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GLENROTHES: 1948 to 1998 A geographical study of the ‘New Town’ in its 50 th year Malcolm A. Sutherland (Revised July 2012)

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An investigation completed in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Scottish Certificate of Sixth Year Studies (CSYS) in Geography, at Madras College secondary school, St Andrews, Fife, Scotland (May 1998)

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Page 1: Glenrothes 1948 to 1998.  A geographical study of the 'New Town' in its 50th year.  Malcolm Sutherland, 1998

GLENROTHES: 1948 to 1998A geographical study of the ‘New Town’ in its

50th year

Malcolm A. Sutherland

(Revised July 2012)

Page 2: Glenrothes 1948 to 1998.  A geographical study of the 'New Town' in its 50th year.  Malcolm Sutherland, 1998

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CONTENTS

Author’s note 2

Site and Layout of Glenrothes 3

Reasons why the site was chosen 3How did the layout reflect the principles of a “New Town”? 4How successfully have the New Town standards been achieved in Glenrothes? 11

Changes in Employment over the years 14

Changes in population and industry 14The tertiary sector in Glenrothes 17Southfield industrial estate 18

4: References 20

Appendix 1: CSYS Geography Field Report and Strategy

Appendix 2: Annotated Map of Field Survey Area

Appendix 3: Field Notebook: selected pages

Appendix 4: Responses by Industrial Unit Companies to Questionnaire

Appendix 5: Analysis Sheet 1: the Site and Layout of Glenrothes

Appendix 6: Analysis Sheet 2: Changes in Employment over the years

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AUTHOR’S NOTE

This report is a compilation of data contained within a batch of posters, log books, letters,drawings, photographs and a report, all of which were submitted and which satisfied therequirements for the CSYS (Certificate of Sixth Year Studies) in Geography, completedin May 1998. Most of the original material has been preserved in the appendices.

I completed this project at Madras College High School in St Andrews, Fife, under theguidance of Ms L Thomson. It was an ambitious project, requiring dozens of visits toGlenrothes by bus or taxi (both Glenrothes and St Andrews were deprived of theirrailways by the egregious Beeching in the 1960s). The project included postingquestionnaires to hundreds of local businesses, and received over 20 responses – not badfor a school pupil – a social sciences post-doc would be feeling envious. Moreover, Icompleted face-to-face interviews with over 100 patient local residents and shoppers inGlenrothes. Traffic surveys were conducted during rush hour at various roundabouts, inthe receding daylight, often in freezing winter weather. A few days before the report andassociated paperwork was submitted to the school, I answered a random phone call fromthe director of the Tullis Paper Mill in response to the questionnaire. In both 1948 and1998, Tullis Paper Mill was the largest industrial site in Glenrothes. It is a survivor.Larger paper mills in Guardbridge (near St Andrews) and in Dover (the subject of myBSc dissertation) closed a few years after 1998.

Glenrothes has not been the subject of a great many social or geographical studies.During the project, the background literature on Glenrothes was found to be very limited.Nevertheless, the information sourced was sufficient enough to suggest that Glenrothes50 years on turned out to be very different from what was envisioned back in 1948. Theinformation gathered from local residents, shoppers and businesses and local newspapersindicated that the town had not lived up entirely to people’s expectations either.

This report – revised 14 years after the completion of the project – provides an intriguingsnapshot of one of Scotland’s five ‘New Towns’ 50 years after its foundation. Today thisreport is a window into what could be regarded as the tail-end of a previous age: just afterthe fall of the Tory government and shortly before Holyrood; when heavy and lightmanufacturing were still predominant; and, when the Ethernet, digital TV and mobilephone technology were still in their infancy.

This project and its strategies could not possibly be repeated. Today (in 2012), thegeneral public fear and loathe anyone carrying a clipboard, and often resort to whippingout their mobile phones in defence. Company directors and managers of the survivingindustrial units are probably inundated with more red tape and paperwork than everbefore, what with Twitter, Facebook, text messaging, email, faxes (they still exist), andthe increasing proportions of junk mail in the post. Indeed, for many people in Scotland,1998 was probably the last year without the internet, email or the now-indispensablemobile phone. Much correspondence was performed using good old paper and pen or atypewriter, and recipients probably had much more thinking space back then. Maybeworking life back in 1998 wasn’t so different compared with 1948 after all.

