Chipping away at North Ayrshire’s damning deprivation numbers is the top priority for the council’s new boss.
The most recent statistics show a third of kids are living in poverty along with huge pockets of deprivation dotted throughout the area’s towns and villages.
In his first interview with the Herald since formally taking the reins on November 1, Craig Hatton insisted that he wants his legacy to be based around shifting the area’s “unacceptable” score on The Scottish Index of Multiple of Deprivation (SIMD) – the Scottish Government’s indicator for measuring deprivation.
The 49-year-old said he was confident that the local authority would be able to see a change in the matter in around five years’ time.
Mr Hatton said: “I think it’s completely unacceptable to have any children living in poverty, never mind 30 per cent of children within the area.
“We’re doing lots of good work around housing, making sure that people have good quality housing.
“But where we can make a difference is getting people into work – we need to create the jobs to enable people to get into work.
“Clearly the Ayrshire Growth Deal is a major strand of that, that we’re developing at the moment.
“Not only is that about attracting investment and employers to the area, but also ensuring that people in North Ayrshire have the skills to do the jobs that we want to bring.
“So if you’re getting more money into families, that naturally filters down into bringing children out of poverty.
“We need to shift the SIMD. That is a big, big focus for me we need to remove the number of areas in multiple deprivation within North Ayrshire.
“That is my clear aim to shift that. In five years’ time, I’m hopeful and confident that we will start to shift that position.”
One way in which Mr Hatton aims to address poverty is by attempting to increase the amount the council spends with businesses in the area.
He said: “One of the big things is around community wealth and the council annually spends just shy of £200million with suppliers.
“So how can we spend more of that with businesses in North Ayrshire?
“Last year we spent just under 20 per cent.
“So every time you increase that by a few per cent within North Ayrshire, spending more money in North Ayrshire, employing more people in North Ayrshire and that starts changing lives in North Ayrshire.
“It’s following the North Ayrshire pound, so what we want to do is spend more of that locally but there are a number of things to that.
“First of all, we need to work with businesses to make sure they’re able to deliver the things we’re contracting at the moment.
“We need to look at how we contract and make it easy for local businesses to bring that together, and also around the skills.
“So if we start making a shift around that, it’ll make a hell of a difference to North Ayrshire.”
