s choice for culture. Not just one month a year, but evenly spread and grown from the roots of an industrial hub steeped in working-class traditions, augmented by the drawing power of internationally renowned universities, the Royal Conservatoire and The Art School.
With dozens of theatres, music halls, markets, cinemas and more, Glasgow made up in authentic, deep-rooted cultural wealth what it lacked in shortbread-tin vistas.
No industry more epitomizes Glasgow’s creativity than its music scene. A city a mere fraction of the size of other European metropolises has managed—since at least the 1960s—to punch far above its weight in terms of the astonishing footprint it leaves on the planet’s contemporary musical history. The likes of Travis, Simple Minds, The Fratellis, Texas and Deacon Blue have all been central figures in the UK and European charts of recent decades. That's before you dig deeper to the less commercial indie and alternative groups with global fanbases and cult reputations.
It is all the more astonishing then that these huge cultural assets seem to have recently come under sustained attack by the very organisations designed to promote growth and raise living standards in the city. Again, this damage can be witnessed nowhere more clearly than the world of live music.
The Legacy of Lockdown.
Just four months before the planet was paralysed by Covid-19, Karl Whitney, author of the book Hit Factories, which documented the cities most vital to the UK’s musical legacy, declared Glasgow the UK’s best city for live music in a 2019 Guardian article. In that he proclaimed that “ key to Glasgow’s thriving music scene lies in small- and medium-sized venues.”
Most reasonable people—bar the mob that assembled regularly on Glasgow Green to decry the New World Order—would agree that the pandemic was both sudden and utterly overwhelming. Systems struggled and services creaked under the strain. Streets were deserted and the economy took a kicking in the process. Glasgow in particular is cited in numerous reports for the comparatively slow return of workers to city-centre premises and offices, hampering efforts at a speedy economic recovery.
Few industries were worse affected in the months and years that followed than hospitality and live entertainment. Not least due to the fact that their entire modus operandi was bringing groups of people together in close proximity: an activity that was temporarily quite literally hazardous to health.
When it finally passed, we knew it would take one massive collective effort to get things back in order and we were frequently assured from on high that every effort would be made to help the worst-affected industries do just that. So as we stand in that very moment, with the worst of Covid-19 having passed (for now), it is with dismay that Glaswegians must surely regard the state of their city centre and in particular the hospitality and live entertainment industry.
It’s important to build a picture of what was unfolding across Scottish cities post-Covid and consider the implications for independent bars and music venues.
Of course, Covid-19 did not just cripple Glasgow; closures were nationwide. Yet a glance to our East Coast rivals in Auld Reekie sees a city in rude health. Edinburgh enjoys the lowest retail unit vacancy rate in the entire UK (a lean 13%), a retail industry that climbed by 10.3% in 2022/23 and a hospitality industry that positively rocketed up by 46.4% in the same year. In mid-2023, footfall in Edinburgh city centre was up 4.7% on the previous year. Meanwhile in Glasgow, that same statistic showed a 7.2% drop.
There are multiple factors at play in the recent sector-wide malaise. Inflation, Brexit, post-Covid trauma, especially lousy weather. As of November 2023, The Office of National Statistics tells us that 67% of adults in the UK now avoid spending on non-essentials. Local gigs, pints and band merchandise almost certainly fall under that umbrella for most.
“The Avenues”
Sauchiehall Street is a particularly relevant case study. This is a street that has previously rivalled even Edinburgh’s prestigious Princes Street for a place at the top of Scotland’s shopping destinations. It now sits desolate, with boarded shop fronts and graffiti now almost as numerous as the pigeons.
Certainly, we should note that in the last decade this street bore the brunt of two huge fires courtesy of the Glasgow School of Art and another that destroyed Victoria’s Nightclub and adjoining buildings. It also saw closures of the famous BHS, the iconic Watt Brothers store, catalogue giant Argos and ultimately even a Marks & Spencer’s that had survived WW2 but couldn’t hang on any longer. A further notable loss, for the night-life sector, was the ABC (and ABC2), whose gigs and clubs had benefited the surrounding food and drink trade to enormous effect for more than a decade. A bad situation was getting progressively worse.