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SITE AND LAYOUT OF GLENROTHES

Reasons why the site was chosen

The town of Glenrothes – one of Scotland’s five “New Towns” – is located centrally inthe Fife region, directly 10 km north of Kirkcaldy and directly 10 km west of Leven –once major heavy industrial towns with railways, ports and access to coalfields.

Figure 1: designated location of Glenrothes from a contemporary map (Muirhead, 1947). Note theabundance of railways - including links to Kinross, Kincardine (linking with Stirling and Glasgow) Leven

(and to the East Fife coast), and the railway to Leslie – all of which were dismantled by the 1970s.

In 1946, the Health Board - under the radical Attlee Labour party government –pronounced the formula for designating and building several “New Towns’ throughoutGreat Britain. This was a vision born not so much from the rubble of the bombings, butalso from the damp, polluted and infested squalor of many inner city districts, namely theslums in Glasgow, in the case with Scotland. In 1948, Glenrothes was designated as oneof the sites for this grand social experiment to create decent, habitable housing andnurture new communities and industrial centres. A third reason for establishingGlenrothes was to provide a repository for re-housing a portion of Glasgow’s over-spillpopulation.

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Scotland in the mid-1940s was an economy of coal, steel and both heavy and lightmanufacturing, all of which depended strongly on rail and sea transport. The ruraldistricts around the Glenrothes site were sparsely populated; adequately served by railtransport; and seated on top of some of the most bountiful coal reserves in the country.Leslie and Markinch (two small towns which are nested on either side of Glenrothes)were paper mill towns, and there were plans to expand the coal mining in the local area.To the south, a small village – Thornton – served as a vital railway junction (and stilldoes today) – leading to the once significant port town of Leven, and the (now former)coal mining towns of Cowdenbeath and Lochgelly. The location for Glenrothes posedexcellent road and rail communications, with short and easy access to major citiesincluding Dundee, Dunfermline and Edinburgh.

In accordance with the News Towns Act, a balance of mining and other industrial tradeswere proposed for the Glenrothes site, along with the paper mill industry along the RiverLeven. Fife’s coalfields were registered for a major coal mining project (as part of anational drive to increase production following the war). The aim was to house over30,000 miners and their families. Not surprisingly, there was no accommodationavailable in the existing towns and villages to meet such a demand, with the result that amassive new-build project was mandatory.

How did the layout (in 1998) reflect the principles of a “New Town”?

The concept of the “New Town” stemmed back to the late Victorian era, when manyBritish businessmen, philanthropists and civil servants became sickened with the squalor,depravation, social delinquency, lack of planning and poor transport infrastructureendemic in many of Britain’s rapidly growing industrial towns and cities. EbenezerHoward was the first to coin the phrase in his book, Garden Cities of Tomorrow,published in 1891:

“They must stop the migration of people into the towns…”

A quotation from Sir John Gorst

“If it be true that great cities tend more and more to become the graves of thephysique of our race, can be wonder at it when we see the houses so foul, sosqualid, so ill-drained and so vitiated by neglect and dirt?”

A quotation from Dean Farrer

What, some may be disposed to ask, can possibly be done to make thecountryside more attractive to workday people than the town – to makewages, or at least the standard oh physical comfort, higher in the countrythan in the town; to secure in the country equal possibilities of socialintercourse, and to make the prospects of advancement for the average manor woman equal, not to say superior, to those enjoyed in our large cities?”

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As early as the 1890s, the government was beginning to visualise the possibility ofpeople living in respectable towns, away from the dingy inner cities. Indeed, such anexperiment already existed before the 20th century: Washington – a town near Lincoln inEngland – was a Victorian ‘new town’ with ‘garden’ spaces and open woodland areasprovided for the benefit of local residents.

By the 1930s, the need for New Towns in Scotland was being fortified with economicand logistical issues. Until then, Lanarkshire was the prime coal-producing region inScotland. During the 1920s, the Lanarkshire coal seams were becoming exhausted, andalterative seams (namely in Fife) were being prospected. In the lates 1940s, the NationalCoal Board noted that coal production in Fife was around 2 million tonnes per annum,and decided this needed to be raised to over 6.6 million tonnes per annum – hence theneed for an overspill population of miners and their families from the Greater Glasgowregion.

