It’s a dreich day in Balfron, a village 18 miles from Glasgow that is the site of a pioneering property build where ex-offenders will learn the tools of the building trade that can propel them onto a new path.
Three terraced houses on the main street are being redeveloped with another six new properties to join them on an expanse of dug-out land that stretches out behind. Already the trainee contractors have added landscaping, demolition, rendering and roofing to their skillset since the build started in January.
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For property developer Barry Mochan seeing the men flourish thanks to the community interest company he founded means that these days, he “bounds out of bed’.
Glasgow Together was set up in 2014 after consultation with Glasgow City Council. Part of umbrella company, the Together Group, the only current Scottish operation joined Bristol and Birmingham in giving employment opportunities to young men who Barry feels are “ready to turn their lives around’.
He said: “We take people regardless of what their background is. If I think they’ve got to a point where they want to make a change then we’ll take them on.
“To an extent we’re taking a chance because we might have someone in their 30s who’s never worked and never had to set an alarm or work as part of a team or resolve a dispute without shouting and swearing and resorting to violence.
“These guys go from having no prospects whatsoever to being in the £150 a day bracket.”
With an impressive zero percent re-offending rate, it’s clear that Glasgow Together’s model is working, with all of the 18 past and present trainees finding onward employment.
All profits are ploughed back into the company, which pays the Scottish Living Wage, and ensuring trainees hold any appropriate certificates that will help them move on.
Barry is looking to expand the operation throughout Scotland, adding a landscaping arm and moving into producing prefabricated house kits to combat the country’s growing housing crisis.
He said: “Everyone knows there’s a huge issue with affordable homes and a huge target to meet of 50,000 by 2021.
“[With prefabricated kits] the quality can be made much higher, you can cut the cost of wastage and you can do it all much more efficiently. It’s a real chance to upskill the guys and downskill the construction process because that’s expensive.”
With seven new builds in Glasgow in the pipeline, Barry is looking for premises where his team can start making the prefabricated kits and he hopes to attract more women onto the scheme with them.
He said: “You very rarely look over the fence of a building site and see women and that’s where I hope we can attract a different demographic in to the prefabricated side of things.”
Barry started his career as a police officer in Glasgow before moving into property development. It was the 90s and social housing standards in the city were poor which, he believes, had an adverse effect on residents’ mental health and motivation.
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He said: “I started to notice a difference when [the council] started to invest in houses, the difference in the city and in how people lived and I started to think of all the ways you could approach the problem.
“If you’re coming from the perspective of you should lock them up and throw away the key - that’s not what happens and it doesn’t work, so what should you do - leave them to do the same thing as before and they go back in again?
“It can cost up to £70,000 to keep someone inside for a year so if these people are now working and paying tax and not doing the things that got them into trouble in the first place there’s a benefit to wider society.”
For 21-year-old Pat from Easterhouse, Glasgow Together has given him the opportunity to turn his life around after an eight-month stint in Polmont Young Offenders Institution. Now a father of a two-week old son, he is working full-time on the Balfron project and is being put through his digger driver certificate.
He said: “To be honest, I didn’t know what to think when I started. On my first day, because it was my first job, I wanted to show a good impression.
“This is what I want to do now. I’ve never put myself forward for anything before because I was keeping bad company so that’s me starting to wise up now.”
Only three days into the job and Ben, 31, originally from Gambia, who was referred to Barry after impressing officials while carrying out a community payback order, has finally “found a purpose.”
The father-of-four said: “I just wanted to work and they gave me the opportunity and I took it. It’s important to be working.”
Building trust and providing stability is vital to Barry, who is paid back in loyalty and hard work.
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He said: “The worst thing we can do is promise something and not deliver because they’ve probably had a lifetime of that. So if you say you’re going to do something then you’ve got to do it and once they see that’s what happens you get a really good work ethic and a lot of loyalty.
“You can see a massive difference in confidence from day one to month three. It’s probably the most challenging job I’ve ever had but it feels great and you bound out of bed doing it.”
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