Indeed, even back in 2022, Business Connect observed that footfall in Glasgow centre was already 15% down on 2019. At the same time, The Herald reported that Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street was Britain’s most struggling shopping street, with an estimated 36% of business premises sitting vacant. That figure doesn’t include vast stretches of that same street dominated by identical (and often temporary) clearance outlets, with negligible pulling-power in terms of shoppers; thrown in there largely to save rent and the financial penalties that accompany vacant commercial property.
Accordingly, with Christmas around the corner, in September of 2023 an enormous redevelopment plan swung into operation. Rather unremarkably titled “The Avenues”, it sought to redevelop Glasgow’s “Golden Z” of shopping streets, starting with the beautification of Sauchiehall Street. Trees were uprooted and pavements ripped up. Along the metal railings huge banners conveyed the land of milk and honey that was waiting, just over the horizon.
And then work stopped.
Or it didn’t. But to most people in the area it certainly felt that way. The fences just sat and instead of trees, a procession of ragged gouges stared blankly back at confused passers-by. Slowly, the local nightlife had their mischief with the metal fences in the wee hours. Windows were broken. Traffic cones and banners found their way onto heads and vehicles. Grandmothers, prams and hurtling bike couriers alike were now condensed into two small channels of treacherous thoroughfare.
Still the street just lay there, half-chewed by some Godzilla-sized monster. Christmas came and went. Shoppers did not. The financial woes of the area were compounded by the fact that taking your children shopping on the edge of a quarry didn’t really make for a fun festive period.
Somewhat predictably, an original (and slightly nebulous) completion date of “Summer 2024” has now been pushed back to “before 2025”. That in itself doesn’t feel particularly binding as recent BBC and STV News vox-pops with bemused tourists and locals testify to.
The entire “Avenues” project is touted by Glasgow City Council as having a budget of £115 million with the Sauchiehall work alone estimated at £5.7 million. What effect the delay will have on that budget is unclear. The impact it will have on local businesses, especially across yet another Christmas period, is far more predictable.
It should also go without saying that the new trees and paving stones promised at the end of this seismic urban tinkering must seem a little indulgent for the growing population of homeless persons making their beds nightly in the doorways of all those empty retail properties.
Stuart Patrick from the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce has commented in the past that he believes the downturn of the retail sector is not as bad as others think. Business Connect asked Stuart to expand on those comments in 2023 and he observed insightfully that “retail will not disappear from the city centre. It is a fundamental part of the city centre and footfall has already recovered to around 90% of pre-pandemic levels.”
That big-picture approach no doubt comes as little comfort to the dozens of commercial and hospitality businesses that have closed in the last 5 years. Likewise, the belief that shopping will continue in society somehow is probably not a huge consolation to the numerous businesses fighting to pay each invoice and facing closure currently.
Faced with these facts, what was Glasgow City Council’s plan with this latest initiative? We can consult a document titled “City Centre Recovery Plan” (CCRP) released in 2020 and updated as of April last year.
Amidst the usual wordy, bureaucratic style of local government policy, there emerge four main objectives of the CCRP:
Maximising activity and footfall
Maximising employment and business development opportunities
Maintaining and enhancing the city centre so that it attracts people to work, live, visit, study and invest there
Embed climate mitigation and adaptation from the Climate Plan at every opportunity
Stuart Patrick, also co-chair of the City Centre Task Force, again commented: "The information presented [in the CCRP] underlines both the breadth of work that’s been undertaken by the Council and its partners to bring Glasgow back to life again after the pandemic, but also the sizeable task that remains ahead of us in moving beyond recovery.
Councillor Angus Millar, current Convener for City Centre Recovery at Glasgow City Council, added: "The City Centre Recovery Plan was put in place to help guide the area’s post-pandemic recovery, and has helped deliver support for businesses operating there and a range of other measures to attract visitors and boost the local economy, as well as considering in what ways the city centre will thrive in the future. The Plan has been invaluable during this time, and I look forward to working with partners as we develop a successor City Centre Strategy 2024-2030 to continue the city centre’s recovery."
