Glasgow council knew this building was dangerous for years. Its collapse left people homeless

Louise Ramsay woke up to fire officers banging on the door of her tenement flat in Glasgow at 1am. The derelict building next door had collapsed and tenants had to be evacuated immediately. They were forced out of their homes with few belongings and encouraged to ask friends and family to house them.

Nearly a month later, Ramsay and her neighbours remain in limbo. The 29-year-old has had to declare herself homeless, move in with her parents two hours away in a town near Dundee and take sick leave from work. She left that night with only her phone, a charger and the clothes she was wearing. Her belongings remain in the flat she is barred from accessing for her safety.

“It has been a complete and utter nightmare where help is flimsily offered but rarely followed up, and there is no action or solution,” Ramsay says.

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The sandstone block on the corner of Albert Drive and Kenmure Street in the Pollokshields area of Glasgow came crashing down shortly after midnight on 12 July. But this followed years of alleged “inaction” from Glasgow City Council regarding the “dangerous” B-listed tenement which burnt down five years earlier.

Residents and representatives had sounded the alarm about the building since the fires. The Big Issue has learnt that costs, the listed status of the building and the pandemic led to delays in redevelopment and culminated in the building’s partial collapse – putting residents’ safety at risk and forcing them into homelessness.

“It’s not fair that we’re being displaced because of the inaction of Glasgow City Council to secure that building,” Ramsay said. “We’re getting pushed into systems that are set up to help those who are in desperate need of help we shouldn’t be having to access.”

Glasgow City Council knew it was a dangerous building. Why was it left standing after five years?

Glasgow City Council has been warned of safety concerns about the building on the corner of Albert Drive and Kenmure Street since it burnt down in a fire in April 2020. There had been another devastating fire a few months earlier, in November 2019, in an adjacent building.

A representative for the local authority confirmed over email, and later clarified with a thumbs-up emoji, that the building which collapsed in July this year was “deemed to be a dangerous building” by the council’s building standards staff after those two fires five years ago.

Residents living in the property were evacuated and it has remained vacant, but there were still concerns for the safety of people in neighbouring properties and for pedestrians. The council determined after the first fire that £4.7 million received in insurance “would not be sufficient to replicate the original” 150-year-old tenement and it was subsequently demolished. There has been a gaping hole there since.

The council has been working with potential developers to redevelop the sites into housing or retail units, but five years after the fires the building hit by the second fire still stood – until its collapse last month.

An owner of one of the flats recently posted on Facebook – in a statement described as “very accurate” by the council representative – that “due to the listed status of the building and the fact that building materials costs had exploded in the pandemic, the cost of restoring the building would be around £4m”.

They claimed that a local housing association explored options to take it on but the “costs proved insurmountable”.

The owner continued that “by the time these dead ends had been reached, another two years had passed”. They claimed that last summer, “owners were called to a meeting with the council and were informed that the building was now on the verge of being unsalvageable and would probably have to be demolished”. 

They added that the “cost of this would have to be met by owners, or we could attempt to find a developer to take on demolition costs and building on the site”. This was estimated to be around half a million pounds in costs, and owners were no longer covered by insurance. 

In May, they were “offered a lifeline by a housing association”. The chief executive of Southside Housing Association Paul McVey confirmed to the Big Issue that it was exploring the potential takeover of the block and future redevelopment, but this did not transpire.

A council spokesperson said: “The block is privately owned and repairs are a matter for the owners and their insurers to address and it can be highly challenging to secure agreements where complex ownership and insurance arrangements are in place. 

“However, the council had been working with the owners to try and find a way forward. I understand ownership was very close to being transferred to a local housing association when the collapse occurred.”

Councillor Jon Molyneux, for Scottish Greens, wrote on Substack the morning after the building fell down that he understood the “anger and frustration that this has been allowed to happen” and that he wished “things had progressed more quickly”. 

He claimed the council has not been “sitting on their hands” and “intensive work” has been carried out over the “past year or so”. Molyneux said he had expected there to be a “significant update” on this within a few weeks, only for that to be halted by the collapse of the building.

For years, the council has been warned of potential dangers at the site of the burnt-down building on Albert Drive. 

Molyneux has raised safety concerns himself. In February 2022, he said in a council meeting that it is “clearly an unsafe environment” and urged the council to use “any influence we can bear to move things forward”, as reported by the local democracy service.

Local residents have also called on the council to “address the fire-damaged building”, including in public forums when giving feedback on the plans for redevelopment of the area. 

John, a 27-year-old resident who has asked for his name to be changed for privacy reasons, said his neighbours had repeatedly contacted the council to ask for action on the building. 

“We were angry at the fact that we were allowed to rent this place and pay council tax,” John says. “I believe if it collapsed that day, it was dangerous prior to that. We heard rubble falling. Our neighbours had reported that to the council and nothing was done.”

Ramsay adds that from the street, pedestrians could see that the building was exposed. “You could see levels of flooring that weren’t there. There were still mattresses on the second floor, all piled up. Right next to me, you could look in and see a washing machine, but the floor in front of it was gone.”

