Conservative in Scots town emptied the place (8)
I believe the answer is:
allocate
'place' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'conservative in scots town emptied the' is the wordplay.
'conservative' becomes 'C' (UK political abbreviation).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'scots town' becomes 'alloa' (Scottish town. I am not sure about the 'scots' bit.).
'emptied' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters).
'the' with its centre taken out is 'te'.
'c' placed into 'alloa' is 'alloca'.
'alloca'+'te'='ALLOCATE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for allocate that I've seen before include "Deal" , "Distribute according to a plan" , "Distribute (resources)" , "Assign (resources)" , "Make assignments" .)