Even the simple appearance of “2030” in that conversation might well leave a knot in the stomach of many businessowners and raise the blood pressure of others, watching the soaring fortunes of Edinburgh. What else lies behind Glasgow’s malaise? Quite apart from slow recovery, why indeed do we appear to be repeatedly committing acts of economic self-harm?
The Low Emission Zone
The mere discussion of The Low Emission Zone has become something of an eyeroll. Those three letters—LEZ—have turned into a political stick for red-faced right-wingers to beat up on “woke environmentalists” and both political and ideological opponents further left on the spectrum.
Yet it should be possible to reflect critically on this policy—and in particular its implementation—whilst still broadly sharing its stated aims of cleaner air and improved health.
It is perfectly understandable that couriers, drivers and other professionals have serious reservations about that which has seriously complicated their livelihood.
In that way, GCC’s ham-fisted approach to a low-emission zone hasn’t just had serious ramifications for local businesses, but it has been a massive self-own in the world of political one-upmanship; an open invitation for the right-wing press to sharpen their knives.
Doubtless many delivery drivers could inject their own anecdotes here but, speaking from a music perspective, the problems are both immediately obvious whilst also frustratingly easy to address. Yet the will to do so is clearly not there.
As discussed earlier, musicians, venues and their wider ecosystem have taken a battering like almost no other. In an industry where physical sales have evaporated in the last two decades in favour of streaming sites that pay fractions of fractions of pennies, this is particularly grievous.
Playing live concerts has a renewed importance as one of the only times bands can both increase profile and generate some income. These artists, often operating on the breadline in hopes of working towards some sort of contract that makes their passion sustainable, walk the finest of margins in keeping their projects and dreams afloat. Yet as also mentioned, it has been decades of such enthusiasm, creativity and resilience that has underwritten Glasgow’s enormous (and frankly disproportionate) international reputation. How much have the works of Simple Minds, Teenage Fanclub, Mogwai, Belle & Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand, CHVRCHES, Biffy Clyro et al contributed to putting this city on a cultural atlas? The answer is incalculable.
Yet the chronic lack of support or concern for that industry is overwhelmingly apparent. Bands on the margins rely on their own transport or affordable hire vehicles. Small shows at hundred-capacity venues do not allow them the luxury of tour buses. With the introduction of LEZ, certain vehicles traditionally rented to musicians, artists and performers no longer meet the criteria required to access the city centre. The rolling stock that does pass LEZ standards is suddenly in greater demand. Whilst investments by companies in new fleets drives prices up to absorb the costs. Thus the vehicles (whether owned or rented) that are still within the financial means of those young and lesser-known groups frequently no longer allow them to enter the city centre. An economic barrier has been thrown up. For those from a more affluent background, those with existing deals and financial backing, those with subsidy, life has continued as normal. Yet those without these advantages are being consigned to the periphery of their own city.
Likewise, when LEZ was introduced, consultation by the authorities with the venues and businesses who would be most severely affected was negligible. Most were left to learn about the terms, the dates, the fines via the press and concerned discussions on internet forums. Experience has since shown that fines for light vehicles (i.e. cars and vans) breaching LEZ regulations start at £60 and compound up to a value of £480 after only four incidents, which can have happened before the first notification is even received.
Yet from the very commencement of this policy a possible solution presented itself: the LEZ system uses automatic license plate recognition. Many of Europe’s older towns and cities, where mobile bollards rise and fall to prevent excessive traffic on the historic streets, recognise given license plates to allow the essential deliveries that keep the businesses within going. In Glasgow too, plate numbers could be easily submitted via a web portal, granting a window of time for essential carriage and deliveries. This could be done by any venue or theatre registered with the council via a simple web form that most teenagers could probably programme.
This issue was raised by the office of Alison Thewliss MP who, after multiple attempts, received a reply from Gavin Slater, Head of Sustainability, NRSM Glasgow, stating that the issue “is not unique to the music industry …To consider this sector for specific exemption would risk challenge from other sectors engaged in routine commercial activities and also risks the integrity of the scheme ...However, it is understood that live music is a vital part of the night-time economy, especially in Glasgow, and has faced significant challenges in recent years. Glasgow City Council will continue to monitor the health of the nighttime economy to help understand the challenges faced.”
