The Blue Lagoon is one of the UK’s best-loved chippies. Pop stars Justin Bieber and Lewis Capaldi, and presenter Amelia Dimoldenberg, creator of the long-running YouTube hit Chicken Shop Date, have all been spotted scoffing deep-fried haggis or sausage éclair at one of its many branches. No less an authority than Nigella Lawson has described its chips as “exquisite”.

Earlier this year, the Blue Lagoon expanded with a barista-grade cafe, Sexy Coffee, next door to its branch on Glasgow’s Gordon Street. Then, one Sunday afternoon in March, disaster struck. A ferocious blaze tore its way from a vape shop on neighbouring Union Street and into the Victorian building housing the Blue Lagoon. Both restaurant and cafe were gutted to the core.

Stuart Patrick CA CBE was on holiday the day of the Union Street fire. That didn’t stop him picking up the phone. Since then, the Chief Executive of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce has barely stopped, promoting the city and helping drive footfall back to the Blue Lagoon, along with the nail salons, hairdressers and 30 other businesses which were impacted when neighbouring Central Station was closed for a fortnight.

“It’s our job to get across what government should be doing to help and what business needs to do next,” says Stuart. “We were making clear calls from the beginning that there would need to be support for affected businesses, plus government commitment to help with recovery.”

The game plan worked. Just two days after Central Station fully reopened in late March, footfall bounced back to 214,000, up from 203,000 on the same day last year.

The episode demonstrates what a city’s Chamber of Commerce can achieve through lobbying, advocacy and business networks. Yet, for Stuart, who has spent more than three decades championing Glasgow, this kind of intervention comes naturally.

Investment drive

Since qualifying as a CA at Ernst & Young (now EY) in the 1980s, Stuart has dedicated his career to supporting Glasgow’s business community and driving investment into the city. In the process, he’s played a pivotal role in Glasgow’s transformation from its “sick man of Europe” 1970s/1980s reputation – a time when grey housing estates, soot-stained cityscapes and low life expectancies shaped perceptions of the city – into one of the UK’s most entrepreneurial urban centres.

Glasgow will be showing this side off to the world when it hosts the Commonwealth Games this month. Having stepped in at the last minute to rescue the sporting extravaganza, following the withdrawal of Victoria, Australia, the city is hosting the competition for the second time in 12 years.

As Stuart points out, the 2026 redux is a very different proposition from 2014.

“The 2014 Games were about making sure the budget was spent in the local company base and getting the message out that Glasgow was a city to invest in and trade with,” says Stuart, who remembers taking 100 businesses to watch Usain Bolt sprint to gold in the 4x100m relay. “However, the biggest legacy of Glasgow 2026 will be us changing the model so that the Games can be run by much smaller cities.”

Indeed, the new scaled-down version is expected to come in at a cost of £114m–150m, barely a quarter the price of the £575m spent on 2014. Organisers hope the cheaper model will help developing countries host the event in future.

Walking around Glasgow today, it’s impossible to miss the physical legacy of the projects Stuart has been involved with. Stroll along the Clyde and you might spot the 12,000-seater OVO Hydro; Stuart helped negotiate £25m of investment from the Scottish government for the arena, just in time for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Walk further on and you’ll see the glass-fronted offices for JP Morgan and BNP Paribas; this is Glasgow’s International Financial Services District, which has attracted more than £1bn in investment, partly thanks to the Chamber of Commerce. From downtown shopping centres to the AI-powered digital assistants at Glasgow Airport through to the University of Glasgow’s tech spin-outs, Stuart has played a role in them all.

Yet Glasgow’s progress also exists alongside visible decline. Empty offices and decaying Victorian buildings still dominate parts of the city centre – something Stuart has vowed to transform.

“Unfortunately, fires such as the one on Union Street haven’t been an unusual feature in Glasgow in recent years,” he says (the Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh Building was also destroyed by two blazes in the space of a few years). “We need to open up the dialogue about the risk of the city’s heritage buildings.”

Accountants’ expertise may also be needed to improve the raw costs of converting these derelict tenements into affordable homes and commercial spaces.

“It’s obvious the sums [don’t add] up for the transition of older buildings to newer uses,” says Stuart. “There are all sorts of hurdles to overcome, which doesn’t make it cost-effective, but it’s something accountants can help [people] understand.”

Regeneration game

Stuart’s passion for urban regeneration started young. He grew up in Greenock, 25 miles outside Glasgow, where his parents ran a department store (unlike most kids, young Stuart’s eyes weren’t drawn to the Raleigh Choppers in the toy department, but its “cash distribution system”, an early sign of where his career would lead).

