Council tried to charge £300,000 for repair bill of just £40,000

AN ARCHITECT who challenged Edinburgh council’s £300,000 statutory repair notice bill for a tenement, forcing it to admit £40,000 would cover the work, said he “smelt a rat” after seeing the amount of scaffolding being put up in the city, indicating the system was “out of control”.

Lorn Macneal has 25 years’ experience in conservation work and took action after seeing the builders’ estimate for the block in the New Town where he had a flat. The official notice was issued last January after the owner of one of the flats noticed a leak in a roof light. A chance conversation with the builders revealed that what seemed like a straightforward repair had escalated.

Last night, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in Scotland (RICS) said the city’s handling of statutory repairs notices needed to be revised to restore public faith in the system.

The council’s statutory repairs department is under investigation by Lothian and Borders Police fraud unit and auditor Deloitte. Some 18 members of staff are believed to have been suspended over the past year.

Mr Macneal, whose practice is in St Vincent Street, demanded a meeting with council officials at which he went through each item on the list, questioning the necessity of the works.

In an unusual move, the council agreed to hand back overall responsibility for the project – which had escalated to include replacing two chimneys, pointing all the walls and stripping and re-slating the roof – to the owners of properties in the block, at the corner of Nelson Street and Northumberland Street.

Mr Macneal said: “I was quite brutally frank about what I thought. I was surprised about them handing back responsibility to us as I’d never come across it before. Perhaps it was threatening their system or perhaps they knew there were problems.

“I’d begun to smell a rat when I saw so much scaffolding going up in the city with the council’s name on it. That would certainly have been attractive to owner-occupiers in the days when there were 90 per cent grants.

“The statutory repair notice system has gone completely out of control. This is only the thin end of the wedge and if the fraud allegations the council is facing are proven, the owners will all have to be repaid.”

In legislation unique to Edinburgh, the council can intervene and order repairs to private homes when owners cannot reach agreement. The value of statutory notices issued has rocketed from £9.2 million in 2005 to more than £30m last year.

Graeme Hartley, director of the RICS, said: “If issued correctly, statutory repair notices are a good thing, but the current system in Edinburgh needs to be revised if the property owners are to have faith in it.

“If a homeowner thinks their property needs repair work, whether they have received a statutory notice or not, they should contact an RICS building surveyor who can give a detailed list of what repairs need to be carried out and the likely cost.”

A council spokesman said: “Most owners seek our involvement because they cannot achieve agreement amongst their neighbours on how to proceed, so requests to take back the work are uncommon. However, this could be done if requested.”