Sudden council funding cut prompts fears of surge in poverty in Govanhill's Roma communities

Community Renewal’s Rom Romeha has operated in the south side of Glasgow since 2018 to support families living in extreme poverty.

Organisers claim its benefits advice service has doubled the incomes of Roma families and brings around £1 million a year to Govanhill.

Yet in the recent funding allocation of the council’s Glasgow Community Fund, Rom Romeha’s application was unsuccessful - meaning it will shut on April 1, 2026 without last minute intervention.

The service also helps parents whose children are struggling at school and finds education and work opportunities for adults.

Ann Hyde, policy and development officer for the charity, said: “We started with four months temporary funding from the financial inclusion department and shamed the council into it because the need was really immense.

“At that time, there was no multilingual service, nothing that served the community at all.”

“When we first got funding from the Communities Fund the outcomes were off the scale.

“We over-delivered all of our targets. So this has really come as a shock; we’re stunned.”

Community Renewal believes the service should be a core council service and not at the mercy of temporary funding.

Roma communities across Europe are marginalised and persecuted and so are deeply distrustful of authority.

That makes the advice service - which employs Roma people - crucial, supporters said.

“If you're in need, if you're vulnerable, you need to be able to articulate those vulnerabilities in your own language,” Ms Hyde added.

Govanhill, in Nicola Sturgeon’s constituency, is home to the largest and most economically deprived Roma population in the UK, which places additional pressures on local services.

Communities from across Europe settled in the area from around 2005 onwards after the EU expansion.

Roma people continue to be the most disadvantaged and poorest in Europe.

The 2022 census records a relatively small number of Roma people with figures believed to have dropped following post-Brexit freedom of movement changes.

However, local knowledge and neighbourhood studies indicate between 3,000 to 5,000 more Roma people living in Govanhill than the census recorded.

Relying on official statistics which “grossly under-count” the size and vulnerability of this population risks cuts in funding that will affect many more residents than headline figures suggest, with a particular impact on child poverty, the charity said.

Rom Romeha has done particularly effective work on supporting Roma residents to secure their legal rights, such as right to remain in the UK.

It’s Home Office support service was particularly busy when the EU settlement scheme ended.

The youth work team has also had particular successes in helping young Roma people into education and diverting them away from gangs and risky behaviour.

Diana Ferar, who came to Glasgow from Romania, said her neighbours will be “helpless and vulnerable” without the advice service.

The 41-year-old, who works as a cleaner, first used the Rom Romeha service in 2015 when she first arrived in Scotland.

Her husband’s brother was already living in Glasgow and the couple wanted to strive for a better life.

She learned English at an ESOL class in her daughter’s primary school and says she can’t understand recent protests in Glasgow against school-based English lessons.

“It was a good opportunity,” she said, “And when someone is giving you a helping hand you take it.

“If we didn’t have these people and this organisation then I don’t know what we would do because nowhere else gives advice in your own language.

“We thank God for them.”

Sona Balogova, from Slovakia, said she has concerns about vulnerable people in the community who will no longer have anywhere to turn to for help in their own languages.

The 51-year-old was given support to secure a Slovakian passport for her daughter when Community Renewal arranged for the Slovakian Embassy to visit Govanhill.

The Scotsman spoke to several members of the local Roma community who all described the discrimination they face.

One said he had been sacked from his job when his manager found out he is Roma.

Francis Tarcsa is a church pastor from Romania and came to Glasgow in 2018.

The 50-year-old was supported to build a CV and find work through Community Renewal

He took ESOL classes arranged by the charity and was supported to set up his financial affairs and find housing.

“It’s about dignity as well,” he said, “Being able to speak in your own language and being really understood, rather than using a translator.

“Often the interpretation is wrong, which can have a difficult effect when you are dealing with banks or the DWP.”

Community Renewal said they also help wider Glasgow services who come to them for advice on working with Rome groups.

They said, in particular, the NHS midwifery service has relied on them to support with cultural differences around pregnancy and childbirth.

Four of Glasgow’s Muslim-led third-sector organisations - Amina Muslim Women’s Resource Centre, Al-Meezan, Boots and Beards, and Sufi Festivals - also said they have not been recommended for funding.

They said no Muslim-run group received funding in the last three-year cycle either and raised concerns that the Glasgow Community Fund overlooks charities representing ethnicities and religions.

“This is now a pattern, not an anomaly,” said Tariq Mahmood, chairman of the Sufi Festival.

“Our services are culturally competent, trusted, and directly address GCF priorities.

“Repeated exclusion raises serious questions about fairness and the robustness of equality safeguards.”

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said the local authority does not comment on funding decisions.