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Press and Journal
4 days ago
- Business
- Press and Journal
David Knight: Council bosses need to act on Raac before Balnagask becomes broken-down ghetto of rebellion overlooking cruise ship harbour
There's a lot to be said for the personal touch – it can knock down walls and win people over with one small gesture. Unless the walls are made out of Raac (Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete), it would seem. Someone famous once wrote how American bank tellers were trained to make customers feel as though they were old friends. I felt something similar when I met the King in Aberdeen when he was still Prince of Wales. A brief encounter of just a few minutes left a vivid lasting impression. It's just a knack which he has perfected over the years: as though you were special and the most important person in the room at that precise moment. Let's now take a look at the Raac people at Torry in Aberdeen, for example. Specifically, owners who bought their homes from the council or other private proprietors who had previously completed similar transactions with the authority. They now face ruin due to weaknesses in Raac 'concrete' used in construction years before (more Aero-looking than concrete, it's been said). Devastated to see Aberdeen City Council offering to 'rescue' their homes at slashed knockdown prices, at up to £50,000 less than they might have otherwise received The council much prefers to describe their offers as realistic 'current market value', but don't be silly – we know which is the more accurate description. An apparent lack of personal touch from council leaders amid such a personal crisis rankles with families, who plead to be compensated fairly. Official valuers come and go, cut-price offers made and that seems to be about it. This aloofness issue surfaced again when award-winning P&J journalist Lindsay Bruce grilled co-council leader Christian Allard about all things Raac. When asked pointedly about his lack of one-to-ones with those who were suffering he didn't really have a convincing answer. Actually he appeared to squirm like a seal out of water. Many a leader has come unstuck by not being around in person when disaster strikes a community. Now owners are digging in for a long battle. The authority cannot brick this up behind a fireplace and hope people abandon the fight or die off. A few days ago, community campaigners backed by the P&J met the council to offer compromises in search of a solution to cover their serious losses – incurred through no fault of their own. A difficult challenge as the council has appeared unwilling to budge so far. The event resonated with echoes of an infamous episode when Aberdeen bus-gate protesters took their own sensible compromises to the council in an attempt to protect city businesses from ruin – and had the door slammed in their faces, so to speak. Raac owners vow to stay-put in condemned houses until they get what they're owed as their once-vibrant community sadly goes to ruin around them. Do council bosses really want to see a broken-down ghetto of rebellion overlooking their shiny new cruise-ship harbour, with waves of affluent tourists passing by? Resembling surviving structures in a bombed-out wartime street; a monument to past follies? Call me simplistic or plain old-fashioned, but surely the buck goes back to the council in some form or other? After all, the properties carried serious hidden structural defects at the time they were offloaded to the public – irrespective of what was known then or now about Raac. It's now become depressingly normal for institutions to recompense victims today for yesterday's mistakes by past colleagues. And especially as warning bells were sounded by another Scottish council which condemned Raac houses nearly a quarter of a century ago. Is it fair to assume Aberdeen officials were aware of this and had assessed its impact on local owners? One Torry family member struck a chord with a particularly memorable quote. 'When they really want to do something they'll always find the money,' he said. Meaning governments and councils will always find the cash for any number of ideological projects to which suit their agenda. Or unless they happen to be a doctor, nurse, bin worker or train driver who wield enormous disproportionate power to win generous pay rises backed by dire threats to public health and safety. But not necessarily for the likes of Raac victims in Torry. If you're scraping a living in Torry you pose no threat and can be pushed around – no matter how unjust it is. Just like pensioners who discovered they were dispensable when Starmer and Reeves stole winter fuel payments from their back pockets. Do we now look to Swinney to unlock the door to housing cash or can Aberdeen Council be creative within its own housing budget? A roof is only a roof, but we feel the strain – and therefore the pain – of living beneath it when the world is about to cave in. David Knight is the long-serving former deputy editor of The Press and Journal To read more about the Raac crisis and our campaign click here. Trapped by Raac: 5000 reasons to keep fighting for Aberdeen homeowners impacted by concrete crisis
Press and Journal
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Press and Journal
