A VETERAN of Scotland’s pit closures has voiced hope for the future after Scottish ministers reinstated a lifeline to former coalfield communities.

The Scottish government yesterday pledged a £753,000 grant to the Coalfields Regeneration Trust for its work across Scotland on volunteering and community projects and public health.

Scottish Housing and Welfare Minister Margaret Burgess said that regeneration of Scotland’s former mining towns was “vital to help make them a better place for the people who live there, to help build better local economies and create employment opportunities.”

But Holyrood’s funding remains just half of what it was two years ago, when it was slashed from £1.5 million a year to just £500,000.

National Union of Minerworkers president Nicky Wilson said it was “obviously grateful” that the Scottish government’s funding had continued, even if the cut had seriously affected their work, of which there is much to do.

Mr Wilson told the Morning Star it was common knowledge that Scotland’s mining communities had “never recovered” from the pit closures of the 1980s and ’90s.

Then the financial crisis wiped out virtually all gains made, with the coalfields’ rural economies too fragile to cope with soaring inflation, unemployment and ruthless austerity measures.

Mr Wilson said that the community-led projects depended on public funding to flourish, but were clearly making a difference — he had just come from Netherthird’s community garden in Cumnock, Ayrshire, where young people were learning landscaping and horticultural skills.

“It’s a sunny day, it’s brilliant to see how retired people are getting down there with the kids, showing them how to do all this work.

“Those generations are coming together again. It gives you hope,” he said.

Scotland’s coalfields across Fife, Lothians, Ayrshire and Lanarkshire have a combined population of more than half a million people, about a tenth of Scotland’s population.

The announcement came as the trust released new research by Sheffield Hallam University on the present state of Britain’s coalfield communities, with lead researcher Professor Steve Fothergill warning that most were “seriously adrift” of the national average in unemployment, jobs, benefits and ill health.