Under the drive of an almost socialist Labour government, the principle of the NewTowns was designed as an abrupt break with major city planning at the time:

Absence of cramped slum conditions No traffic congestion and reduced air pollution Healthy provision of public services and employment Attraction of businesses and people to a scenic rural setting

The development and expansion of Glenrothes was gradual, with only a few thousandhouses by the end of the 1950s. More prolific expansion occurred during the 1960s and1970s, with more northerly expansion during the 1980s and 1990s. The age of thedistricts of Glenrothes is illustrated in Figure 2 over-page:

(dark brown) the oldest districts include Woodside and part of Auchmuty, whichwere built by 1955;

(red) west Auchmuty, east Rimbleton and South Parks (up to 1965); (pink) Tanshall, Caskieberran, Macedonia, Pitteuchar and west Rimbleton (up to

1975); (orange) Stenton (south); Cadham, Pitcoudie, and west/central Balgeddie (up to

1985); (yellow) the rest of Balgeddie; Collydean and Balfarg up to the mid-1990s.

The style of the housing and street layout changed subtly over time. Nevertheless, thegeneral principles of habitable housing with garden space, wide roads, pedestrian access,local facilities and nearby business spaces were retained throughout the first fifty years ofthe town.

1950s housing: the earliest Glenrothes district, Woodside, is characterised by shortterraced housing separated by trees, paths and wide open roads, each house with a sizablegarden, and each street bound with grass belts (Figure 3).

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Figure 2: the growth of Glenrothes. Grey areas indicate industrial units. The dark blue line is thedesignated Glenrothes boundary.

Figure 3: housing in Woodside, Glenrothes

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1960s housing: Glenrothes was almost completely spared the onslaught of the towerblock. Only one tower block was constructed: this reasonably respectable tower stillstands across the main road from the designated Glenrothes town centre. However, someof the 1960s housing might still be considered ‘grim’ by today’s standards. The housingin Tanshall and west Auchmuty includes low multi-storey concrete tenement housing(Figures 4 and 5, respectively):

Figure 4: multi-storey housing in Tanshall, Glenrothes

Figure 5: multi-storey housing in west Auchmuty near the town centre

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Housing in the 1970s: the developers turned away from building high and wide, andfocussed increasingly on double-floor and single-floor housing, although tenements werestill a popular choice of design. Examples include the housing in the Pitteuchar (early1970s) and Newcastle districts (late 1970s, far west end of Glenrothes) (Figures 6, 7):

Figure 6: bungalow and 2-storey housing in Pitteuchar

Figure 7: housing in Newcastle

1980s housing: Glenrothes witnessed a major northward expansion, as well as thegrowth of a housing estate in Stenton, south of the dual carriageway passing through theindustrial estates on the south side of Glenrothes. Housing was more detached, withsemi-detached and single houses replacing tenement structures. In Leslie Parks (south

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end of Pitcoudie), the houses are separate and surrounded by their own gardens with treeand bush barriers (Figure 8).

Figure 8: detached housing at Leslie Parks, Glenrothes

Late 1980s/early 1990s housing: the most recent housing observed during this projectwas located at least a mile outside the centre of Glenrothes, and had a more distinctlyremote setting, with small detached houses surrounded by wild grass, forestry and unusedland. The houses in Balfarg (Figure 9) tended to be closer together than those in LeslieParks, probably because by the 1990s, most of the designated Glenrothes site had beendeveloped.

Figure 9: Balfarg housing (poor weather conditions affected the photo quality)

The Glenrothes Greenbelt: the Glenrothes Development Corporation, which wasresponsible for the development and regulation of Glenrothes during the 1950s throughthe 1970s, established a boundary for the designated area (refer back to Figure 2).

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The purpose of the green belt was to effect a buffer, in order to tame the rate of townexpansion, and avoid the worst elements of urban sprawl. Buffers were also createdinterally, with green barriers alongside major roads and surrounding industrial parks:these comprise high fences, wild grass, trees, bushes and even ponds (Figure 10).

Road network: as shown in Figure 2, Glenrothes is a distinct tapestry of housing andindustrial estates, effectively woven together by a network of principal (A and B) roads.The main industrial estates south of the town are served by a ‘B road’ dual carriageway.

Shopping precincts: these were provided for every two or three housing estates. Inaddition, Glenrothes has a designated town ‘centre’, which includes the Kingdom Centreshopping precinct and bus station, which both dominate the town centre district. Thereare five designated local shopping precincts in districts including Woodside, Pitteuchar,Cadham, Glenwood and Stenton:

Figure 9: shopping precincts in Glenrothes

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Parkland: in addition, Glenrothes has some designated parkland spaces, including theexpansive Riverside Park (Figure 11) along the River Leven around the mid-north area ofthe town. The Riverside park extends from the picturesque Leslie down to the TullisPaper Mill site, which in turn is obscured by forestry. There is parkland betweenAuchmuty and Pitteuchar; along the east side of Woodside; and between Pitcoudie andBalfarg in the north (refer back to Figure 9). Two golf courses occupy the northeast andsouthwest corners of Glenrothes.