Christian Allard: 'Raac is the next Post Office scandal without government help'
Torry families Trapped by Raac charged us with pinning down Aberdeen City Council co-leader Christian Allard – to answer their questions on the concrete crisis. After spending months with these Balnagask homeowners, we've heard their concerns and criticisms, shared their stories and launched a campaign to join them in a fight for justice. In an with Lindsay Bruce – for the first time since the Raac bombshell dropped – we put Councillor Allard in the hot seat. We asked: CA: They all got a letter. CA: What do you think the letters say? CA: So what does it say? CA: It says contact us for support and we'll help you through. We can't force people to give them support. What do you want? For me to knock on the door? We had sessions [extends arms to suggest a large session]. CA: No, no, a large session with one-to-one support. Okay. We had 10 officers. 10 officers, and they were meeting family to family. One-to-one support. We didn't do a public meeting because what does that show? It shows what? Everybody's in a different situation. You are tenants and you are owner occupiers, you are private tenants, you are landlords. Will be the one who shouts the loudest who will be heard. So you need to have that one-to-one support. And we have extended that offer all the way through. It's still rare for people to want it. But we can't force people to do it. CA: I can't comment about an individual case. But if you give me the name, I'll look into it. CA: I understand, and I understand as well that as a much as I think our team are fantastic doing what they do, that's stretched them to the limits. Our level of support has maybe not been as good between one, and another one. I can understand that. CA: I want to make it very clear when I talked about success, I was talking about the relocation of our tenants. CA: And the work put through. Now, it's not a success for tenants. Nobody wanted to be relocated, maybe a few did, but on the whole nobody wanted to be relocated. Nobody wanted to be in that situation. So that is not a success. What I'm talking about is the operation put in place and our officers doing a fantastic job to deal with this. It's so difficult. You have to deal one-to-one, with each person. It breaks your heart to hear the stories. You will have experienced similar as a journalist. It's a very difficult task. CA: I don't meet one-to-one. CA: Because it's silly. You know, it's officers to do that. I'm an elected member. They contact me and I respond to them. I meet them in public meetings. CA: I think it would be unrealistic for me to knock on doors of tenants or owner occupiers… to tell them what? You know, it's officers who do the work. If they want to contact me and they do, I respond to them. They've got their groups – which are a very important – they meet regularly. But I'm not here to do either the job of our fantastic team, or to do the fantastic job that groups organised by themselves are doing. This is not my role, you know. People are all welcome to contact me at any time. CA: In which context do I meet them? I'm not going to knock on doors and disturb people, if that's one thing. What I can do and what I've done since the start is to go to every meeting that I can go to. Where people can call me names, by all means. Because I have felt their frustration, I felt the anger, and we are right to be frustrated and to be angry. But I don't know, are you asking me to actually go and knock at the doors of people? CA: [Mr Allard points to an email from March 2024 addressed to then First Minister Humza Yousaf.] CA: That's the answer. [Points to email] CA:[Nods]. CA: The same thing that I asked a local government minister, when he first came at the end of 2023. I took him through the houses in Torry and I said we need greater flexibility or any kind of funding, for local authority, tenants, and our owner occupiers. CA: What specific do you want me to ask? CA: It's not a claim I'm telling you! [Points to dossier of emails] [LB reads emails] CA: We had many meetings and many correspondences. I have asked and had many, many meetings. We had meetings last Friday [with Paul McLennan]. CA: Which we asked the same thing again. Can we have funding? Please, we need access to funding now. CA: Response from two Governments so far is there is no Raac funding. CA: Do you know how much it's going to cost me for the owner occupiers? No, because I said we do a one-to-one. CA: We've got two obstacles. First obstacle, there's no Raac funding anyway. Obstacle number one. Obstacle number two, I can tell you how much we have spent so far. I can't tell you on how much I'm going to spend. Because as you said, some of the owner occupiers have not interacted yet. [Long pause] CA: We've given details of where we are all the time. All approximate figures. Of course we did, because we have to. CA: I was not there. I was not invited to the meeting. So I can't comment on what Paul said. CA: But what do you mean no detailed proposal? How can I give a detailed proposal for something I've not secured? CA: We did. We did broad figures, approximate figures, of how much it will cost. CA: They would be exchanged between our officials. CA: I can check it. I can check if you want. CA: Who me? CA: Me? CA: