Towers of Strength: How Ukrainian refugees found home in a Scottish town

From the 14th floor, Olga can see the sunrise over Glasgow. 

The view from her flat near the top of the High Coats tower block is unobstructed – there are few buildings as tall in Coatbridge, the North Lanarkshire town that she and hundreds of other displaced Ukrainians now call home.

When Olga and her sons were preparing to move into their new Scottish home, she made just one request of the council’s resettlement team, asking if it could have sunlight. They had spent five months living on board a cruise ship used for emergency accommodation for Ukrainians escaping the war and little natural light got into her cabin. “On the boat I couldn’t open my window,” she says. “When I got here, the first thing I saw was the large, large windows and thought, ‘I will open them’.”

Known as High Coats, the 1960s-built block overlooking the town’s Main Street was part of a mid-century drive towards efficient, modern housing. But enthusiasm for sky-high living waned over decades and by 2017 it was decided that local towers, both high and low-rise, had to go. As part of a major strategy known as the Plan for North Lanarkshire, the council agreed to raze and replace them with 5,000 new affordable homes for rent by 2035.

But when the Scottish Government asked town halls to help house thousands of displaced Ukrainians, 200 empty properties in High Coats and Birkshaw Tower in nearby Wishaw were overhauled and offered – fully furnished and upgraded with new bathrooms and kitchens – to families looking to move on from emergency accommodation in hotels and on cruise ships.

Around 400 Ukrainians, mostly women and children, now live at the sites and are supported by a jigsaw of interlocking services including housing, social work, finance, education and health. 

We started our lives twice already: the first time when we were born, then settling in Scotland

The innovative Warm Scottish Welcome scheme was backed by £6m in Scottish Government funding and was the first of its kind. Officials determined that it would be cheaper and more beneficial than other forms of temporary housing. But work continues to bring down tower blocks and clear the way for lower-level alternatives in the region, and eventually that will include High Coats and Birkshaw. And so all of those living there know it is a stepping stone, not a final destination, despite the benefits the Ukrainian influx is said to have brought to the area. “There are still some Scottish residents in the block,” development officer Nicola Barlow says of High Coats, which is close to shops, pubs and services. “They tell us they don’t want to leave now because it’s back to how it used to be. They love the atmosphere and everybody talks to each other.”

Barlow, a Coatbridge native, is part of the team behind the rehoming project. Focusing on adult learning and resettlement, over the years she and her council colleagues have helped newcomers from countries like Afghanistan, Syria and Sudan adjust to life in the west of Scotland. It’s work she’s still engaged in along with the distinct project set up to manage the local response to the Ukraine crisis. With the help of partner organisations and the drive of the women themselves, the team has supported many to start college, find jobs, join church groups and sports clubs, and take up volunteering. “Main Street has got a bit more vibrant,” she says, “and that’s from me being born and brought up here. You hear it anecdotally – people are seeing somewhere that wasn’t thriving as much as it had been in the past come to life again. It’s bringing local people back out to the town centre where they had maybe fallen away from that.”

As of August last year, the Scottish Government had been ‘super-sponsor’ to 38,304 people from Ukraine, providing them with the visa coverage needed to work and study. Another 9,492 have been sponsored by individuals through the Homes for Ukraine scheme, which encouraged members of the public to open up their spare rooms to those fleeing the war.

It has taken a great deal of effort from Barlow and colleagues to make the Warm Scottish Welcome a success. A management board was created to bring together input from across council services and, with the area little-known to Ukrainians, a welcome brochure was created to showcase the benefits of coming to North Lanarkshire, such as access to services. Meter replacements were fast-tracked to make properties liveable and employability and other support initiatives were developed. The flats were ready on time and within budget and where Ukrainian tenants have left, the homes have been re-let to others from the country. Tenant groups have been set up in each tower and an annual conference organised to ensure their experiences are shared and learning taken from them. For some of those considering their future, North Lanarkshire has become an option for a sustainable new life.

“My sons didn’t smile for months,” says Olga of her teenagers after their “stressful” relocation. “After settling in Coatbridge, after starting to attend the local school, they found friends.”

With bikes stationed outside, the community flat on the ground floor of High Coats has become a hub for classes, activities and drop-ins. English language sessions are held here, as are meetings of the children’s club, and art created by residents decorates the walls. Kateryna, who lives in Birkshaw, wishes her block had the same facility and says that while her daughter has taken up taekwondo and clarinet lessons, it has been harder for her to fully adapt. 

