Librarians set to be removed from every Glasgow secondary school
Librarians will be removed from all of Glasgow's 30 secondary schools next year if council budget cuts are approved.The plans would see the school service headed up by a principal librarian along with three area-based librarians.An assistant would then be placed in each of the city's high schools.Glasgow Life, which manages the service on behalf of Glasgow City Council, says it would take 16 librarians out of the school system.
In February 2024, the council approved a review of the school library service, with a target saving of £100,000.Glasgow Life and the council's education department concluded the greatest savings could be made through changes to staffing services.However, they insist their plans would increase access to school libraries citywide by 27% by raising the number of hours when facilities have some form of staffing.A Glasgow Life spokesperson said: "Additionally, the funding available to provide school library books and other resources going forward will remain above the Scottish average."The plans have now been communicated to staff and trade unions, with consultations expected to begin.The spokesperson added: "Glasgow Life is bound by Glasgow City Council's commitment to no compulsory redundancies."Should the proposal be approved, affected staff will have the opportunity to apply for promoted positions or be redeployed into available vacant roles commensurate with their existing pay and grade."
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BBC News
31 minutes ago
- BBC News
Could Glasgow's skyline be set to change with skyscrapers?
Think of skyscrapers and images come to mind of New York City's skyline, or hundreds of buildings soaring above the streets of Hong could Glasgow be poised for a similar boom in tall buildings?The city council formally approved its new tall buildings policy on Thursday, with a design guide establishing what areas could benefit from construction, such as Charing Cross and local authority hope the plans would lure more developers to the city, building upwards and therefore creating more accommodation and also space for businesses - at a time when land for development is becoming limited. It's a strategy other cities in the UK have pursued in recent years, with London and Manchester building clusters of skyscrapers at Scotland News understands the hope from some in the city council is that the new policy would shatter misconceptions regarding Glasgow having limits on building heights, and therefore encourage more interest from the moment the city's tallest building - the tower at the Science Centre by the River Clyde - is under the minimum height for a skyscraper, which is taller than 150m. It sits at began last year on the Ard development in Blythswood Hill, a 36-storey tower of student accommodation. But some of the city's tall buildings already lie vacant, while large blocks of flats - like on Wyndford Road - have been demolished in recent to redevelop the 14-storey Met Tower as a digital tech hub were cancelled last year. The new design guide doesn't set sights quite so high, defining tall buildings via various factors - including how it's perceived on street level and how it affects the skyline around highest category - metropolitan - is classed as a building three and a half times above the height of "the broader context" surrounding it, meaning somewhere like the Met Gerry Hogan, who works with the firm Collective Architecture, believes the policy is quite conservative, but welcome nonetheless."We've been a little reticent to be bold with in our approach to tall buildings, and arguably with architecture in Glasgow generally," he says. "If anything, the guide doesn't go far enough – they go through a very careful analysis of where tall buildings should be located and it doesn't give much encouragement for parts of the city." That belief is centred on the guide's suggestion on placing larger spaces - ideally mixed-use developments with shops or leisure facilities below housing - in certain parts of the city, therefore avoiding clashes with conservation areas like Pollok Park. Russell Baxter, a director with architecture and engineering firm NORR, believes the guide encourages clusters of buildings together."If you look at London, there's a lot of clusters there," he says. "It has a very protected skyline, so things like cathedrals and churches are retained, and key views are retained – that's everything in these cities. "So in Glasgow something like Trinity Tower at Park Circus is a key view – you can't obliterate that view for people. The idea is to cluster them together so you get a number of them in one area - the edge of the motorway is always seen as a place where that can happen." Mr Hogan believes that the quality of the new builds themselves will be key to making them a success, wherever they are situated in the city."A tall building is the same as any building, it comes down to how good it is," he explains. "Sure, height is a factor but if it's well designed and how it sits in the skyline has been considered then there's no reason it couldn't be put in more sensitive areas if they were well enough designed."What this seeks to promote, and what I agree with, is having multi-use buildings that bring in people throughout the day and engage people in using both the building and the wider area around it. "You don't want it putting a nearby park in the shade for example." 'You have to justify these buildings' Cllr Ruairi Kelly, the convener for development and land use at Glasgow city council, said the proposals will play a "significant role in our ambition to grow the city centre population" through providing a housing Manchester's recent boom in tall buildings was driven by public money, in particular the £300m Greater Manchester Housing Investment Glasgow will have to box clever, including with locations."You've not got the ability to do what you could do in Victorian times where you could just place a church or town hall at the end of a street, like a church being right on Ingram Street," says Mr Baxter. "If you go down Buchanan Street and the way the station entrance is sitting there – those were classic Victorian moves for how you masterplan cities and those buildings were key public buildings. "Now what you get are all buildings that are full of students and you have to justify them taking up these key positions."The guidance itself was drawn up through a public consultation and feedback from designers, developers and amenity Baxter believes the guidance will be helpful, even if the city having its own version of the Burj Khalifa remains a pie in the sky thought for now. "At the end of the day, you're not going to stop developers building tall. So what you need to do is control it, and that's what the policy is there to do – control where they are and control the quality of them."
