Home Truths: How powers to clean up private rentals were used just twice in 10 years

From the doorway of a takeaway, a woman calls out asking why she hasn’t seen Soryia Siddique on TV. “I didn’t see you in the parliament,” the woman says. “No,” says Siddique, “I’m not an MSP, I’m a councillor.” She shares details of upcoming surgeries with the woman and asks her to get in touch. 

The sun has brought plenty of residents to the streets of Govanhill and Siddique is met with nods and waves as she walks along Allison Street. The Glasgow City Council member has represented the area since 2012 and then, as now, the larger part of her casework is related to housing.

Around 18,000 people live in these 0.33 square miles. The area is amongst the most densely populated in the country and is also one of its most diverse.

Historically associated with migration – Highlanders settled here, as did people from Ireland, Italy and Pakistan – that link continues today and around 90 languages are spoken in its streets and closes, including French, Romani, Turkish and Farsi. 

Like others nearby, Allison Street is flanked by Victorian tenements. Many of the flats above its grocers, clothes shops and takeaways are owned by landlords in the private rental sector. Today the street is clean and light glitters from sequinned outfits in store windows as Siddique talks about the many improvements she’s seen to the district, with its proliferation of cafes.

But 10 years ago conditions were so poor that the neighbourhood became the country’s first Enforced Enhancement Area (EEA), with the council gaining additional powers to combat dilapidation, overcrowding, infestation and anti-social behaviour, all related to private lets.

Children celebrate Govanhill International Festival & Carnival | Alamy

That was in 2015 and covered four blocks. A second designation three years later covered 18 more. The Scottish Government says EEA powers “made a significant contribution to improving standards” here. But in 2025, Govanhill is still the only place in the country to ever hold the status. In fact, the government is unaware of any other attempts to use it elsewhere. 

Siddique, who campaigned for the measure, wonders why. “My hopes were and still are for it to enhance living standards. Considering how much it was celebrated at the time, why haven’t other places used it?”

Indeed, the measure was launched to some fanfare. But for Ruairi Kelly, Glasgow City Council’s convener for housing, development, built heritage and land use, it doesn’t have transformational effects. “It’s quite clearly not a silver bullet,” he tells Holyrood. 

“Glasgow was at the forefront of lobbying for it and while there have been improvements in Govanhill, it still represents one of the more challenging areas in the city. There remain a number of social and service delivery issues that were present there to begin with. Govanhill is still the only area with a standing bed bug team.”

Created in an amendment to the Housing (Scotland) Act 2014, which brought in mandatory registration for private landlords, EEAs gave extra powers to councils who applied for them. Councils body Cosla did not respond to requests for its take on why more bids haven’t been made. But when asked if there’s a lack of awareness of the policy, the Scottish Government said it is “up to local authorities to decide whether they apply for designation as part of their approach to improving and enforcing standards in the private rented sector. “Glasgow City Council has made use of the Enhanced Enforcement Areas Scheme and reported that it made a significant contribution to improving standards in the private rented sector.” 

But a local government source told Holyrood the high evidence threshold may have acted as a deterrent for some.

Govanhill from above | Alamy

Where a need was proven over a single tenement, a street or a whole postcode area, EEA status allowed local authority officers to inspect properties and force entry in cases of non-compliance. It also granted enhanced background checks on landlords and the means to compel production of insurance and other certificates related to tenant safety and rights. 

Rogue landlords have been struck off as a result after failing to bring their flats up to tolerable standards. Hundreds of flats have also been bought from the private sector by social landlords over the period, which has seen control of the council pass from Labour to the SNP.

When those processes started, Siddique received emails from residents of other districts calling for EEAs in their areas. But the move didn’t make her as popular with landlords and she remembers an angry phone call from a man complaining about the change. “It was the right thing to do,” she says, “and that was the most important thing.

“There were closes that didn’t have bannisters. There were closes where you were walking up the stairs and you would feel drips on you because there was water coming in.”

That’s changed in part as more factors have been engaged, Siddique says, giving tenants a “go-to person” responsible for addressing the upkeep of communal areas. But there remain persistent problems with waste collection, vermin and overcrowding in an area where larger-than-average families, often from minority ethnic backgrounds, are crying out for three- or four-bedroom homes. “Families are on social housing lists for sometimes a decade or more,” she says. “They complain that their children don’t have the space to study. It impacts them, it’s disadvantaging their children and some of them don’t see an end to it.”

There is simply a shortage of suitable properties even in the social sector, Siddique says, and the overcrowding also impacts on services. The council and the Scottish Government have each declared a housing emergency, but Siddique says that, without widespread change, residents are “becoming increasingly frustrated”. “If it’s an emergency, there should be emergency action,” she says. “We have a really strong, proud community here. We need to raise the bar.”

