'Scotland's Chernobyl' cost council £3million, MPs are told

A disused housing estate cost a Scottish council £3m over 20 years, MPs have been told.

Derelict Clune Park was dubbed "Scotland's Chernobyl" after lying close to vacant since the late 1990s.

Now bulldozers have moved in, but Stephen McCabe, leader of Inverclyde Council, said the authority has spent millions over the site in between.

He said: "There are lessons to be learned for the Scottish Government in terms of the powers that should be available to local authorities to deal with situations like this.

"The renewal of this estate, the demolition of the estate, could have started many years ago, rather than taking around 20 years."

Built in the early 1900s, the Port Glasgow estate was home to shipyard workers but conditions there deteriorated in the early 1990s.

The estate was privately owned and plans to address problems there were abandoned after the then-Conservative UK Government cut funding.

The area has been almost empty since 1997, with properties subject to vandalism and fire-setting. Bulldozers finally moved in after buildings became unsafe.

McCabe said the authority has been engaged in a "war of attrition" with landlords since the late '90s – a process he says cost the region £3million.

He said: "It's taken too long, and that's because the powers available to us have been inadequate."

Clune Park spanned as many as 430 homes across 45 tenements. A total of 150 homes in 15 blocks are being razed in the first phase of redevelopment, along with its former primary school and parish church.

A large part of the site has already been cleared and two workers were recently injured in an incident involving falling masonry.

It really has been a war of attrition

Speaking to MPs on the Scottish Affairs Committee, Labour councillor McCabe said the estate was managed by "a couple of factors" in the early-mid-1990s, when conditions deteriorated and private landlords "mined into the area".

McCabe said refurbishment and re-roofing plans were shelved when UK Government funds were cut and talks with the Scottish Government in the 2000s ended when the administration took the view that "the area should be demolished and new housing built in its place".

McCabe said the costs of securing properties from vandalism, fighting legal challenges and taking action against owners who were not paying council tax racked up to "somewhere in the region of £3million worth of costs to date".

He said: "We had to then, over a period of time, seek to acquire the properties and unfortunately our powers are very, very limited. 

"We weren't really able to take effective action until the properties had deteriorated to the point where they were considered to be unsafe.

"We have, through a process of voluntary sale and engagement, now acquired probably around 80 per cent of the estate and commenced the demolition, but it really has been a war of attrition with, particularly, private landlords who were unwilling to sell their properties voluntarily to us at the price that we could afford. 

"As a relatively small authority, there wasn't huge amounts of money available to us and obviously we're constrained by the public purse in terms of what we can actually pay for properties. 

"We had engaged with the Scottish Government during the 2000s to try and get new legislation to give us more powers, but unfortunately, the government chose to not to go down that route. 

"Compulsory purchase is obviously a power available to us, but it's very much a last resort."

The council hopes to acquire the remaining properties within the next 12 months, with demolition to complete within that period.

Talks with housing associations and the Scottish Government for the money to build 150 affordable homes are taking place and it is hoped that these could be ready within five years.

McCabe said: "We believe that that would be an excellent estate for Port Glasgow and Inverclyde more generally."