A FORMER council leader who helped revive a community devastated by the closure of a steelworks believes the Government should intervene over Corus.

Alex Watson, who led Derwentside District Council before it was replaced by a single unitary authority, was instrumental in the regeneration of Consett.

The town was built on the back of the industry, but the closure of the steelworks in September 1980 put about 3,600 people on the dole with devastating consequences.

Mr Watson said the ripple effect from the mass redundancies meant that twice as many people found themselves out of work as the local economy shrunk.

He said: “It is a disgrace that we pump millions of pounds into the banks and close a steelworks.

“The knock on effect down there will affect 3,000 to 4,000 afterwards, easily.

“There is not a lot of work around and this is not the time to be making people unemployed.”

Closing the steelworks at Consett not only created widespread poverty in the town, but also saw the population fall from 110,000 to 90,000 as people moved away to find work.

It also created a rise in male suicides as men struggled to cope with having no skilled work and their social life taken from them.

Mr Watson added: “This sort of thing creates a lot of depression. The Government should subsidise the plant and keep these people employed.

“The area around Corus will take 20 years to get back to where it is. It is going to be devastating.”

The steelworks at Consett was nationalised in the Sixties, but was forced to close when it was deemed no longer commercially viable.

Derwentside District Council formed a partnership with Dysart Developments to reclaim the contaminated site and attract private investment.

Derwentside College, Mc- Donald’s, KFC, Morrisons and Focus DIY now stand on the site where steel was made before it was shipped around the world.

The council invested heavily in broadband internet infrastructure during the technological revolution of the Nineties, and has since attracted a number of power companies who have changed the countryside skyline with wind farms Mr Watson said: “We had no money – we were skint.

Private finance helped put the area back on the map and industry began taking an interest in the area again.”