Ruth Gibson of Living Rent tenants’ union agrees, but advocates for countrywide response. The organisation’s national campaign chair, Gibson is a Govanhill resident and spent years living there in a property afflicted by damp and mould linked to a problem with the roof. An owner-occupier in the close had tried to get agreement for repairs, she says, but that failed. She was evicted from the property after the owner said he wanted to sell, but then discovered that it was back on the lettings market with a rent hike of more than £350 per month. Photographs in an online advert showed no repairs had taken place and the condition remained just as poor, she says. “We’re seeing cases like that weekly,” Gibson says, and while tenants can look to the housing tribunal for redress, most simply feel that is not worth their while. 

According to the latest figures from the Scottish Landlord Register, there are 236,500 landlords offering 351,150 properties for rent across the country. That marks a decrease of around 200 landlords since 2024, but an increase of 330 registered properties. Published in March 2024 and currently making its way through the Scottish Parliament, the Housing (Scotland) Bill will cover these and other forms of rented housing. It includes new measures aimed at reducing homelessness as well as long-term rent controls for private tenancies, rights on keeping pets and stronger protections against eviction.

For Gibson, it is rent controls that have the potential to drive up housing standards in areas like Govanhill. In designated rent control areas, cost increases would be limited to the CPI annual rate of inflation, plus one percent, up to a maximum rise of six percent. The measure would apply both during and between tenancies, preventing landlords from hiking prices before putting properties back on the market.

Like EEAs, the decision on which areas will become rent control zones will rest with the government. The measures can help to address the “balance of power” between tenants and landlords, she says, with cost controls giving renters more choice in the market. In turn, she believes this will give owners more onus to keep standards up and make their properties more attractive.

After becoming an EEA, it is possible that Govanhill, which is home to one of Living Rent’s largest branches, will become a rent control zone. Gibson says a “proper enforcement mechanism” will be necessary and reflects that the responsibility for following through on EEA measures fell to the council. “We know local authorities are buckling, we know they don’t have the money,” she says. 

Siddique also links a lack of enforcement with rising issues around waste and vermin. Local problems with rats and mice have hit headlines and Siddique says it’s like “going back in time”.

Kelly says Govanhill “has probably more resources dedicated to it than most areas of the city” and says the council is “in a continuous cycle of chasing our tail” on clearing flat-loads of goods dumped as tenants move on from one place to another. The most recent budget allowed for more than 200 extra staff to tackle waste issues in the city, including those related to commercial premises. Unlike other areas, a night shift is in place for Govanhill.

The EEA isn’t a “sweeping power that allows us to fix things overnight”, he says. And he argues that a shortage of homes is part of the problem. Construction of 50 new homes for social rent in the south side of the city recently got underway, but he acknowledges this “is not going to really scratch the surface of the housing need”. And so Kelly has also been leading efforts to bring empty homes back into use. 

From an analysis of council tax records, as many as 43,550 properties in Scotland had been disused for six months or more as of September 2024, with 31,600 vacant for a year or longer. Figures from February this year show Glasgow has more than 3,000 vacancies of six months or longer, and 1,800 of a year or more. 

In Southside Central, which includes Govanhill, 243 properties are empty, despite acute housing need. Siddique reveals an empty close just off Allison Street which has clear signs of disrepair. Efforts to address the issue have come to nothing so far, she says. “Empty homes are a real problem. Families have moved away because of it.”

The push to repopulate empty homes is city-wide and a letter to owners of 2,500 such addresses resulted in a 15 per cent response rate. Press coverage also generated reports of empty homes the council wasn’t aware of.

The local Empty Homes Team is working with social landlords to acquire empty flats and shops for conversion to residential use, with West of Scotland Housing Association working on one such project in St Enoch Square in the city centre, where vacant upper storeys will become almost 30 residences. Other conversions are planned for Trongate and Duke Street to the east. 

Kelly says Glasgow City Council is “by far the leader in Scotland” in this work, with other authorities seeking to take on its model. “We have done more compulsory purchases than every other local authority put together,” he goes on. “We have three full-time empty homes officers. Most local authorities don’t have one.”

The council is trying to bring larger family homes back into use, especially where they are “impacting negatively on adjoining properties and causing environmental blight”. “At the end of the day, the priority is ensuring people have safe, quality places to live where they’re not exposed to dangerous or unsanitary conditions,” Kelly says. “The vast majority of landlords, from my experience, want to provide a service, as a business. At times we rub up against unscrupulous ones. What we need to do is build as many socially affordable houses as we can.”

Failing to tackle housing pressures, he says, also affects the economy of the city. EEAs would help to provide a remedy “in a healthy, functioning housing market”, he says, but “because there’s so much demand and so little supply it means that it’s a landlords’ market, as opposed to a tenants’ market”.

“If we had much greater supply you’d be forced to have higher standards because people would have a choice of where to go. Anything that’s not working towards the supply is kind of just window dressing.”