The town whose council wants migrants to move in

A new shop opened along Greenock's fading High Street in May. Anik African Store has brought a small corner of Nigeria to the Scottish town, selling yams, plantain, okra and catfish.

It is not the only African food shop here - there is another just metres away, responding to the area's changing population.

Five years ago, locals say, it would have been rare to see a black person in Greenock. Now hundreds of Africans and refugees have moved to the area.

The local council has in fact come up with a plan to attract even more to this corner of the west of Scotland as a means of stemming its falling population.

Scottish people "are lovely and accommodating", says Anik's owner, Christianah Omilana, who came to the UK in 2021. "Immigrants will come when there is work", she adds.

The lack of work however has been a key driver of depopulation in Greenock and the wider Inverclyde area. No local authority in Scotland has been hit harder by population decline.

The number of residents in Inverclyde is 22,000 fewer than in 1981. And its current population, 78,000, is projected to fall by a further 16% over the next two decades.

Tackling the lack of people is the council's number one priority, by keeping more residents here and attracting others into the area.

It is a "lovely, friendly" town, says one of Anik's customers, Sunday, who has just moved here from Devon. He has begun a job at a hospital in Glasgow, and has come to Greenock to join his wife who works at the local hospital, Inverclyde Royal.

"If the local council can provide [jobs], everything in Greenock will change, because people [from Africa] would like to come," says Sunday.

Most of Greenock's African population are working or studying in Glasgow or Paisley and have been attracted to the town by cheap housing. Many have arrived on skilled work visas, known as sponsorship, helping to bolster the health and care workforce.

Inverclyde Council's repopulation strategy is based on trying to encourage them to set down roots here, as well as attracting other legal migrants and people who've been granted refugee status to move in.

However, the lack of jobs lies at the root of the town's problems.

"It's a ghost town," says Tiffany, a mother of one, who we meet at a local parent and toddler group. "There's just nothing in it. There's nothing to do, there are no shops. There is no employment."

The 29-year-old moved away from Greenock to work but came back to bring up her child. Now, she says she is facing up to leaving once more.

"I'm struggling to find jobs that suit both childcare and myself. I've considered moving from here to Paisley because there is so much more to do there."

Rummage through Greenock's industrial history and you will find a distinct heritage - in the 19th Century its status as a global hub for refining sugar earned it the nickname "Sugaropolis". Thousands of ships were also built in the coastal town over a near 300-year period.

More recently, the computer manufacturer IBM employed more than 5,000 people at its campus near Greenock. But the site closed completely in 2016.

Indeed, in the past four years, a further 1,500 jobs have vanished. Amazon, EE and a string of other companies have gone elsewhere. Just this week, the local shipyard announced it was cutting about a quarter of its workforce. Meanwhile, supporters of Greenock Morton, the local football team, have set up a fighting fund to try to stave off financial collapse at the club.

The town has been left bereft - little wonder Scotland's First Minister John Swinney is due to visit this month, to hear the problems first-hand.

While health and social care roles employ many of the Africans, job opportunities for those born locally, and refugees, can be hard to find.

"When the work disappears, people disappear," says Muriel, one of dozens of elderly residents gathered at Lyle Gateway Community Cafe, a stone's throw from the High Street.

Between games of table tennis and cheap, hearty lunches, the group remembers a vibrant town, full of people and shops they wanted to go to.

There is a despondency now, with words like "depressing" and "empty" peppering the conversation. The pensioners are sceptical too of the council's repopulation strategy. While happy for migrants to move in, they wonder how sustainable any influx would be.

The council requires hundreds more immigrants each year just to keep the population stable.

"Where would they work?" asks Pamela. "The people in Greenock can't get work [never mind] bringing in other people."

The cafe is housed in Lyle Kirk, where Jonathan Fleming has been the Church of Scotland minister for the past five years. He feels the town's depopulation crisis at first-hand. His church does "a lot more funerals than we do weddings and baptisms," he explains. "And that shift, it's a lot more dramatic than it used to be."

The church has been supporting some Iranian refugees recently and their experience is a sobering one, says Fleming. They are desperate for paid work but can't find any.

"They're wanting to contribute to the community. They want to be independent of receiving financial aid and they're not able to do it - they're actually trapped in it, in some respects."

