Property row will have lasting damage

The city certainly needed a review of the council’s building maintenance strategy: however it didn’t need the “over the top” response to its newly-created policies.

Gordon and I were the technical team chosen by a television documentary team that dealt with the issue under the category of “property scam”. This gave us insights into what’s been going on. Like Gordon, I have been involved in helping several owners to challenge such “over the top” council work.

Whatever the papers and TV allege about the juicier aspects of the mess – corruption, criminal activity, overcharging of owners, substandard work, cosy relationships between the council and its contractors derived from restricted tender lists – all of this is the consequence of the fundamental defect in the council: the lack of an ability to tackle and run complex technical projects.

Building conservation requires years of training, solid knowledge of traditional buildings and honest toil. However, the council basically created a huge experiment in managing the capital’s privately-owned historic buildings, often involving resources that didn’t measure up to the challenge of doing maintenance work on such a large scale. All the organisation really had to do was honest repairs for the owners. However, for its own reasons the council chose to develop it into a huge business.

It is clear that much of the problems stemmed from a lack of a consistent and expert implementation of its conservation philosophy, a complete breakdown in governance and a total failure in the management of all the technical processes vital to building conservation. Within this chaotic environment it must have been easy for some to spot personal opportunities for gain.

Most of the buildings, historic or not, which I studied fell victim to the wrong interpretation of the council’s conservation policy.

Such an enforced “conservation philosophy” needed people with a keener eye than usual, the steadiest of hands on risk management and a long experience of traditional tenement repairs. Instead, “statutory orders” flew about like confetti, many initiated by advice from contractors and then enforced by inexperienced surveyors. In most cases, the owners were the last to find out. This isn’t criminal activity, just incompetence.

From what I have learned from the many project files I read, the council conducted minimal pre-contract surveys, failed to make correct assessments of technical priorities, made errors in specifications and then allowed all manner of new problems to escalate on site once a contractor was appointed.

This created more chaos for owners, delays, inadequate supervision, poor quality work and massive increases in cost to which the owners had no prior knowledge until they received an invoice.

All its failures have potentially shortened the lives of many buildings and, I suspect, reduced the value of some properties.

Any architect running tenement conservation work which doubles in cost runs the risk of being sacked; here I saw evidence of cost over-runs of three to six times the original pricing. And the council never let on.

Given that Edinburgh has world heritage status because of its architecture in a unique setting, the current situation needs a solution. All I see, however, is a council wanting its money back and seeking to blame a few staff for unspecified crimes.

I fear that having seen the jailing of a few people, the council will want to move on, not revealing much, but having “learned some lessons”.

Well, this situation will move on only after owners have been compensated for the overcharging, have had money back for unnecessary work and had all the botched work rectified. Sadly this will have to be at the cost to the public purse unless they can find somebody to sue.

John Addison

Director

Addison Conservation & Design, Midlothian Innovation Centre, Roslin