It's unbelievable' Scunthorpe faces life after steel with 2,700 jobs at risk

"Everyone is despondent," said Roj Rahman when trying to sum up the mood of a town where thousands could be out of work and 160 years of iron and steelmaking history could come to a juddering halt in a few months.

- Mark Brown

Everyone is despondent," said Roj Rahman when trying to sum up the mood of a town where thousands could be out of work and 160 years of iron and steelmaking history could come to a juddering halt in a few months.

"The steelworks is the very fabric of Scunthorpe," he said. "It's not just the steelworks, it's all the small businesses associated with it, all the logistics and so on. Anything that happens at the steelworks has a massive, massive, massive impact on this town."

Rahman is a co-owner of the north Lincolnshire town's football club, which at the weekend offered reduced price tickets to British Steel workers for the home match against Southport. "It was the least we could do," he said. Thankfully, they won.

A few years ago, he researched the people who came to Scunthorpe because of steel work. "Whether it was the Polish, the Ukrainians, the Irish, the Italians, the south-east Asian communities - they were all drawn here by the steelworks," he said.

They included his late father, who came to the UK from what is now Bangladesh and headed to Scunthorpe because of the steelworks. "He worked there 35 years and loved it."

Rahman, who owns Mortz Property Services, was speaking a few days after the Chinese owner of British Steel, Jingye, said it was starting consultations on redundancies. It plans to close two blast furnaces and steelmaking operations in the town, putting 2,700 jobs at risk, as well as a large number of jobs in the supply chain.

Jingye said the Scunthorpe site had run up losses of £700,000 a day. It is understood to have rejected a £500m state rescue package.

There was a mix of anger, sorrow, fear and resignation in Scunthorpe when the Guardian visited. For Rahman, the feeling was shock.