The number of people arriving in Inverclyde from overseas has trebled in recent times, to about 750 per year since 2023. Hundreds of African migrants have now settled in the area, as well as refugees from Ukraine, Afghanistan and several other countries, many with a positive tale to tell.

As part of its repopulation plan, the council is offering English classes for those who need them and help to access skilled employment. Schools are also supported to provide an inclusive "anti-racist education".

Mo Almalarashid arrived in Greenock in 2018 as a Syrian refugee without a word of English. He says he found a supportive community and, after studying hard, he now works as a local gym instructor. "There was always people there for me," he says.

There have been tensions. A local teenager was sentenced to 10 years in prison last year for planning mass murder at the local mosque. And in June, a protest outside a local hotel housing asylum seekers resulted in one woman being charged with a hate crime, and three police officers being injured.

Yet in May's Scottish Parliamentary elections, Reform UK - which campaigns strongly for lowering immigration nationally - came a distant third in Inverclyde, about 8,500 votes behind the winning SNP candidate, and despite fielding its Scottish leader in the constituency.

Other council areas will face Inverclyde's depopulation challenge in the coming years. The populations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all expected to begin declining within the next decade.

Stephen McCabe, who has led Inverclyde's minority Labour-led council almost exclusively since 2007, believes its repopulation plan is beginning to take effect. The population has stabilised in the past two years, he says, largely because of immigration.

Repopulation is at the heart of everything Inverclyde Council hopes to achieve, McCabe says, from housing projects and the revamping of school buildings to, perhaps most importantly, job creation.

Standing on the banks of the Clyde, he sees opportunities in the maritime, renewables and defence sectors, reimagining use of the river for the 21st Century - although for that, they will need significant Scottish and UK government support.

When asked about asylum seekers, who for the most part are not permitted to work as they await Home Office decisions, McCabe acknowledges there is "an unease, no doubt about it".

While the council has "willingly" participated in a Home Office dispersal scheme - accepting more than 200 people seeking asylum - he believes the area "has been allocated a disproportionate share", with a Home Office contractor said to have bought up a number of houses in the area.

But migrants and refugees who can work are welcome in Inverclyde, McCabe says.

"Without those people, our health service would really be struggling... The refugees who have come have brought benefits to this area. They will bring ambition. They'll bring children to this area."

Greenock's population is not just shrinking, it is also ageing. The lack of children means that one nursery is closing, while older people have greater health needs.

Add in the area's high levels of deprivation, and there is increasing pressure on public services amid a shrinking tax base. Those who remain, pay more - council tax rose by almost 8% locally this year.

Yet you do not need to look far for a different vision for Greenock. Just 15 minutes down the road is the centre of Gourock, once similarly deprived, which has a small, thriving High Street with independent retailers, boosted by a recent £5m council investment and residents with more spending power.

Local resident Matthew Quinn, a 19-year-old former member of the Scottish Youth Parliament, says Gournock has embraced its future as a commuter town and believes other parts of Inverclyde should follow suit.

The council's focus on creating lots of jobs locally is misplaced, Matthew believes. Many people now work from home, he says, and the area's proximity to Glasgow - about 40 minutes away - should be exploited.

"If we accepted that the jobs are in Glasgow, then our focus should be on public services and ensuring we have a nice environment for people to live. Then I think we would be much more successful," he says.

"It's not that [people] are desperate to leave, it's that there's no reason to stay."

That is a challenge that some Greenock residents are attempting to tackle, head on.

Derek Mitchell, infused with infectious positivity, is looking to convert a former sugar refinery next to an Aldi car park into a thriving hub that will teach and enthuse young people.

A focus on science, technology, engineering, arts and maths, he says, will provide them with skills for the future.

"If you build a sense of belonging, naturally and organically, people don't want to leave."

He has purchased the building as part of a group of locals, who estimate it will need £5m of investment as they continue to look for partnerships.

"A lot of people are starting to do things for themselves," he says. "They see there's potential - they're fed up of waiting."

At a time when much of the UK has concerns about immigration, Inverclyde's decision to embrace migrants and refugees makes it stand out. Its lack of people is acute, its solution, striking. Other communities will soon face a similar depopulation challenge and may look to what Greenock is trying as a possible way ahead.