News Story

Glasgow will flourish again, John Swinney has said, as he pledged his Government’s support to rebuild part of the city centre hit by a major blaze on Sunday.

Flames ripped through Forsyth House on the city’s Union Street on Sunday, resulting in the building collapsing.

As a result, the adjoining Glasgow Central was closed, with services not calling at the station’s high level platforms and missing out the lower level platforms.

John Swinney paid tribute to firefighters and emergency services saying at the height of the blaze, 250 fire service personnel had been at the scene.

He added that Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) had “scaled back” its response this morning to four appliances and two high reach vehicles, but stressed it “remains a live incident”.

The First Minister committed to support the re-build of the area, telling MSPs in Holyrood: “Above all else, let me be clear today: the Scottish Government will stand with the city of Glasgow as it recovers from the fire.

“Given the significant cost the city faces, we will back those costs with cash.

“To get that work started, a ministerial oversight board has been established, chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice.

“We will rebuild, we will restore, and Glasgow will flourish again.”

The station remained closed on Monday and Tuesday, with no timeline for its reopening.

Speaking to the Press Association on Tuesday, Mr Swinney said: “It’s still a very live site, that is still under not just investigation, but under stabilisation adjacent to Glasgow Central.”

He added: “There’s a building adjacent to the Gordon Street entrance which is extremely vulnerable, so the reassurance I would give is that will be undertaken as quickly as we possibly can do, but I can’t give a definitive timescale on that.

“It would be the wrong thing to do to open the station prematurely without all the safety issues being guaranteed.”

Just a few hundred yards from the site of Sunday’s fire sits the Mackintosh building on Sauchiehall Street, which has been hit by two major fires in just over a decade, the latter ripping through the nearby O2 ABC.

Asked if it will take as long on Union Street as it has for Sauchiehall Street to redevelop the site, the First Minister said it was “not all within my gift”, adding that his ministers would “work constructively” with the council.

“It will be in everyone’s interest to move as quickly as possible to do so,” he said.

On Tuesday, firefighters continued to pour water onto the shell of the building, from which occasional billows of smoke still rose.

Streets in the area remain cordoned off as emergency services continue to deal with the incident.