How would we know this? CA: By whom? CA: But why on earth would somebody say that? It's got nothing to do with them, whatever I think, or don't think. If somebody wants to know what I think, they should ask me, like you are doing today. CA: First of all, I've not seen the papers yet. I don't know how it will end up. So I don't know what officers recommend. CA: I'll follow officers' recommendations as much as I can, if I disagree with officers, I'll disagree with officers, but I can't answer until I know exactly what the recommendation is of the officers. CA: Why would I do that? Imagine if this is the recommendation of the officers, and I will block them. Why would I do that? Now, if officers' recommendation is no, then I'll have to look at it and make my mind up, and it's not me only. It's not only the SNP and Liberal Democratic parties… CA: If I was not open to, I don't think we would have decided, as a council, as a local authority, to look at it. CA: What? CA: I've changed at least three times on bus gates, gone to two round tables. If I could have avoided all that and did what you just said I would have done it. On the contrary, I kept on speaking about it and I kept on changing. CA: We have not made up our mind up yet, as you know, and when the group went to us and said that they wanted us to have an open mind we said, yes, bring the proposals to us, we'll look at them, and we'll take them to committee and decide. One thing can't be done, and it would be very strict on that. I don't want people to live in these houses, a day more than they are living in them. You know, for all that pressure, whether it's financial, mental life, or physical health. In terms of physical health – something can happen, it's very high risk. And I will not give people false hope. I can't make promises. CA: I never have been. CA: No, it's never enough because it's through no fault of your own. It's no fault of your own. And to be truthful, I know why the petition was created. They put on it for a Raac UK fund to be created, and they put on it about a public inquiry. And I didn't sign it at the time because a public inquiry is for 10 or 20 years time. We need to have help now, we don't need help in 10 or 20 years time. Never mind this. Public enquiries can be an absolute nightmare. You know, they compensate people when we're dead, you've seen what happened with the Post Office, you know. It's just a scandal. So I signed it when you took over the campaign, because I thought, okay, if it's validated by the Press and Journal and by the other Raac group, I was happy to sign it, of course, because as you can see, it's the same. I asked for the same thing from day one. We need to unlock that funding. That will be the best solution. CA: I don't know. I don't know what the limitation will be, you know. There will be limitations on cladding as well. There are limitations on everything. Will it give us a lot more flexibility to our programme financially? Yes. CA: No. Legally, no. But that doesn't mean we haven't got a moral obligation. As I said, earlier on, you know, anybody in the city in financial difficulty can come to Aberdeen City Council and they'll get support. Listen to Mr Allard's response here:
STV News
09-05-2025
- Business
- STV News
Government urged to use unspent £20m to fund RAAC work
A desperate plea to use an unspent £20m fund to help residents affected by the RAAC crisis has been turned down. The cash was found sitting in the City Region Deal's housing infrastructure fund. It was launched by the Scottish Government to be used across the north-east back in 2016 as part of the 10-year deal – but it has never been spent. There were hopes the money could be used to help with the ongoing RAAC crisis as Torry residents met SNP housing minister Paul McLennan during his visit last week. Labour councillors submitted an emergency call to the council's finance committee recently regarding the cash. They wanted the sum to be used to offer RAAC victims the full value of their houses or to replace the material in homes across Balnagask. Torry councillor Simon Watson said the pot of cash was a 'little glimpse of hope' for residents. But, he also warned that the £20m could be lost if it's not spent in the near future and slammed local authority bosses for not doing enough to help. 'In the last 14 months there has been no formal approach from Aberdeen City Council to the Scottish Government for funding,' he said. 'Our council leaders have not even asked for support for our residents.' Mr Watson noted that council co-leaders Christian Allard and Ian Yuill both sit on the City Region deal committee and oversee the spending of its funds. However, he was aware that members of the City Region Deal and Scottish Government would need to rubber-stamp the spend. Finance boss Alex McLellan argued that the funding solution needs to come in the form of a UK-wide Raac fund to support affected tenants as well as homeowners. He said this would alleviate the 'financial devastation' caused by raac. McLellan stated this was the council's position and asked chief executive Angela Scott to engage with Scottish Government on the matter. He also noted that the City Region Deal cash was 'not just our money' and was shared with Aberdeenshire Council. 