In the 1970s, Greenock was grappling with the destruction of the shipbuilding industry which had sustained the port town for centuries. Stuart remembers “industrial decline setting in”, and he credits these formative snapshots with influencing his subsequent career trajectory.

During his first job at Ernst & Young, the devastation of the local economy was hard to ignore. “At the time, it felt like I was going around doing audits of family engineering companies on their last legs,” he recalls.

By the end of the 1980s, Stuart was at the Govan Initiative, spending “two-and-a-half years helping a local neighbourhood recover from dramatic industrial collapse” (like Greenock, Govan was a shipbuilding centre being hollowed out of its industry).

Although he hasn’t practised accountancy since those days, he enthuses about the profession’s ability to help beginners “learn the language of business”.

“The CA training gives you confidence in discussing business matters, which you can see many others don’t have,” he adds. “Being a CA also gives you a strong sense of risk, which is one of the biggest issues in governance today… I see so many practising and former accountants at senior levels in business to know just how valuable the CA qualification still is.”

He also notes the CA qualification has helped with his many board memberships at the Scotland Office, the Audit Committee and Connected Places Catapult. Stuart used these business skills during the 17 years he spent building his career at Scottish Enterprise, where he decided that “Glasgow was the project [he] wanted to devote [his] time to”. Today, he presides over the oldest Chamber of Commerce in the English-speaking world with continuous records, a history dating back to 1783.

“Being a CA gives you a strong sense of risk, which is one of the biggest issues in governance today… I see so many at senior levels in business to know just how valuable the CA qualification still is”

Stuart is particularly proud of the work the Chamber has done around sustainability and green investment. This has involved discussing the circular economy with the then-Prince Charles when Cop26 came to Glasgow in 2021, and the Chamber’s Step Up to Net Zero campaign, which funded work placements for young people at SMEs to help businesses strengthen their sustainability strategies.

Engineering a revival

Part of Stuart’s job is promoting Glasgow on trade missions everywhere from South Korea to New York’s Tartan Week. He says the city’s engineering heritage remains a powerful selling point: “It opens doors when persuading overseas markets to look at Glasgow – we have tens of thousands of engineers here.”

The Chamber is hoping to harness that talent via the three innovation districts it supports in the city. These bring together Glasgow’s universities, start-ups and businesses to work on tech such as AI, quantum engineering and photonics.

Glasgow’s traditional industrial base might also see a renaissance. With Nato countries pledging to spend 5% of GDP on defence by 2035, the once-withered Glasgow shipyards are expected to benefit, not least from a recent £10bn deal to supply the Norwegian navy with five new warships. 

Even Snoop Dogg wants to invest in Glasgow. Last year, the Californian rapper said he wants to open a “Paradise” burger van at Celtic Park. The Chamber of Commerce is yet to receive a call from the Doggfather, but Stuart hints they might stay away, reluctant to get involved in Glasgow’s famously tribal football rivalry. “Football is something we treat with a certain amount of care here,” he notes.

“Glasgow and Edinburgh together have a much better skills base than northern England. If you’re standing in Shanghai talking about business, it’s daft not to talk about Central Belt Scotland as a whole”

Glasgow’s attractiveness as a business destination also comes from the character of its people, however. “One thing I hear from leaders is that Glasgow has great project managers,” says Stuart. “That’s part of the Glaswegian character. Yes, it can sometimes be direct, but projects will always get done and finished on time here.”

Stuart doesn’t see Glasgow as being overshadowed by its historic rival Edinburgh either. Instead, he views them as complementary economic partners. “Glasgow and Edinburgh together have a much better skills base than northern England,” he says. “If you’re standing in Shanghai talking about business, it’s daft not to talk about Central Belt Scotland as a whole.”

Asked which city offers the best blueprint for Glasgow’s future, he points to Manchester. “Although we’ve done better than Manchester in attracting financial services, what we’re interested in is its ability to attract residential property investment,” he says. “We’ve got a bit of catching up to do there.”

Industrial decline, inner-city poverty, crime: the chips have been down many times during Glasgow’s recent history. But just like the Blue Lagoon’s continuing success – in May it opened a branch in Newcastle, its first fish-and-chip shop south of the border – or the city hosting the Commonwealth Games twice in 12 years, nobody should ever underestimate Glasgow’s capacity for reinvention. Rest assured, whatever happens next with this resilient, ever-evolving metropolis, Stuart will somehow be part of it.

glasgowchamberofcommerce.com

Join us for Inside Glasgow Commonwealth Games 2026 with Ian Reid CA CBE, Chair of the 2026 Commonwealth Games