Glasgow's 'food desert' - where all people want is a supermarket

It's the first day of spring and The Braes Shopping Centre in Castlemilk is busy with shoppers and hungry teenagers on their school lunch break.

Lorraine Monaghan emerges from Iceland with a trolley full of bags.

I begin to ask her what she thinks of the local shops, but I don't even need to finish the question.

"Very limited," she says.

Lorraine says she goes from shop to shop looking for fruit, vegetables and other groceries at prices she can afford.

But that often means going to bigger shops outside the area.

She says: "Sometimes I'll go to Asda when I'm feeling flush, and I get everything in there. But that means getting the bus, and it's half an hour away."

The journey is meant to save money, but it also costs money – more than £6 on a fare for her granddaughter, who she needs to help her.

A big local supermarket would make a big difference.

Residents have been campaigning since 2016 to attract a major supermarket to Castlemilk - an area in the south of Glasgow developed after World War Two to rehouse people when run-down tenement buildings were cleared. It was one of the big four housing schemes built on the outskirts of the city.

Four years ago, they were told it was about to happen. But it didn't.

"There were promises, all these promises, but they've done very little," says Lorraine.

"Tidied up the pub round the corner and gave it a new name. That was about it. A café opened up, wasn't long there, and shut back down again."

Lorraine says parts of the shopping centre are "like a ghost town".

It's easy to see what she means.

Inside The Braes, there is a branch of One-O-One, a licensed convenience store belonging to the Scotsman Group, the company that owns The Braes.

A community hub operates from here too, but more than half of the units appear to be empty.

Round the back there's a pub, a butcher, the Citizens Advice Bureau and Post Office, and two betting shops.

If you want to eat, the busiest part of the centre offers Gregg's, Subway, McDonald's and a Chinese takeaway.

Some groceries are available from B&M and a small independent greengrocer, as well as Iceland – but none of these is a one stop shop most areas take for granted.

Anne Mills is showing her sister Pat, who moved away years ago, how the shopping centre has changed since their childhood.

"It's a mess. An absolute mess. The size of Castlemilk, it's hopeless, isn't it? Hardly any shops."

When the sisters moved to Castlemilk in the 1950s, it was brand new.

But the lack of sufficient amenities, public services and opportunities for the large population that moved out there from the city has made life hard down the decades.

Nonetheless, Anne tells me some things were better back then than they are now.

"Castlemilk got bigger, and then we had our shopping centre which was really, really good at the time," she says.

"We had everything you could want. And then, all of a sudden, we've just got nothing really."

Anne says she wants to see a big supermarket and that she thinks the rest of the community agrees.

For years The Braes has been discussed as the logical location to build one.

In 2020 it was bought by the Scotsman Group, which said at the time that the centre needed significant investment but that it aspired to "fully address the various retail requirements for the residents of Castlemilk".

In 2022, a flurry of activity created hope and expectation. The new owner was allocated £3.35m of public money from Glasgow City Council's share of a Scottish government fund designated to regenerate communities.

The council said the money was for "environmental improvements" to encourage businesses to come there.

At the time, the council leader, Susan Aitken, said the money for The Braes was "a game-changer, a final piece of the investment jigsaw that will allow for the development of a household name supermarket" in Castlemilk.

The community was primed for an announcement of a deal with a major supermarket chain, but it never came to pass.

Four years on there is frustration.

The mood is clear at a public meeting organised by the local MP, Labour's Gordon McKee.

More than 50 locals have turned out to talk about community concerns.

They're here because the UK government has awarded Castlemilk £20m from its Pride In Place fund to regenerate "disadvantaged neighbourhoods" - and their MP wants to talk about how they might spend it.

He has tried talking to supermarkets about coming to Castlemilk.

"I've been amazed at how hard it is," he says.

Big retailers want car parking spaces, passing traffic and potential customers – and they have told him nowhere in Castlemilk meets the bar.

Gordon confirms "pretty advanced talks" to open a supermarket at The Braes at one point, but the site "would need reconfiguration as it stands" to make it viable.

"We're keeping that door open," he says – but his focus is shifting to the new funding and whether it can be used to remove the obstacles that could be putting companies off - or to develop an alternative site that could work.

A neighbourhood board that will also include Castlemilk's elected representatives is being assembled over the coming months to decide what to do.

Also here is Anna Stuart, chair of Castlemilk Housing Association and an organiser in the community for more than 40 years.

She saw Castlemilk being built as a child and brought up her six children in the area.

She is also chair of the Housing and Human Rights Lived Experience board.

Its campaign for the supermarket emphasises human rights - specifically the right to affordable, nourishing, fresh food championed by the United Nations.

Her board has questions about the public money allocated to The Braes and what it has meaningfully achieved.

BBC Scotland News asked the Scotsman Group for an update on its plans for The Braes, how it has used the funding, and what progress had been made towards attracting a supermarket to the site. It did not respond.

Glasgow City Council said that to date £776,000 of the £3.35m allocation has been transferred to the Scotsman Group and that had been used "mainly for site clearance works, site infrastructure, surveys and relevant professional fees."

A recent council document said the project was "ongoing".

Asked about her statement in 2022 that the funding was "a final piece" of investment that would bring a supermarket to the area, Council Leader Susan Aitken told BBC News: "At the time those comments were made, a leading supermarket chain had committed to establishing themselves in the new asset that was being created."

She added that Glasgow City Council was still working with the Scotsman Group to find a supermarket operator - and that while the redevelopment of The Braes was "complex...everyone involved continues to be positive that the shopping centre will be improved and that a supermarket operator can be identified."

Anna and colleagues would like to take matters into their own hands.

"We can run things better in Castlemilk than anybody else can, I can assure you," Anna says.

"If you give us the money, the land, we'll build a supermarket ourselves and we'll run it ourselves.

"We would do it properly. And it'd be for the people of Castlemilk, rather than just for money."

Liz McKenzie, chair of Ardenglen Housing Association, has been scouting out empty land that could be a potential site.

She believes a supermarket is even more essential because Castlemilk is one of the most deprived areas in Scotland.

Obesity, poor mental health and drug and alcohol addiction are all problems in the area, she says, and it's much easier to access unhealthy food and alcohol than more nutritious options.

Add to that the increasing cost of living – everything from fuel prices and bus fares to energy bills and rent – and Liz says people "are struggling really badly just now."

"We are very isolated up here. We're a food desert, basically."

MP Gordon McKee, says the lack of a supermarket illustrates a bigger problem:

"You don't have this problem in the West End of Glasgow, but you do have it in Castlemilk and that is not a coincidence. It's because the people here have been given less opportunity and have been overlooked for decades and decades."

Castlemilk's campaigners are trying to solve a complex problem involving private business interests, public need, bureaucracy and long-standing inequalities.

But Liz is clear they won't give up:

"We're entitled to the same things as everybody else. We need to make sure our needs are being met.

"It's not just something we want. It's our right."