Plook on the Plinth: Carbuncle Award for 'the most dismal town in Scotland' axed after backlash

The town in Inverclyde was set to receive the infamous “Plook on the Plinth” trophy in the Carbuncle Awards, run by architecture magazine Urban Realm, earlier this month.

However, the announcement was met with significant backlash, with social entrepreneur Kevin Green rejecting the award at the presentation event and branding the magazine’s visit a “poverty safari".

It was confirmed on Tuesday the magazine’s award is now being officially retired. The award has been replaced with a more positive “Heart On Your Sleeve” trophy, which was awarded to Port Glasgow in a second presentation.

Mr Green, who runs a regeneration project aimed at improving the area through community empowerment, suggested the alternative after he vented his frustrations to the magazine’s editor.

“I told him that Port Glasgow has loads of plans to exploit its potential,” he said. “It’s a lack of money, we’re living in austere times.

“We’ve had the 2008 crash, the cost-of-living crisis and Covid. To come to a town that’s sitting there with shovel-ready plans to do something about it and say ‘you’re a bit naff’ just struck me as a bit of a poverty safari.

“I said to him nobody’s accepting it. It’s the wrong award to the wrong town.”

John Glenday, the editor of Urban Realm, said the magazine would take a different approach from now on after the award was “symbolically binned” at the first handover event.

He said: “Having been chased out of Port Glasgow last week, I was not expecting to return to Port Glasgow so soon, but I am delighted to be back. Fruitful conversations away from the cameras showed that while coming from very different starting points, we are both headed toward the same end, a better Port Glasgow.

“Just as adaptive re-use is the story of the town, so too can it be for the Plook on the Plinth and I am pleased to see the award evolve in response to local demand.”

Hugh Jamieson, a 61-year-old ex-community worker from Port Glasgow, said he was happy the award had been scrapped.

“I just felt it was really negative and stigmatising,” he said. “I grew up here and people are really hard working and decent. So to be stigmatised like that was really appalling.

“The issues the magazine had taken issue with are down to the decline in shipbuilding and depopulation. People were just really scunnered with it. It’s easy to be superior and [it] just seems like it’s kicking people when they’re down.”

Mr Jamieson said a more positive version of the award could help to harness the potential of an area like Port Glasgow.

“I think it’s good for people to aspire to be better and raise their game,” he said. “To be set a challenge like that is terrific.”

Port Glasgow was the eighth town to be awarded the Plook - a Scottish word for pimple - which has been presented on seven occasions since 2000. It was the first recipient since Aberdeen was awarded the prize in 2015.

Cumbernauld in Dunbartonshire has received the award twice.