According to Scottish Housing News, an architect reported Glasgow City Council to the police, claiming that the local authority failed in its legal responsibility to maintain the derelict tenement. Police Scotland told the Big Issue there is no ongoing police investigation.

Ramsay says she feels it is fortunate no one was hurt. “If the collapse had happened on the other side of the building, next to my building, it could have brought our wall down and I could have died. I’m not being overly dramatic when I say that. It is outrageous. My letting agent does inspections every six months. They inspected the interior of the building.

“I am in shock that they thought for the last four years it has been suitable for that building to be let out and for them to take my money and increase my rent year on year.”

The aftermath of the collapse

Residents were told after the collapse that it would be 24 to 48 hours before they could return, and they were given 10 minutes to retrieve items they might need from their flats for the night. But more than three weeks later, they remain in the dark about when they might be able to go back and access their belongings again.

“I was hoping that this would get sorted within like a day or two. We were definitely more hopeful at that time than we are now,” John says. 

He believes it may be nine months before the property is safe again. He and his partner are staying with friends and are in the process of securing another rental flat. They are not eligible for financial or housing support as they are migrants with no recourse to public funds.

Ramsay was told that, as a single person, she would only be offered hostel accommodation by the council and was advised to find somewhere else to stay. She says she was encouraged by her estate agent to break her lease with her landlord and find a new place to rent – but she fears that would give her no rights to the items she has in the flat. 

Ramsay and John are just two of 11 households which have been displaced and, to Ramsay’s knowledge, only one has been found new accommodation by the council.

Residents have been encouraged to apply for crisis grants by the council, but these are intended for people on a low income and without savings.

Ramsay breaks into tears as she speaks about the items of sentimental value still in the property – furniture from her grandmother who died two years ago which her family had only just moved in, as well as family jewellery. She worries about photographs of relatives who have died getting damaged in the renovation as she has no digital copies. Her passport is still there.

“It is this limbo period where we’re calling building standards and we’re calling our representatives and begging for scraps of information to know what’s going on. Even when we do get any form of communication through official channels, it is so scarce on information. It makes it so difficult for anyone to plan,” Ramsay adds.

A representative for the council told the Big Issue that “access to homes in cases such as this can only be given when they are deemed to be safe as public safety must come first, and we will advise residents when it is safe to do so”.  

They said that “at present, it is impossible to give a precise timescale for this, and we appreciate this is a frustrating situation for the evacuated residents”. 

“We’ve had little to no sleep since it began,” John says. “The most stressful thing is the uncertainty of it. It’s very anxiety-inducing, especially because the council won’t tell us anything apart from it will take some time.”

He fears it is even more difficult for families with children who were living in the block.

Ramsay says there is “emotional turmoil” to being displaced. She is away from close friends and support only comes from messages or phone calls, or she has to pay £50 on a return train ticket to “just to have a hug” from people she loves “at a really difficult time”. 

“It feels as though you’re being left alone and left behind by those that should be doing more for you to ensure that you feel safe and you feel secure and you feel that Glasgow is a place that you can still call a home.”

Could this happen again in Glasgow?

There have been similar incidents in Glasgow previously. The Herald reported that in spring 2024, the India warehouse in Laurieston was demolished after a partial roof collapse. In Shawlands, a tenement “with a major crack in its facade” was held up with a timber prop for more than three years. There are fire-damaged tenements across Glasgow waiting for restoration.

“It seems like it’s a pattern with the council to leave these buildings derelict, wait for a long time like they are in a helpless situation, like nothing can be done about them,” John claims. “Now that it’s affected our building, they are proposing to clear out the rubble but not stabilise the walls.

“If that happens, and if they leave the building without stabilising, and God forbid if there’s another storm, those walls might fall again. That could just be a chain reaction of buildings falling, because there’s inaction from the council and everything is left for the insurers.”

There are an estimated 570,000 tenement flats in Scotland, accounting for more than a quarter of urban housing, according to official estimates. They are characterised by their sandstone material, large bay windows and period features.

But more than a quarter of pre-1919 buildings are believed to face disrepair to critical infrastructure, including their walls, floors and roof, according to CityLets.

Ramsay says: “Tenements in Glasgow are not being kept to stable living standards. It’s not a unique problem, and it’s not something that might not happen to other people. It’s highly likely this could happen in other areas across Glasgow, especially on the south side.”

The owner of one of the flats agreed, in their Facebook post, that “in Glasgow we all live on top of each other, and there has been an inescapable sense since the fire happened that this could happen to anyone and that our system is not as prepared for this kind of eventuality”. 

They said that “in every turn in our process of trying to sort this out we were confronted with the fact that this was a situation that no one had clear answers or resolutions”.

For Ramsay, who has lived in the city since she was a university student, Glasgow is no longer a place she feels she can rely on to keep her safe.

“One of the things I love about Glasgow is the sense of community, especially in the south side, especially in Polokshields East. But what’s letting me down is my council, and those that work for my council, and those that hold my council accountable,” she says.

“I’ve lived in Glasgow on and off for 10 years, and I’ve loved Glasgow, and I want to still love Glasgow, but the way that the council and my local representatives and their lack of action has really just taken away a part of the love that I had for Glasgow.”

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