Dangerous buildings cost council

Works cost over £110k

A law designed to keep the public safe saw Perth and Kinross Council fork out more than £110,000, the Perthshire Advertiser can reveal.

The council stepped in to carry out necessary building works and bill those responsible only once in the past five years, racking up the six figure sum in the process.

As of March this year, around half of the full cost had been recovered from the owners.

Following high-profile cases – including the former St Paul’s Church in Perth and the ongoing concerns about a number of other disused properties around Perth and Kinross – the PA asked Perth and Kinross Council for details about where it had used its powers to claw back costs after ensuring building problems had been resolved to its satisfaction.

Our inquiry surrounded Scotland’s Dangerous and Defective Buildings (Recovery of Expenses) Act which was introduced in 2014 and updated the Buildings Act from 2003 to allow cost recovery.

PKC’s freedom of information team told the PA: “Dangerous building enforcement to undertake work in default has been used once.

“The value of the work was £110,582.36.

“Not all costs have been recovered to date, although more than 50 per cent of this amount has been recovered. Some of the owners have paid in full, others are paying in instalments or haveyet to pay.”

The FOI team did not say where the property was or what works were required.

In previous years when the PA asked about defects at the derelict St Paul’s Church in Perth, PKC told us that it could exercise powers to carry out the repairs and bill the owners.

But in the case of St Paul’s, Perth and Kinross Council, after issuing an urgent works notice and setting a compliance date last year, it lost patience.

It stepped up the response and bought the building, which is now being transformed in a £2million scheme.