Graeme Downie

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. Last Friday I was at a roundtable with local businesses, creative organisations and city centre groups in Dunfermline to discuss the safety of the town centre and how we can make Dunfermline a prosperous city in the future. What struck me was the unanimity of experience: people love their city and are committed to its future, but they feel that too much of the burden of improvement is falling on them, rather than being supported by different levels of Government. Those at the roundtable spoke about day-to-day frustrations that shape how safe a city feels: graffiti that is not cleaned; broken cobbles left unrepaired; street furniture that has seen better days, and a lack of accessible parking, which makes the city centre more difficult for disabled residents. I also heard examples of vandalism and shop break-ins not being meaningfully followed up. Here we come to one of the key responsibilities devolved to the SNP Scottish Government: policing. While frontline officers in Dunfermline and across Fife work incredibly hard, they are operating under sustained pressure from years of cuts, centralisation and under-investment. Dunfermline, with its heritage and potential future, has not received the kind of long-term planning and investment that it deserves from the Government at Holyrood, and that is also true of wider investment in Scotland’s towns and cities. What was striking at the roundtable, however, was a sense of optimism—from places such as Café Wynd, Veneno Music Store and Caledonian Craft Beer Merchant, there was a clear pride in what Dunfermline has to offer. While many of the policy levers for direct intervention in the future success of Dunfermline lie in Holyrood, there are actions that the UK Government could and should take. I hope the UK Government will consider Dunfermline as a pilot area for trialling any kind of tax incentives, which small businesses are calling for to support creation and innovation in town centres. We need a shared vision between the UK and Scottish Governments, Fife council and local businesses to deliver that future. Dunfermline has talent, ambition and enormous potential, and with the right support across both Scotland’s Governments, and a clear, shared and deliverable vision, it can become a leading example of how to build a safe, thriving and modern city centre in the 21st century.