‘A lot of debate’ will be needed in the coming year to boost population and employment in Argyll and Bute, a council official has said.
Fergus Murray, the authority’s head of economic growth, was responding after a councillor highlighted the situation with employment in his Oban ward.
SNP group leader Jim Lynch called for training for job opportunities to be stepped up following the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, the council’s leader Robin Currie, said the situation could also be attributed to Argyll and Bute’s declining population.
Cllr Lynch told the council’s environment, development and infrastructure committee: “The employment situation is quite worrying in terms of where you go. Oban is one of the ones which is quite bad and we have spoken about getting other agencies involved.
“Now that we are out of the pandemic, I would like to see job fair-type training. How difficult is it to get agencies together to do that?”
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Mr Murray responded: “I can’t say that it is an easy situation and you have highlighted a critical area which we have to deal with.
“We know our unemployment rate tripled in some parts of Argyll and Bute overnight because of lockdowns, and also people going on furlough. At one point, 8,000 people in Argyll and Bute were on furlough.
“Now that we have opened up again, we are returning to normal, but in some areas unemployment remains higher than we would like.
“We also have businesses who cannot function fully because they cannot get staff or the skills they need, so we must focus on this in a number of ways.”
Last year a council report suggested that the area’s population was projected to fall by nearly 6% from 2018 to 2028 – compared with a predicted increase of 1.8% for the whole of Scotland.
Argyll and Bute also saw a population decrease of 5.9% between 1998 and 2018, and a working age population decrease of 11.2% in that period.
More than a quarter of the local population is aged 65 and over – and nearly half of the council’s staff is aged over 50.
Cllr Currie told last week’s meeting: “I don’t think it is just to do with getting local people skilled to do the job – there are just not the people to do the job.
“If we are serious, and I firmly believe we are, about repopulating Argyll and Bute, we need to do everything at our disposal to get people into Argyll and Bute.
“You can see on a daily basis the number of local businesses either closing early, or not performing as much as they used to, simply because there are not people there to work. It is a terrible situation to be in.”
Mr Murray said: “I think you are right. I could go on for quite a long time about this but there are other initiatives to get people into Argyll and Bute.
“I am on the national group in terms of looking at population strategy for Scotland, and some areas have big increases in population, putting strains on infrastructure, and we are losing population.
“So the group set up by the Scottish Government is looking at how to get others into our area. That is where we need a lot of debate in the next year.”
All very well but lack of social housing needs addressing. Too many air b and b and outsiders buying up local property. Also high costs of living in argyll and bute does not help and lack of the big discount stores in.our bigger towns eg Helensburgh