Art school chiefs called to give evidence to MSPs

Glasgow School of Art (GSA) management will be asked to give evidence to MSPs after a Holyrood committee heard of systemic management failures on fire risk.

The art school’s historic Mackintosh Building suffered a devastating fire in June as reconstruction following an earlier blaze in 2014 neared completion.

A panel with links to its famed designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh or to the art school gave evidence to Holyrood’s Culture Committee.

They agreed the building should be rebuilt and an expert panel should oversee this, but were split on whether lessons had been learned from the 2014 fire and what the refurbished building should be used for.

Glasgow Kelvin MSP Sandra White said the GSA board appeared “not fit for purpose”.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh scholar Roger Billcliffe said the building was a “fire trap waiting to happen” due to construction including air vents which acted as chimneys and warned a further blaze would occur if the building is rebuilt.

He said: “The staff are still there that were responsible for it. I don’t want to send them to prison but I want to make sure that they don’t operate a system where they can do it again.”

Former senior employee at the art school, Eileen Reid, said anyone that worked in the school before the first blaze knew it was a fire risk.

Architect Malcolm Fraser said the cause of the second blaze appeared to be a failure of statutory oversight.

Art School management failures have been uncovered