Defusing the city’s tenement timebomb

RepAiRs - p4/5

IT is one of those figures that should make us all sit up and pay attention.

Today we reveal that 45% of Glasgow’s private homes are in “urgent need of repair”.

The problem? The city’s historic pre-1919 tenement buildings are being neglected by their owners.

With bills to pay, many of us, it turns out, just don’t prioritise regular maintenance of our homes.

Not least when they come on top of factor fees – and even the very idea of, say, a new roof can set neighbour against neighbour. The council, rightly, is worried. It has a backlog of emergency repairs to some 4000 flats and 300 shops. These are the fixes it is forced to do – because propertyowners haven’t.

Council bosses have now set aside more than £8m for such work. This, of course, is not enough. But the local authority is also bracing itself, reluctantly, to bang together the heads of property owners who are not prepared to agree to bills.

This is not an easy situation. And we must have sympathy with those who struggle to pay.

But there is something huge at stake here: the very face of historic Glasgow.

Without pre-1919 tenements neighbourhoods like Govanhill just woundn’t be the same.

We all need to protect our unique architectural heritage: tenements.