The family had been living on a ship docked in Edinburgh before moving to North Lanarkshire, and the change was “stressful”, she says. She’s been cut off from her career in insurance and is now working in a nursery, one of many Ukrainians to take up jobs thanks to a local recruitment drive targeted at hard-to-fill posts. She enjoys working with the kids but misses big city life in Ukraine, where she was one of 300,000. In Wishaw, the headcount is one tenth of that. But her daughter “loves it here and has many friends”.  

But it’s hard for Kateryna to talk about the future with so much unknown.

A war veteran and his son look at destroyed Russian military equipment in Kyiv | Alamy

Next month Ukrainians will mark an unwanted anniversary when the current conflict reaches its third year. It was 24 February 2022 when Russian forces invaded. Since then, all hopes of a cessation of violence have been dashed and it is estimated that one million lives have been lost. 
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attacks followed almost a decade of fighting in the east of Ukraine between government troops and separatists backed by the Kremlin. And as 2025 began, Russian forces were gaining ground in the Donbas region. Not only has new US President Donald Trump failed to live up to his pledge to  stop the fighting within 24 hours of taking office, but he also cautioned that Ukraine should “probably” prepare for less American aid.

On a visit to Kyiv, Keir Starmer told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky that “we are with you not just today, for this year or the next, but for 100 years – long after this terrible war is over and Ukraine is free and thriving once again.”

Lesia, a teacher, who has secured a job with the resettlement team, has seen the toll on her people first-hand during visits home to see her parents. “People are not okay,” she says. “They’re different. People don’t smile, people are angry, they are always depressed. The mood in Ukraine is not healthy now.”

And with so much to worry about, the women agree that it helps to connect with their own culture from afar. Much effort is made in North Lanarkshire to mark important events – a Ukrainian evening held in Coatbridge heritage attraction Summerlee provided a chance to wear the national dress, as did nativity celebrations organised before Christmas. Those came one month after members of the community remembered the Holodomor, the devastating famine caused by the policies of the Stalin government in the 1930s in which millions of Ukrainians died. So far from home, there is an effort to make sure that children, including some who were very young when they had to leave, grow up with a sense of where they came from.

But Scotland is making a mark on these children, and Iryna, a graphic designer from Kyiv, says her son, now eight, has a Scottish accent. She watches him speak English with his friends so fluently that sometimes she can’t catch what they’re saying. And she wonders what the future holds for them. “We’re fully integrated,” she says. “My son is in school; he has friends and hobbies here. Even if the war stops, it won’t be a good thing for a child to start again.”

“What should we prioritise as parents? Stability,” Olga adds. “A safe life, mental wellbeing and education, these are the most important things for children.

Ukrainian independence day celebrations in North Lanarkshire | Supplied

“People in Scotland are relaxed, they’re sure about their future. They plan their holidays – in winter they know what they will be doing in August. In Ukraine, we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. 

“We started our lives twice already: the first time when we were born, then settling in Scotland. It would be too hard to start a third time in another place.”

Resettlement manager Eleanor Rafferty considers the sense of security and comfort reported by tenants as evidence that the project is working. The whole ethos, she says, “is that we provide the best possible experience” for the displaced families and “they will have as much of an opportunity as anyone else who lives in North Lanarkshire” to thrive. “The work that people on the team have done – and they’ll not admit to it… We got a moment’s notice, literally, that there was a bus arriving and everybody just rushed. After almost three years, the team now know the people they work with. It was never just ticking a box.”

Fulton MacGregor, MSP for Coatbridge and Chryston, praises the service and says it’s now common to hear teenagers switching between languages in local schools. “It’s all been very, very positive,” he says. “They’ve entered the fabric of the community, there are lots of different things happening – during the Euros in the summer a community centre put on the Ukraine games for them and there was an atmosphere where they could get behind the team. 

“When the flats went up, everybody wanted them, and they became great communities. Over time that changed but now they’ve been regenerated to a high standard and it’s brought new community benefits. The kids are in the schools, they are in the colleges, but we’re fully aware they didn’t come here for prosperity and there are obviously people wanting to go home. We do what we can to support them, but it can be difficult. Coatbridge was built on immigration – we have a very large Irish Catholic population and a large Polish population – and we want to see everyone feel welcome here, for as long as they stay here.”

“It’s about integration, real integration,” says Barlow. She finds Ukrainians are “more independent” than other groups she has worked with and “formed their own community” with little need for encouragement. “Resettlement is traumatic,” she explains. “The initial part is tough and it’s about supporting people, but then it’s about life, it’s about building that life and just empowering them.”