'No stone will be left unturned in terms of accessing funding,' McLennan said. He also admitted the council would need 'significantly more' than £20m, saying: 'That won't touch the sides in terms of demolition and rebuild of the area, we need more. 'I would be surprised if cash-strapped Aberdeenshire Council were willing to give up that funding. 'It's not funding that we can snap our fingers and use.' He suggested the council may have to raise council tax or cut services to pay for private homeowners if funding can't be found from the UK Government. Meanwhile, council co-leader Christian Allard praised the 'success' of the rehoming process. 'The vast majority of people have left their houses and have been rehomed. 'The housing team has worked hard to rehome so many of our tenants, it's incredible work they have had to do through no fault of our own, the tenants or owners.' Allard noted the 'financial struggle' the council and residents have faced, saying the local authority earmarked £3m to help tenants move out. 'We promised our owners and occupiers that we would do the same for them,' he stated. But, he argued that the UK Government ultimately had to help out by creating a national Raac fund. The bubbly material was found to be in 500 council houses across Balnagask last year. Aberdeen City Council intends to knock down properties affected by the potentially dangerous material by 2028. This comes despite the fact that some homeowners are refusing to sell their beloved homes. They are fighting for fair compensation as they currently face average losses of between £35,000 and £55,000 for the sale of their homes. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
Press and Journal
08-05-2025
- Business
- Press and Journal
Council boss hails 'success' of rehoming Torry Raac tenants - while refusing to use spare millions to help homeowners hit by crisis
A desperate plea to use an unspent £20 million fund to help residents affected by the Raac crisis in Torry has been turned down. The cash was discovered in a shared fund bestowed upon the entire north-east for housing improvements almost 10 years ago – but has never been spent. There were hopes the money could be used to help with the ongoing Raac crisis as Torry residents met SNP housing minister Paul McLennan during his long-overdue visit last week. And it comes as The Press and Journal fights for the affected homeowners with out Trapped by Raac campaign. Labour councillors this week pleaded for finance bosses to investigate using this £20m to resolve the crisis. They argued it could be used to offer Raac victims the full value of their houses – rather than the current rate – or to fix them up. Torry councillor Simon Watson said the pot of cash was a 'little glimpse of hope' for residents. He also warned that the £20m could be lost if it's not spent in the near future… 'In the last 14 months there has been no formal approach from Aberdeen City Council to the Scottish Government for funding,' he said. 'Our council leaders have not even asked for support for our residents.' Mr Watson noted that council co-leaders Christian Allard and Ian Yuill both sit on the committee overseeing the spending of these funds. However finance boss Alex McLellan argued that the funding solution needs to come in the form of a UK-wide 'Raac fund' to support affected tenants as well as homeowners. He said this would alleviate the 'financial devastation' caused by the crumbly concrete. Mr McLellan confirmed this was the council's position – and asked chief executive Angela Scott to engage with Scottish Government on the matter. He also noted that the City Region Deal cash was 'not just our money' and was shared with Aberdeenshire Council. 'No stone will be left unturned in terms of accessing funding,' Mr McLennan assured his opponents. He also admitted the council would need 'significantly more' than £20m, saying: 'That won't touch the sides in terms of demolition and rebuild of the area, we need more. 'I would be surprised if cash-strapped Aberdeenshire Council were willing to give up that funding. 'It's not funding that we can snap our fingers and use.' And he suggested the council may have to raise council tax or cut services to pay for private homeowners if funding can't be found from the UK Government. Meanwhile, council co-leader Christian Allard praised the 'success' of the rehoming process. 'The vast majority of people have left their houses and have been rehomed,' he said. 'The housing team has worked hard to rehome so many of our tenants, it's incredible work they have had to do through no fault of our own, the tenants or owners.' Mr Allard noted the 'financial struggle' the council and residents have faced, saying the local authority earmarked £3m to help tenants move out. 'We promised our owners and occupiers that we would do the same for them,' he stated. But, he argued that the UK Government ultimately had to help out by creating this national Raac fund. The bubbly material was found to be in 500 council houses across Balnagask last year. Aberdeen City Council intends to knock down properties affected by 2028. This comes despite the fact that some homeowners are refusing to sell their beloved properties. They are fighting for fair compensation as they currently face average losses of between £35,000 and £55,000 for the sale of their homes.