Figure 10: the B921 dual carriageway connecting the industrial estates, south Glenrothes

Figure 11: Riverside Park, looking south

How successfully have the New Town standards been achieved inGlenrothes?

Despite these successes in creating employment, decent housing and services in a cleanenvironment, it was discovered that some local residents and shoppers expressed somedissatisfaction of Glenrothes. Interviews were conducted at the five local shoppingcentres (Woodside, Pitteuchar, Cadham, Glenwood and Stenton), whereby ten people ineach precinct were surveyed.

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Interviewees were asked two questions:

1 “Are you satisfied with this residential area, and what improvements doyou think are needed around here?”

The results are provided in Figure 12 and Table 1. The majority of responses werenegative at three of the five shopping precincts; most responses were positive at theWoodside and Stenton shopping precincts. Several respondents wanted more parks,shops and/or youth clubs, and expressed concern about crime, litter and poor streetlighting.

2 “Are you satisfied with Glenrothes itself, and what improvements do youthink are needed?”

The results are provided in Figure 13 and Table 1. Respondents in Cadham and Stentonexpressed mixed negative and positive views. Respondents in Woodside were mostlysatisfied with Glenrothes; the opposite reaction was observed in Pitteuchar andGlenwood. Those in Pitteuchar and Glenwood complained about the lack of shops andclubs; developers building on green areas; and the need to reduce crime. The respondentsin Woodside wanted a wider variety of shops and more shopping precincts aroundGlenrothes. Respondents in Stenton and Cadham wanted to see more playgrounds andmore nightlife in the town.

0

1

2

3

45

6

7

8

9

Woodside Pitteuchar Cadham Glenwood Stenton

YesNo

Figure 12: “Are you satisfied with this residential area?” Responses from shoppers (N = 50; n = 10)

0123456789

Woodside Pitteuchar Cadham Glenwood Stenton

YesNo

Figure 13: “Are you satisfied with Glenrothes?” Responses from shoppers (N = 50; n = 10)

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Table 1: recommendations from shoppers

Shoppingprecinct

Improvements needed in local area Improvements needed forGlenrothes

Woodside More shopsYouth clubsSports facilities

More shopping precinctsMore shop variety

Pitteuchar Brighten up shopping centre andplaygroundsMore clubsCombat crime

Stop building on green areasMore clubs and nightlifeCombat crime

Cadham More shopsMore garden space

Cut down bushesMore playgrounds

Glenwood Clear up litterRepair housing

Prioritise spendingMore clubsMore shops

Stenton More parksBetter street lighting

Combat crimeMore clubsMore nightlife

Further information including survey results are contained in Appendices 3 and 5.

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CHANGES IN EMPLOYMENT OVER THE YEARS

Changes in population and industry

The original designation of Glenrothes as a coal-mining settlement back in 1948 wasforgotten almost as soon as the first houses were constructed. The railway to Leslie wasclosed to passengers shortly after the war, and plans to sink a coalmine within the vicinityof the town did not come to fruition. (Incidentally, open-cast coal mining has witnessed aresurgence in the years after 1998, with a large open-cast coal mine just shy of Thornton.)

By the 1960s, coal production and dependency quickly became replaced by electricalpower and gas supply, especially when gas was discovered in the North Sea. Mininggradually disappeared from Fife, and the railway line to Leslie was torn up by the end ofthe 1960s. Glenrothes had to accommodate modern industry, or face an early decline.Towards the 1970s, new industries (including electronics and manufacturing) wereestablishing themselves, and contributing to the earlier fast population growth in the town(Figure 14):

0

6704

12499

18579

2806732978

40250

0

500010000

15000

2000025000

30000

3500040000

45000

1948 1953 1958 1963 1968 1973 1978 1983 1988 1993 1998

Figure 14: population of Glenrothes between 1948 and 1995

In terms of employment, Glenrothes specialised in light industry twixt the 1950s and1970s, with a rise in engineering and logistics companies. More recently, the retail sectorbecame the dominant source of employment in the town, particularly following thedifficult economic transitions of the 1980s (Figure 15). While retail stores havemultiplied rapidly in and around Glenrothes town centre, heavy manufacturing andintensive engineering declined during the 1980s and 1990s. Service materials areincreasingly dependent on retail businesses. Nevertheless, the rate of job creationplunged from positive values in the 1960s to negative figures in the 1980s. Figure 16shows the rate of job creation from 1952 to 1976, which was often in the lower-midhundreds per year, and which exceeded 1000 jobs a year in the mid-1960s.

