How Scotland is unlocking its empty homes

They say that in Glasgow, you should look up. While much has changed at street level over decades of shifting consumer and industrial trends, shopfronts give way to ornately detailed storeys above, the product of the city’s rich mercantile past.

That’s certainly true for passers-by on Hope Street, where eight floors of art nouveau concrete stretch into the sky at Lion Chambers, a category A-listed historic building known as much for its dereliction as its beauty.

Designed as a base for lawyers and artists, it has over more than a century been home to countless enterprises but, emptying out, has suffered increasing neglect and decay, surviving safety-related demolition threats in no small part thanks to its listed status. So long has the site languished that the question over its future, for many locals, became not whether it could be saved but when it would be brought down.

Now it is hoped that this much-loved landmark will be turned into housing as part of broader work to bring disused buildings back to life. 

It will take “a chunk of money”, concedes Councillor Ruairi Kelly, the city’s housing convener, and require partnership to make it happen. 

And it will “probably” also require the use of a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO), allowing the local authority to buy up the building, section by section, from its various owners without their consent for a project within the public interest.

Historic Lion Chambers, Glasgow | Alamy

It’s a power the city has made much use of in trying to tackle its housing crisis. Glasgow’s council has used CPOs almost 75 times since 2019 as part of a drive to bring empty homes back into use – a rate far higher than in other areas. 

In one example, a pebbledashed semi in the city’s east end was bought after years of disuse, its gardens having grown to wild proportions around a car with a smashed rear windscreen which lay just inside its gates. Clean up now done, tenants are expected to move in by Christmas.

In another, this time in the Shettleston district, the place was in such poor condition that it was, according to Kelly, “a total rip-out job” when the council partnered with a housing association to get it back in order. “It was electrics, pipes, gas, everything,” he says. “All the internal walls needed stripped back and it was basically a full renovation. The bathroom had a limey-green 70s suite.” Avocado? “Not quite,” says Kelly, “or, maybe it was once.”

According to the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership (SEHP), which is funded by the Scottish Government and hosted by housing charity Shelter Scotland, there are 43,500 empty residences across the country. Tenement flats, semis, and bungalows lie vacant in varying concentrations across regions. In some cases, such properties are linked to anti-social behaviour and vandalism, in others there are concerns about vermin or water ingress affecting adjacent properties. And in all cases, there is residential stock going to waste during a national housing emergency.

And so efforts to repopulate the properties have stepped up. Twenty-five of Scotland’s 32 councils have published or are developing a specific empty homes strategy, and around 20 have a dedicated homes acquisition or buyback scheme in operation. 

Almost 2,070 such properties were brought back into use over 2024-25 in what was a new record, and most of those – almost 620 – were in Glasgow. That compares with just 80 in second-largest city Edinburgh, and 90 in Dundee. In North Ayrshire Council, which came second to Glasgow, the total was 370; in East Lothian Council, the total was just two.

We need every tool available

Officers from Glasgow are achieving such success that they are now giving presentations to colleagues in other authorities, setting out their use of CPOs and other measures. They typically partner with registered social landlords on CPOs, moving the properties on to become affordable social housing. “The public sector is quite risk-averse,” says Kelly. “If a local authority doesn’t have an institutional memory or experience of doing this, and if there’s the worry about expense or process, it can be off-putting when you’re starting from scratch.”

The Scottish Government has conceded that CPOs could function better. It’s consulting on reforms it thinks will make the powers “more useful for public bodies” and “fairer to property owners”, and Public Finance Minister Ivan McKee visited that same Shettleston residence highlighted by Kelly to launch a consultation on the matter. If it succeeds, it will see delivery of a manifesto commitment made by the SNP in 2021. “We need every tool available to play its part in tackling the housing emergency,” McKee said. “Making it easier and simpler for councils and other public bodies to take ownership of derelict property will help.”

All but four councils – Clackmannanshire, Midlothian, Moray and Shetland – have empty homes officers, and the SEHP hopes that cover will be provided in the near future. As well as CPOs, which are supported by Scottish Government money, the teams have a range of options for interested owners, from grant funding to a matchmaker scheme which tries to put motivated sellers and interested buyers together. 

A property is considered a long-term empty home (LTE) if it sits unused for 12 months or more. And the longer it goes without a resident, the harder it can be to rectify its problems, from tracking down owners to making roof repairs or fitting new wiring. Of those brought back in to use in the 2024-25, around 30 per cent had been disused for six to 12 months, with a similar total empty for a year or two, and 25 per cent left for two-five years. At the more stubborn end, six per cent had lain dormant for a decade or more. And these are the ones that members of the public really hate. 