As to how Glasgow City Council has continued to monitor that impact is unclear since no small to medium independent local music venues report subsequent consultation on the issue of any sort.
The swift dismissal of a cheap potential solution that addressed the onslaught of criticism also seemed like a missed political open-goal. Despite the fleeting overtures to the importance of music “especially in Glasgow”, combined with the lack of consultation, the abiding impression is of a relative indifference, at a local authority level, to the health of the sector.
As said, opposition to the scheme is substantial, with the TLF Research group stating that only a quarter of respondents to their surveys back LEZ in Glasgow. It is a policy with ostensibly noble aims, but badly in need of considered and thoughtful integration.
In stark contrast to Mr Slater’s rigid stance on exceptions to the LEZ rules undermining health benefits, the Glasgow Herald reported accusations of “hypocrisy” in September 2023 when it emerged that more than a third of GCC’s own vehicles did not comply with the council's own regulations.
Meanwhile, BBC News revealed that Glasgow City Council made £478,560 from LEZ in the four months from June to the end of September 2023. In September of that year alone, 83 drivers of everyday light vehicles found themselves facing the maximum fine of £480.
To be clear, the cost implications of LEZ have to be borne by somebody. Fines must be paid and the options for potential arrivals in the city centre boil down to this: a musician, artist or performer lacking sufficient means is simply unable to access the centre of the city; a musician, artist or performer enters the city, accepts the fine and absorbs the costs; a musician, artist or performer demands higher fees to cover the expected costs which are then absorbed by the venue. Whatever the outcome, this regularly proves prohibitive and dozens of concerts across multiple venues (Nice N Sleazy, Broadcast, BOX, The Garage, King Tuts, Bloc+) have felt the effects already.
With the dust barely settling from the messy implementation of the LEZ scheme and daily live news broadcasts from the Mad Max-esque scenes of Sauchiehall Street, one might think that GCC would be keen to avoid further controversy. Their media department in particular can surely expect some compassionate leave.
Yet, adrenaline junkies that they must be, they decided that 2024 was the perfect time to announce imminent changes to parking regulations in the city centre that would see basic charges rise and—more significantly—hours expand to span 8a.m. ’til 10p.m. with increased penalties (the previous maximum of £60 rising to £100).
Freedom of Information requests quickly brought into question the numbers used to justify the changes and weary businesses faced yet another blow to their prospects for survival. Whilst the increased charges landed in April, as of late March the proposed change to prohibited hours was effectively kicked into the long grass by a council that was swamped with furious objections from a public seemingly down to their last nerve. Patience with the constant disruption was evidently at an end yet, despite that one merciful concession, new building works and their corresponding new street closures continued to pop up, undeterred.
Nightlife and access
Though the dropped plans for increased parking charges will be welcome news to those still visiting the city centre, there remain real issues of access. Persons travelling into the city face obstacles on multiple fronts.
Rail services remain comparatively expensive and end before most bars or venues close. Glasgow’s subway— already fairly limited— still closes prior to midnight most days, and 6p.m. on a Sunday, like some bizarre religious anachronism. Keen to maximise access as well as ensure safe transport options for their customers and patrons, promoters such as Paul Cardow of PCL Presents (who, alongside the likes of DF Concerts, have promoted some of the city’s largest musical events including The Strokes, Foo Fighters, Katy Perry), have spent many years advocating for a late subway service to no avail.
Elsewhere, First Bus reintroduced a number of late routes to encourage growth after the height of lockdown, connecting outlying areas to the city centre. However, as of 2023, many of these were scrapped. Some of the neglected routes were subsequently covered by smaller providers, like McGill’s, but on a limited level, still leading to a deficit overall. In stepping up to cover those routes, Ralph Roberts, CEO of McGill’s Group, astutely observed that: “Buses are vital to the success of Glasgow and we’ve been striving to find a solution that serves the night-time economy, residents and visitors.” Indeed a lack of these services restricts not only shoppers' access, but also that of workers and, in turn, potentially limits the job opportunities they can affordably and safely pursue.
