Glasgow City Council hopeful £2.7m boost will fund 'vital projects'

Glasgow’s city council leader is hopeful that the local authority will get more funding for vital projects after securing a minimum of £2.7m from the UK Government.

Councillor Susan Aitken advised members of the city administration committee (CAC) on Thursday morning she was confident that the budget allocated from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) would lead to more investments for projects such as the Lighthouse and Kelvinhall.

In January, it was agreed that out of the £2.7m for Glasgow to invest in capital programmes, £150,000 should be used to support businesses through the Green Business Support Grant.

During the meeting on Thursday, members agreed that £2m of the funding would help repair the Charles Rennie Mackintosh-designed Lighthouse sandstone building.

The A-listed building which is owned by the council, was initially constructed in 1895 as a warehouse for the Glasgow Herald.

It was later transformed into The Lighthouse, Scotland’s Centre for Architecture, Design, and the city, with its launch in 1999 including a permanent Mackintosh exhibition but, in recent years, particularly post-COVID, it has largely fallen out of productive use.

In February 2025, the council approved a lease to Sustainable Ventures, an organisation aiming to turn the building into a Net Zero Innovation Hub for start up firms working on climate technology.

Meanwhile the remaining £611,060 will be used to continue improvements on Kelvinhall which has already benefited from the creation of a “high-end” television studio.

A substantial portion of the empty floorspace remains available at the venue with the council receiving expressions of interest from commercial operators across multiple sectors to use this space.

Councillor Bill Butler said that the Labour group welcomed the two funding options but asked if any others were taken into consideration.

Council leader Susan Aitken said: “One of the things that is really clear about both of these investments is that they are not investments that will just stop once that money has been spent.

“There are very clear pathways with both of them and I think particularly with the Lighthouse and identified partners whereby the investment that we put in will lead to significantly more investment.

“This will lead towards not just a productive use but a highly valuable and beneficial use of both of these buildings.

“That is something we have been struggling to find with The Lighthouse for a very long time particularly post covid but really before that.

“The Lighthouse has never quite found the place that it needs to have. This partner has a plan which shows a very clear pathway to multiple benefits following on from this investment from UKSPF.

“In terms of Kelvinhall we have already seen the impact of the investment and the work that has been undertaken there. It is such a huge building that there are even more opportunities to do more with Kelvinhall.”