Fife's local economy is “clearly underperforming”, according to Fife Council Leader David Ross.

On Wednesday, he told Fife Partnership Board that, economically, there’s a lot of good work going on to create a good local economy, but recognised that partners are “clearly not getting the impacts [they] want yet”.

The Board brings together the council, NHS Fife, police and fire services, Fife College, the University of St Andrews, SEStran, the business community, and more. On Wednesday, members were presented with a ‘deep-dive’ economic update.

On the bright side, tourism and visitor rates have bounced back post-pandemic, and Fife’s unemployment rate is at an all time low (3.4 per cent).

However, economic inactivity, which is the rate of working-age people who are not in work, actively looking for work, or available for work, has fallen but remains “stubbornly high” – 21.3 per cent, down from the record high of 26.9 per cent in 2022.

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Claimant rates have also revealed mixed results.

There are fewer people claiming out-of-work benefits compared to last year, but Fife’s 3.4 per cent claimant rate is still higher than the Scottish average of 3.2 per cent.

Business creation and survival rates are also scoring lower than previous years.

“I think [the economic strategy] is going in the right direction, but the local economy is clearly underperforming,” Cllr Ross said. “There’s a lot of good work going on, but clearly we’re not getting the impacts we want yet.”

He said the general Fife-wide statistics can be in line with Scotland or “not look too bad”, but he pointed out that they can mask a lot of local variations.

“There’s a tension between high growth areas and the need to concentrate on Mid and Central Fife, and it’s about how we marry that,” Cllr Ross said.

Jim Metcalfe, principal at Fife College, largely seemed to agree, and believes that the Partnership could be working together more effectively to find solutions.

“The positives are that we have a partnership, but I’m not convinced from a skills perspective that, between these meetings, we use this partnership to design solutions and strategies,” he said.

Mr Metcalfe said the college intends to introduce an informal, adult skills prospectus next year, which he hopes will help get people who are economically inactive back into work, but the college has run into funding challenges.

“The entire focus on college funding in Scotland is away from tackling the heart of the challenges [seen] in this paper and towards supporting school leavers, which is critically important, but we need to retool the way colleges and schools funding is provided to let us tackle this problem [of economic inactivity],” he said.

Mr Metcalfe appealed to fellow partners to petition the Scottish Government for a new funding method, and believed that they “could use the partnership a bit better”.

Meanwhile, Fife Council Chief Executive Ken Gourlay suggested that the Partnership concentrate their efforts on tackling the “stubborn challenge” of economic inactivity.

“[The statistics show] that a lot of people want to get back to work, so it’s not a lack of will,” he said.

“I suppose a lot of these people are needing help and it strikes me that people across this Partnership could get in that space to help.”