After 3 years, £17m ‘legacy’ care home is still not open
A FLAGSHIP care home for the el derly which was part of Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games legacy has failed to open.
The £17million facility is the centrepiece of the Athletes’ Village but is still empty three years after the event.
The property was designed to complement 700 new homes which were converted from the flats that housed competitors including Usain Bolt.
But despite massive pressure on the care system, the brand new beds lie made up but unused at the Riverside Care Home in Dalmarnock, in Glasgow’s east end.
The building – the biggest single investment in care for the elderly in Scotland – remains unoccupied because it has not been granted a completion certificate.
Alison Thewliss, Nationalist MP for Glasgow Central, said: ‘I am very concerned with the utterly unacceptable delay in getting the care home open – this was a key part of the legacy which has not yet been delivered. I am writing a joint letter with my colleague, councillor Greg Hepburn, demanding that the council get a move on and sort this out once and for all.’
Mr Hepburn raised concerns over the home last month and was told by a senior official that builders had not secured a Building Completion Certificate.
A council website charting the project has pictures of the property from October 2013, with the caption: ‘External works complete.’
The l ocal authority subsequently confirmed ‘alleged design and construction defects’ in the work carried out by the private consortium City Legacy Ltd.
Repeated promises by the council over a revised opening date have come and gone. When the athletes went home in August 2014, the council said it would be eight months before it could open.
That date of April 2015 was missed and the council then gave a new date of summer 2016.
Last year it was claimed that the first residents would move in by January. However, they are still in the ageing Fulton Lodge, Loancroft and Peter McEachran homes, which should have been ‘decommissioned’ by now.
New beds and furniture can be seen through the windows of Riverside but the garden is unkempt, with bags of materials and an upturned bench.
Glasgow City Council said: ‘ The care home is expected to be complete by the end of February, with residents moving in in March.
‘Residents and carers have visited this outstanding facility and all are looking forward to the move. We expect the certification to be finalised very shortly.’
An Age Scotland spokesman said: ‘This project has been dogged by continual delay, so we hope that the move-in date of March will now be adhered to.
‘With the increasing pressure on the social care system, it is vital that new facilities are completed on time.’