Fort mum slams council over alleged house blunder

A Fort William single mother has slammed Highland Council after she says the local authority scrapped an offer of a new house which she had been waiting two years for just a fortnight after originally making the offer.

Alisha Lindsay says she is furious with the way she has been treated by the council.

‘After waiting for two years to move into a new property, the council made me an offer of one elsewhere in Fort William which I accepted,’ Ms Lindsay told the Lochaber Times.

‘Then just two weeks later they informed me they were withdrawing the offer because they had realised the property in question was a bungalow rather than a house and that single-storey properties had to be reserved for people with disabilities.

‘I understand that with disabilities need people certain types of accommodation but they use a points-based system and I qualified.

‘I was originally told I’d be offered the next three-bedroom property that came along and when it did I accepted it. How can it be legal for them to make

Alisha Lindsay says she was offered a new house and then had it withdrawn.

an offer, for me to accept it and then for the council to take it back, to just rip that away from us?

‘My children and I have been waiting two years for this and they were all excited about the move and looking forward to getting away from where we are at the moment and then this happens.

‘I find it frankly unacceptable. We had packed up all our stuff ready to move and then I had to disappoint the kids telling them we weren’t going.

‘I have contacted my MP, Ian Blackford, and hope he can help us because this just isn’t fair.’

The

Lochaber Highland

Times contacted Council for a comment on Ms Lindsay’s situation. However, the local authority told us it was unable to comment on individual circumstances.

But a council spokesperson did tell us: ‘Our housing allocations policy is a points-based process designed to allocate suitable available properties to those applicants in the greatest housing need.

‘Where a ground-floor property becomes available in a particular area, the priority will therefore be to allocate to the applicant with the greatest ground-floor accessible need.

‘The council can confirm that all offers of allocation are provisional and are subject to change depending on circumstances. This is to ensure that the council and its Highland Housing Register partners make the best use of the available housing stock.’