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By contrast, around 1650 jobs were lost in Glenrothes during the 1980s, and between1990 and 1997 another 350 jobs were lost. Figure 17 details the jobs, which were lostbetween 1990 and 1997: nearly all these jobs were industrially based, includingglassworks, paper manufacturing, ceramics and automotive engineering.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

1975 1998

Other

Building

Retail

Engineering

Electrical/computing

Transport

Health

Figure 15: changes in occupancy of industrial units in Glenrothes (no. of units)

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

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12000

yr 195

2

yr 195

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yr 195

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yr 195

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9

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8

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yr 197

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yr 197

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Figure 16: job growth in Glenrothes between 1952 and 1976 (annual rate and cumulative rate)

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100

7065

45

40

18 12(Glasspress)

(Actuator)

Paper mills

Engineering

Automobile

Ceramics

Windows

Figure 17: job losses in Glenrothes between 1990 and 1997: sectors affected

The Conservative government abolished the Glenrothes Development Corporation duringthe 1980s. The double-recession of the 1980s and the economic winds of change did notbode well for manufacturing or engineering. Opportunities dwindled, and by 1998 youthunemployment had become an endemic problem in Glenrothes:

Glenrothes is part of the ten-worst affected area of youth unemployment inScotland, according to new figures released by local MP Henry McLeish.Thirty and a half percent of all benefit claimants in the Central Fifeconstituency covering the town are young people – just 2.2 percent behind thecountry’s top blackspot in Cumbernauld and Kilsyth…

…it was also claimed that 4,700 households in the constituency – 19 per centof all non-pensioner homes – had no–one in work.

The Glenrothes Gazette, 2nd January 1981

By then the newly-elected New Labour government had ear-marked some developmentfunding for the town, although one councillor (Christine May) from Fife Councilbelieved it insufficient

Fife is to get £1 million over three years to help deprived areas. The fundingis on top of the £4.8 million of Urban Programme resources.

Glenrothes will not benefit directly…as it [the money] is ear-marked forDunfermline, Kirkcaldy, Benarty, Buckhaven, Methil and Methilhill.

…Christine May…said: “While £1 million seems like a substantial amount, itsimply isn’t sufficient…around 50 per cent of our project shall suffer andthere will be little scope for new ones”.

The Glenrothes Gazette, 20th March 1998

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The strength of the pound (£ sterling) during the early to mid-1990s was also detrimentalto larger industries, which relied heavily on profits through exports abroad. Appendix 4contains the responses from 28 companies, many of which exported products abroad.Between 1995 and 1998, the £ / Deutschmark exchange rate increased from 2.25DM/£ to2.95DM/£.

The tertiary sector in Glenrothes

Before the 1980s, very few shops existed outside the five local shopping precincts aroundGlenrothes (refer back to pages 10 through 13). The retail sector and consumer spendingincreased substantially from the mid-1980s onward, and encouraged a new-found focuson generating retail and service industry-based employment in the town. The hithertounder-developed town centre was transformed radically with the construction of theexpansive Kingdom Centre shopping precinct (see Figure 18).

In early 1998, this shopping centre contained over 90 retail units, with at least 10 clothesshops, 13 newsagents and supermarkets, 9 banks, 9 entertainment/appliance stores; 8cafes and bakeries; and also a library (the Rothes Library).

Figure 18: the Kingdom Centre looking to the west entrance (names of companies are confidential)

One worrying observation was the 9 unoccupied fronts with To Let signs on thewindows, around 10% of all available fronts. Nevertheless, during several visits toGlenrothes in early 1998, it was observed that the shopping centre was always busyduring the day, and it may be suggested that the Kingdom Centre does have a goodsphere of influence, drawing in people from outside the town. Of 50 shoppers

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interviewed for this project, 32 were resident in Glenrothes; 5 lived around Glenrothes(Leslie, Markinch, Thornton, Coaltown of Balgonie; and the other 12 lived further away.