“Some things become tokenistic,” says Highland Council member Sarah Atkin. Vice-convener of the area’s planning committee, she says it’s all too easy to spot empty homes in the Black Isle, where she is based. As a case in point, she recently flagged a 200-year-old house on Fortrose High Street with officers after locals asked what was happening with it. “People think ‘look at the council, this house is still empty’. Sometimes there’s a really good reason for that, like it would cost half a million quid to do it up. But it is a big issue.”

While the Highland Council area contains just 4.5 per cent of the country’s homes, it is overrepresented when it comes to long-term empty homes, with more there than anywhere else – almost 12 per cent of the national total. 

At 3,660 LTEs, the total outstrips the number of second homes in the area, which number around 3,400. And so unlocking these front doors has become a key priority for the local authority, which is recruiting for another staff member to join its Empty Homes Service, an initiative that’s been going for more than a decade.

Houses overlook the seafront at Avoch in the Black Isle | Alamy

Last year it helped 35 LTEs come back into use, with most becoming owner-occupied. The service works to identify owners and offer support to either get properties back into habitable condition, or to move them on through auction, or sale or lease for social housing. 

“On its own, it’s not going to solve the housing crisis,” says Atkin, “but as an elected member, nothing makes people angrier than a pothole or an empty house.”

Two hundred miles away in the north east of Glasgow, Kelly agrees. It can be frustrating for residents living next door to such places, he says, and for those waiting for a house in the first place. 

There are more than 6,000 households on the council’s waiting list for a property, and more than 4,200 more in temporary accommodation. The situation is so acute that the local authority carries a warning on its web page: “If you intend to move to Glasgow, do not move until you have secured suitable accommodation.”

Derelict land has been earmarked for new housing developments, but it’s a costly and lengthy process. Freeing up existing stock is both quicker and cheaper, and each completion allows a household to move off of those waiting lists.

The council issued thousands of letters last year to the owners of disused homes asking them to bring them back into use. The response rate was just 10 per cent, but the council says its empty homes officers “feel that the exercise was worthwhile” because it raised awareness of the problem and “will have had a positive impact” on some owners. 

As housing convener, Kelly fronted the push. And he “definitely” feels pressure to get results. “There’s massive pressure on all the services,” he says. “I definitely feel the pressure to deliver on that because you see the issues with constituents on a weekly and daily basis, where people don’t have a suitable home to live in because of damp or mould, or they can’t afford their rent in private accommodation and they’re having to declare homelessness. 

There's nothing they're saying that we're not doing

“The way the economy has gone, even people who were comfortable five or six years ago are feeling a real impact. It’s causing pressures throughout, from the extremes of poverty and homelessness right through to people who have considered themselves comfortably-off.”

There is no shortage of criticism of Glasgow’s handling of the problem, but Kelly says he has “never taken any of that personally, because I know we are doing everything we can do within the money and suite of powers we have”. 

“There’s nothing they’re saying that we’re not doing,” he says of the critics.

It typically takes around 18 months for a CPO to complete, and it’s not always a successful process. The deals must be confirmed by ministers, and research by the SEHP found that disinterest by registered social landlords, whether on the grounds of property type, location or another factor, can stymie the process. It also noted that “many long-term empty homes that are a blight on communities or subject to environmental health problems may not be suitable as social or affordable housing”, meaning that a range of solutions must be used.

Still, Tahmina Nizam, SEHP national manager, is positive about the opportunities presented. “We know empty homes won’t solve the housing emergency on their own but bringing them back into use is an environmentally friendly and cost-effective way to meet housing needs, so it’s clear they have a significant role to play,” she said in the body’s recent report. 

However, she said “strategic focus and sustained investment is needed if we’re to continue to build on the excellent work that’s already under way”. “Each empty home can change the life of an individual or family, but collectively they have the potential to transform Scotland’s housing landscape,” she went on.

Officers are currently trying to unlock the potential of five more homes in Glasgow through CPOs, with processes under way to get Scottish Government support. They include a tenement flat in Cardonald which has caused water ingress damage to the businesses beneath it, and fire-damaged homes in Dennistoun which have been neglected for around a decade. Those third-floor properties have become a “blight” on neighbouring homes, the council said, and – subject to approval by ministers – Milnbank Housing Association is ready to take them on for homeless accommodation.

Work on the Lion Chambers isn’t at that level yet. But Kelly and his team believe targeting disused commercial property in the city centre provides yet more potential for transformation. “We’re looking for housing-led solutions”, he says of efforts to address pressures in the city, and the council is working with the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust to chart a way forward.

If it is to happen, it will require patient and detailed graft, not least in tracking down the various owners of the eight-floor premises. A feasibility study is under way. Success will take, Kelly says, “a big chunk of money” to bring the place up to modern standards. “We are working through it,” he says.