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Are interest-only mortgages too risky for first-time buyers?
Interest-only mortgages are to become an option for most first-time buyers for the first time since the financial crisis. From Monday Gen H, which specialises in loans for first-time buyers, is offering interest-only deals for those with at least a 20 per cent deposit and a minimum income of £50,000. Buyers will need to demonstrate how they will repay the loan, for example by showing that they can save the difference between the monthly costs of a repayment mortgage and their interest-only payments. Gen H will also lend to first-time buyers with as little as 5 per cent deposit on a part interest-only, part repayment basis. Many lenders have started making it easier for first-time buyers to borrow, with some lending up to seven times salary, instead of the standard limit of 4.5 times. But, in an uncertain market, with house prices stagnant in many areas, could this all be too risky? A shove up the ladder Research by the Building Societies Association (BSA), a trade body, suggests that there are 2.2 million 'missing' first-time buyers who should have bought since the financial crisis but have been unable to, either because they have struggled to save a deposit or can't borrow enough. To fill this gap, the government, as part of its drive for economic growth and increased homeownership, has prompted the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the City regulator, to lean on banks and relax the lending rules. In the past three months, almost all high street banks have reduced the interest rate at which they 'stress test' borrowers, to see if they could afford payments if rates went up dramatically. Borrowers can now also find more loans at 100 per cent loan-to-value (LTV), where you borrow what the property is worth, without a deposit — another fixture of the pre-2008 mortgage Building Society offers five-year mortgage deals to those with less than a 5 per cent deposit who can prove they have been paying rent at the same level as mortgage repayments for two years. April Mortgages, which began lending in the UK last year, has a no-deposit deal for those with a household income of at least £24,000 who are happy to fix for ten or 15 years. And the ratio of debt to income is being relaxed, with April Mortgages lending up to seven times a borrower's income on its ten or 15-year fixed-rate deals, provided they have at least a 15 per cent deposit. Skipton will lend 5.5 times a buyer's salary if they have an income of £50,000 — up from . £100,000. The downside While lenders have been praised for finding innovative ways to get more people onto the property ladder, concerns have been raised that making it easier to borrow will simply push house prices up, leaving first-time buyers having to find bigger deposits and take on even greater debt. The estate agency Savills estimated that a 1.25 percentage point reduction in stress rates by high street lenders could increase first-time buyer sales 24 per cent over the next five years, but could also push up prices between 5 and 7.5 per cent. That could be a problem when buyers are already stretching themselves. Some 7 per cent of new mortgages were at 90-95 per cent LTV in the first three months of the year, their highest share since 2008, according to the FCA. And while mortgage rates have fallen over the past year, first-time buyers are spending a bigger chunk of their cash on repayments. In March they spent an average of 22.6 per cent of income on their mortgage, the highest proportion since November 2008, according to UK Finance, a banking industry body. 'I'm nervous,' said Neal Hudson from the property data firm Residential Analysts. 'There are good reasons for a bit more flexibility but I fear that lenders and the government are going too far. Now that rates are falling, that saving is being used to push up house prices rather than reducing repayments. That's not good.' Paul Broadhead from the BSA said the return of part repayment and part interest-only loans could be popular because they 'provide a lower deposit threshold but also help affordability, which we know are the two important barriers for first-time buyers'. Critics, however, believe that interest-only loans should remain limited to those with more equity and assets. Martin Stewart from the mortgage broker London Money said: 'Let's not forget that interest-only was one of the significant contributors to the crash in 2008, along with pushes for higher loan-to-value lending and excessive income multiples. Throwing all these things together to limp the housing market forward feels like a dangerous game.' How the interest-only deal works The Gen H interest-only mortgage rates will start at 5.09 per cent for a two-year fix at up to a 60 per cent LTV, with a £1,499 fee, and 5.33 per cent for a five-year fix with the same maximum LTV and fee. For comparison, the best two-year fix for a standard repayment mortgage at 60 per cent LTV is 3.95 per cent and 3.99 per cent for a five-year deal. For those with only the minimum 20 per cent deposit (80 per cent LTV) the two-year fixed rate is 5.44 per cent. For a five-year fix it is 5.38 per cent. In time, Gen H plans to make interest-only deals available to those whose parents can support them by using their investments, buy-to-let property or pension pot as the initial repayment strategy for the loan, which could change if their child was later able switch to a repayment deal. Peter Dockar from Gen H said: 'Interest-only mortgages have long been pigeon-holed as a tool for the rich. But we believe they could fill important gaps for first-time buyers and households on average incomes too. In this landscape, buyers need all the help they can get. We all need to consider how familiar tools might be used in new ways to benefit more people.' Why interest-only became rare Interest-only mortgages were common before the financial crisis, when buyers could get larger loans with few