A UK “ghost town” with an abandoned high street has been hit by another “devastating” blow which puts 400 jobs at risk.
A major employer in the area is shutting down in the New Year which could affect the whole town.
The struggling town of Cowdenbeath in Fife lies on the edge of Exxon Mobil’s petrochemical plant at Mossmorran.
The community is home to about 12,000 people but the former mining town’s unemployment rate is high at 8.7%.
It once had a busy High Street but has lost huge retailers such as Farmfoods and Iceland and now has many empty shops.
The Bank of Scotland left in the summer and a number of shops are now boarded up.
Now, the town has been dealt another blow with the news that the chemical plant is to close in February.
Local resident, Peter Dunn told the BBC: “This area is really struggling. There’s a lot of shops already closed so I think this is bad news.”
Exxon Mobil has said there was not a “competitive future” for the site, confirming 179 directly-employed jobs would be at risk, along with 250 contractors.
ExxonMobil blamed Labour for the closure of its chemical plant.
A boss claimed the UK Government’s windfall tax and ban on new drilling licences had “undermined” the firm’s Mossmorran site in Fife.
He said there were “four keys to success” — a cheap, abundant supply of ethane, low-cost operations, good market prices and a skilled workforce.
Mr Greenwood added: “I have one of those keys, a brilliant workforce.
“But two of those keys I deliberately do not have because of Government policy.”
He added: “In the North Sea, we’ve had windfall taxes and a ban on production licences.”
“We paid £20million last year in CO2 taxes. That will double in the next four or five years.
“My international competitors do not have those costs.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer yesterday said officials had “explored every possible, reasonable avenue” to save the plant.
Assistant Manager of a local bakery, Susan Marshall said the site’s closure was “devastating”.
She explained: “We have a lot of customers from Mossmorran and we get a lot of orders for conferences and meetings, so this will affect our business.
“This will affect not just us but the whole street.
“People come to the high street, not that there are many shops left for them, for their lunch and we have our regular customers from Mossmorran.
“A lot of shops have shut here and now the Mossmorran workers might have to move away from the area but we’ll just have to cope.”
Local resident, Audrey Haldane said: “It’s a shame it is closing because that’s people out of a job and the area is already quite bad for unemployment.”
John Stagg, a 47-year-old father-of-three has worked at Mossmorran for three years as a scaffolder.
He said: “We had been hearing rumours for the past couple of months about the possible sale of the site but the suddenness of the news has made me feel really quite angry and shocked.
“It is looking increasingly likely I will have to travel for work away from home, which is not an ideal situation.
“It’s going to affect Christmas and the emotional impact is going to cause stress and anxiety.”
Jim Paterson, who has owned Kassy’s Kitchenette for 27 years, said: “We are resilient in Cowdenbeath, we will bounce back from this.”
He added: “The shopkeepers here have seen the highs and lows.
“The lowest has been the banks closing and companies closing and leaving the High Street such as Farmfoods, Woolworths, all these bigger named shops.
“But the independent shops like ourselves have overcome this. You just have to get your head down and get on with it.”
However, not everyone was sad about Mossmoran closing as the plant had allegedly caused years of noise and light pollution in the area.
ExxonMobil was fined £176,000 for six days of continuous flaring in April 2019, which caused houses to shake and generated hundreds of complaints.
The problem was mitigated with noise-reducing flare tips and enclosed ground flares.
Kirsty Archbold, who lives in nearby Kelty, said she felt relieved by the closure although she felt sorry for the people who had lost their jobs.
She said: “I do feel sorry for the staff, 100%, but for the safety side you do often worry about it because you can sometimes feel the ground shudder so there is something very uncomfortable about it.”
