People are not going to “leap for joy” at what they see on Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow Chamber of Commerce’s chief executive has declared, while highlighting the scale of the challenges in filling disused city centre spaces.

Stuart Patrick underlined the particular difficulties facing Glasgow as a result of it suffering the slowest return to offices of any city in the UK.

And he flagged Glasgow City Council’s refusal of planning permission for a proposed student accommodation development by Fusion Students at the site of the former Marks & Spencer store on Sauchiehall Street as his biggest disappointment of the year.

Mr Patrick believes the Scottish Government’s rent controls have brought challenges in securing build-to-rent housing developments for Glasgow.

And he highlighted weakness in the city’s office market.

However, Mr Patrick flagged great strides forward for the innovation economy in the Glasgow City Region, emphasising the key roles played in this by major investments by the University of Glasgow and Strathclyde University while also highlighting widespread backing for projects from the private sector.

He underlined the success of the innovation districts which have been built up in recent years.

Mr Patrick also noted that the increase in the number of high-growth companies in the Glasgow City Region in recent times was ahead of the national average.

The Glasgow Chamber chief told The Herald in an exclusive interview: “The city centre has been more of a challenge than an opportunity this year. There are lots of opportunities in the city centre. The perceptions of how it has been performing have been negative among the membership.

“Anyone who wanders down Sauchiehall Street is not going to leap for joy at the sights they see. It is not a particularly encouraging experience.”

Mr Patrick added: “We know there is a bigger challenge in there in trying to fill the spaces that have fallen out of use.”

“There [are] a number of issues we have been faced with. Firstly, Glasgow came back to the office slower than any other city around the UK.”

He noted that sample-based surveys by Remit Consulting had “always shown Glasgow as being the slowest to come back to the office”.

Mr Patrick said of this situation: “It has generally shown up in the footfall stats - we are still 10% adrift of where we were pre-Covid. It is predominantly weekday. It is pretty much related to the commuters coming back in.

“That has an impact on perceptions on whether investing in offices is a wise move for the city centre, although I would say the supply has been constrained for some time [and] at some point there is going to be a need for investment for [future] provision.”

Mr Patrick noted the City Centre Task Force in Glasgow, which combines the efforts of Glasgow City Council and the business community and others, was asking employers what their return to office policy was now, whether it was enforced, and what their plans were on this front in the year ahead.

He noted that, in terms of footfall in Glasgow city centre, weekends had “recovered well”.

However, Mr Patrick highlighted debate about the strength of the night-time economy.

He noted that credit card data indicated spending was well ahead of where it was before the coronavirus pandemic but considered this an “unreliable” basis for forming a view given the major switch from cash to cards and the lack of data about the extent of this shift.

Analysing patterns of when people were going out, Mr Patrick said: “In terms of what has happened to the night-time economy, the impression is that the emphasis has been more on the weekend and earlier in the evening, rather than later.”

He highlighted a study being undertaken about people’s perceptions of coming into the city centre, and getting away.

Mr Patrick said: “We are reviewing whether more needs to be done, particularly around perceptions of availability of transport for getting home.”

Highlighting a potential need to speak to public transport operators, if perceptions on this were negative, he added: “If the perceptions are negative, then that is going to be affecting behaviours. We have got to ensure our transport network is adequate.”

He flagged as critical in the “transition” of Glasgow’s city centre the conversion of some of the empty spaces into residential use.

Mr Patrick said: “We have placed our bets on this. We have two strands of demand that were coming through from investors. One was build to rent. The other strand was student accommodation.

“Build to rent has been significantly diminished by rent controls. We have lost a lot of potential investment. It has all shifted to student accommodation.”

Referring to councillors’ rejection of Fusion’s planning application for student accommodation at the former Marks & Spencer store site on Sauchiehall Street, Mr Patrick declared: “I don’t think it has switched everyone off but there is a genuine risk of doing that.”

Flagging this as his biggest disappointment this year, he added: “I thought we were building some momentum to getting some changes happening on Sauchiehall Street.”

He asked: “How are we going to use those empty spaces and get Sauchiehall Street back into active use?”

Mr Patrick highlighted issues in terms of availability of student accommodation in Glasgow.

He said: “At the moment, we are underperforming for student accommodation. We had a crisis last summer.”

Mr Patrick said that, in the short to medium term, the city should “at least” be supporting student accommodation developments, adding that adjustments to the rent controls to “bring build to rent back” could then be looked at.

He noted the raft of recent hotel openings in Glasgow but observed this market might now be on a “downswing”, as with offices, as he declared that student accommodation was “not entirely supported by the local political environment”.

Highlighting Glasgow’s large number of empty city centre premises in this context, Mr Patrick asked: “How are we going to deliver that repurposing? It doesn’t look as if it is going to happen through public sector investment.”

Mr Patrick expressed confidence that major development projects planned for Glasgow city centre would go ahead in spite of the rise in interest rates, highlighting the importance of major plans for the St Enoch Centre and Buchanan Galleries sites and the Candleriggs redevelopment to the city.