questions about how they planned to repay them. At their peak in 2007 some 51 per cent of new mortgages were either fully or partially interest-only, according to the FCA. House prices fell about 20 per cent between 2007 and 2009 during the financial crisis. This led to mortgage rules being tightened in 2014, making it harder to get interest-only deals and forcing lenders to be much stricter about repayment methods. At the end of last year the total number of home loans on an interest-only basis was 541,000, down from 963,000 in 2012, according to the trade association UK Finance. Only 8.7 per cent of new mortgages in the first three months of 2025 were fully or partially interest-only. Interest-only loans have tended to be limited to wealthier borrowers with more equity. Applicants normally need to earn at least £75,000 a year (or a total of £100,000 on a joint application) and have a 25 per cent deposit and proof of how they will repay the loan. They can only use the sale of their main home as a repayment strategy if there will be enough equity afterwards to buy somewhere else. This has made them largely inaccessible for first-time buyers — lenders including Nationwide Building Society will not give them interest-only mortgages at all. Gen H said buyers would be able to list downsizing as a repayment strategy provided that the interest-only portion of their loan was capped at 60 per cent LTV, and that they would have at least £200,000 in equity (£300,000 in London) after repaying the interest-only mortgage. This would be based on their initial deposit and the capital repayment portion of their loan, and would not assume a future rise in house prices. Other options available Paul Barnes, 40, and James Hope, 36, expected to be saving for another five years to buy their first home in Cambridge — until they found out about an unusual scheme from Cambridge Building Society. Rent to Home offered buyers the chance to enter a ballot, where they could rent a property from the building society for up to three years, after which they could get back 70 per cent of what they had paid in rent to use as a house deposit, as long as they took out their mortgage with the building society. The couple won their chance in 2023: 'We were actually hesitant when we got the call because we thought there must be a catch,' said Barnes, who works for an exam board. 'Cambridge is its own little bubble and it is quite an expensive and competitive market.' They moved into a four-bedroom townhouse in Longstanton, near Cambridge, paying rent of £1,450 a month. It means that after three years they could get about £36,500 back as a deposit. The couple are now two years in and hope that they will own their home by next summer. 'I can't believe schemes like this aren't widely available. It's a massive opportunity for people like us, who might otherwise be struggling to get a foot on the housing ladder due to the cost of living and fierce rental market,' said Hope, who works for the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Benefits rebellion means welfare crackdown is ‘not in the bag'
Sir Keir Starmer's Government is stepping up meetings with potential Labour welfare rebels to stave off the threat of a Commons defeat. Ministers including Liz Kendall, the Work and Pensions Secretary, will increase their engagement with MPs to prevent a large rebellion, it is understood. There are concerns in government that a Commons victory in a vote on the potential cuts – expected in the next few weeks – is not a foregone conclusion. The move comes after Vicky Foxcroft resigned as a party whip on Thursday night over cuts to disability benefits. In her resignation letter to the Prime Minister, the MP for Lewisham North said she understood 'the need to address the ever-increasing welfare bill', but did not believe the proposed cuts 'should be part of the solution'. Ms Foxcroft was the second Labour frontbencher to quit in protest over policy issues after Anneliese Dodds resigned as development minister over cuts to the aid budget. Dozens of other Labour backbenchers have expressed concern over proposals to reform the welfare system, which are expected to save up to £5 billion a year. One rebel said there were rumours about further resignations. However, Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, insisted a major rebellion over welfare was not on the cards. She added that Ms Foxcroft was the only frontbencher who had spoken to her about resigning. Ms Nandy claimed a 'handful' of backbench MPs had expressed concerns to her about the 'detail' of the Bill, but added that she was confident the Government had listened and the package of reforms was 'absolutely right'. She told BBC Breakfast: 'It would be wrong to say that when you bring forward big reforms, there aren't concerns and there aren't dissenting voices, of course there are. 'But Vicky is the only frontbencher that I've had a conversation with about resigning.' Rebel Labour MPs welcomed Ms Foxcroft's decision, with Hartlepool's Jonathan Brash saying that he had the 'utmost respect' for her 'principled stand'. Connor Naismith, the Crewe and Nantwich MP, said that her resignation 'must have been an incredibly difficult decision but she should be commended for standing by her principles'. Ms Foxcroft had said she had wrestled with whether to resign or remain in the Government and 'fight from within'. 'Sadly it [...] now seems that we are not going to get the changes I desperately wanted to see,' she continued. 'I therefore tender my resignation as I know I will not be able to do the job that is required of me and whip – or indeed vote – for reforms which include cuts to disabled people's finances.' Legislation introduced to Parliament on Wednesday includes a tightening of the criteria for the main disability payment in England, the personal independence payment (PIP). Ministers also want to cut the sickness-related element of Universal Credit, and delay access to it so only those aged 22 and over can claim it.