Meanwhile, taxi apps like Uber have propagated and now constitute the main way for people to get to and from town from the outskirts. However, the fact that these apps operate on dynamic pricing— whereby demand drives cost and thus the wettest weather and busiest times now mean huge jumps in fare— means that there is a further economic barrier facing persons looking to simply take part in their own city’s nightlife. After all, if a one-way cab home from town to Shawlands costs you the same as a flight abroad, might you not just stay in with Netflix this Friday?
We find ourselves at a point where prestigious multi-day inner-city music festivals, such as Celtic Connections and The Glasgow Jazz Festival are faced with not only a harsh economic climate, but also increased infrastructural hurdles like LEZ and “The Avenues”. This is a pain also felt by cinemas like GFT (a cultural icon in the city) and internationally renowned big screen events, including The Glasgow Film Festival.
Once again, these are forward-thinking organisations and teams, likely to broadly share the stated positive environmental and social aims of said programmes, yet they will also have enjoyed few concessions to mitigate the negative impact of such policies. This, in turn, could feasibly threaten their ongoing stability in the near future.
The decline in custom for city centre premises works on many levels. Fewer shoppers means less daytime trade. Lower numbers at night mean fewer sales. In light of the above transport restrictions, hospitality in Glasgow City Centre also now faces the well-documented phenomenon of people leaving events and establishments early in order to make last services by rail or to avoid peak periods and mitigate the dynamic costs of taxi pricing. The bottom line to all of this is a massive loss of revenue for huge numbers of businesses. That revenue loss leads to closures. Those closures lead to a lack of opportunities for the entertainment and arts that the city was made famous for. The domino effect is fairly apparent with only the extent of the damage to be determined, long term.
Future Prospects
There were 960 grass-roots music venues in the UK in 2022, but that number dropped by 125 (16%) in 2023. Asides from the obvious impact of Covid-19, many of the factors behind those statistics are systemic; economic challenges, including taxes on alcohol, have forced prices up just as the Cost of Living crisis has forced expendable income down.
Brexit too has had severe ramifications; perhaps not felt so severely by its cheerleaders at Wetherspoons, but certainly felt acutely by small and independent businesses, whether in terms of produce prices or staffing shortages.
As The Guardian observed recently, of that 16% “around half of those [are] closing altogether and the other half ceasing live music provision. High-profile examples include Moles, the Bath venue that once hosted the likes of Radiohead and Ed Sheeran on their path to success.” Those names might be specifically English, but Scottish equivalents that birthed the likes of Lewis Capaldi and Optimo abound.
This is a well-documented economic climate, discussed nightly across news channels and the press. The statistics on the downturn are easily accessible. Personal testimonies on the challenges faced are likewise available from any business owner.
So the most logical course of action for any local authority was surely to stop the bleeding: to try and limit the extent of the damage by passing policies that helped stabilise and assist struggling businesses. Glasgow City Council seems to have undertaken the exact opposite.
Since the shipyards rusted, Glasgow has built its reputation on cultural capital. Its influence far exceeds its relatively small size in the big scheme of things. Yet when faced with its biggest challenges in five decades—from circumstances largely beyond its control—that capital has been further subjected to a series of policies that have exacerbated the decline. Despite numerous warnings and attempted interventions, concerns have been waved away and a breakdown in communications has pitted the council itself against many of the most significant ambassadors for the city.
The financial barriers now being erected to deter persons of lower income backgrounds from participating in the cultural life of their own city can only worsen those effects, as well as pushing against most reasonable and generally accepted notions of equality of opportunity.
With numerous establishments in the city centre having already closed their doors in the last twelve months, 2024 promises to be another austere year. Steps must be implemented as a matter of urgency to prevent further generational or even irreparable harm being done to a wide swathe of Glasgow's retail, hospitality and—in particular—entertainment and cultural sectors before the city loses its strongest assets altogether.
words: C Cusack