It may be considered that the Kingdom Centre drew attention away from the localshopping precincts around Glenrothes. Local shopping precincts are accessible, but onlyprovide a limited range of services and little entertainment, as mentioned above. Theshopping centre is surrounded by nine car parks, most of which were mostly or even fullyoccupied during one day visit to the town: 1250 spaces were taken; 328 were available.(It should be noted that the Fife Council central offices are located beside the KingdomCentre, and this will have affected the car parking data collected.)

Southfield Industrial Estate

The Southfield industrial estate is the largest in Glenrothes, and in 1998 it included someof the largest firms in the town, including Canon and Apricot, and where engineeringfirms still existed, although computographics and servicing materials were of increasingimportance. Of the 50 units surveyed, there were 17 engineering firms, 13 electricalfirms, 12 retail-based firms, 2 domestic services firms, 1 health products firm and 5 othercompanies.

Eight of the fifty Southfield industrial estate companies responded to the questionnaire(details in Appendix 4). The results showed that the proportion of workers living outsideGlenrothes varied widely: proportions were typically between a quarter and a half,although over 80% of workers in one company lived outside the town (refer also toAppendix 6). This reflects a similar pattern seen in the responses from all 28 companiesthroughout Glenrothes, which responded to the questionnaire (Figure 19).

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

<1%

1 to 10%

11 - 20%

21 - 30%

31 - 40%

41 - 50%

51 - 60%

61 - 70%

71 - 80%

81 - 90%

91 - 100%

Figure 19: proportion of workers in Glenrothes industrial estate companies resident outside the town(n = 25; 3 companies did not provide a figure)

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The above figure was an indication that, as a job market, the Southfield estate not onlycatered for local residents, but also served on an inter-regional basis. Some companies(which responded to the questionnaire) even employed foreigners.

Of the eight Southfield industrial estate companies, the majority of them choseGlenrothes for easy access to their markets, and easy availability of premises. Half ofthem mentioned that low rent and rates and grants were incentives. The issue ofGlenrothes being a New Town and having an abundance of open space were lesscommon reasons (Table 2).

Table 2: reasons why companies chose Southfield industrial estate (details of companies are confidential)

Incentive for locating inGlenrothes

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Easy access to market

Open space

Grants

Located in New Town

Available/good premises

Low rent/rates

Movement of workers during rush hour: traffic surveys were conducted at theroundabouts and junctions surrounding Southfield industrial estate between February andApril 1998. Each survey was junction-specific: only one junction could be surveyed at atime, although the surveying time was fixed (5pm to 5.30pm). Few conclusions may bedrawn from such a dispersed set of results (refer to Appendix 6). One observation ofsome validity was the significant increase in parking outside the Safeways* supermarketnearby the estate, from 126 vehicles at 1pm to over 210 vehicles at 6pm (Figure 20).This may have been an indication that some of the Southfield workers chose to goshopping shortly after completing their shifts.

126

163

211

0

50

100

150

200

250

1pm 3pm 6pm

Figure 20: number of vehicles outside the Safeway supermarket* Safeway is no longer a trading retail company

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Despite all the major changes in industry in Glenrothes, the geography of the Southfieldindustrial estate in 1998 was an indication that not all the changes made a negativeimpact. There were traits of industrial stagnation and departure, including some emptypremises. However, Southfield industrial estate was still a thriving hub for engineeringand electrical companies, most of which had been operating there for over 20 years.

References and other sources of information

Aldridge. The British New Towns – a programme without a policy. Chapter 1. Copyright ©1980

Champion, Clegg and Davies. Facts about the New Towns. Copyright ©1977

Dept of Health for Scotland. New Towns Act 1946: Draft New Town (Glenrothes) DesignationOrder 1948. Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Scotland. Pages 3, 4.

Glenrothes Development Corporation. Glenrothes. Copyright ©1973

Glenrothes Development Corporation: firms, their directors/managers and telephone numbers(sourced from the Rothes Library, Glenrothes, 1998)

Howard, Ebeneezer. Garden Cities of tomorrow. Chapter 1: page 45. Published 1891

Osborne, F J; Whittick, A. New Towns. Pages 363 – 415. Copyright ©1963 McGraw-Hill

Scottish Geographical Magazine. Glenrothes: some geographical aspects of New Towndevelopment. Copyright ©1966 PJ Smith

Wirz, H M. Social aspects of planning in New Towns. Page 24. Copyright ©1975