A £20 million rescue deal for Aberdeen residents living in the shadow of RAAC will be proposed at a crunch meeting between campaigners and a Scottish Minister tomorrow. (Friday)
Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) was identified in more than 500 council and private properties in 2024.
Aberdeen City Council plans to demolish affected properties in Balnagask, Torry by 2028.
But the Torry Raac Campaign Group have estimated that losses on owner-occupied properties could be £50,000 each.
Minister Paul McLennan will meet campaigners and local MSPs Liam Kerr and Audrey Nicoll to discuss a way ahead.
Scottish Conservative Mr Kerr will propose a rescue deal like the one struck for residents in so-called “Orlit housing” at Garthdee in the 1980s and 90s.
It would be paid for by an unspent £20m fund for new city properties established by the Scottish Government in 2016.
The City Region Deal memorandum of understanding contained “£20 million in infrastructure funding to unlock housing sites that are of strategic importance to the local authorities” and has not been spent.
As of May 2024, no Aberdeen or Aberdeenshire project qualified under Housing Infrastructure Fund criteria.
Mr Kerr discovered houses built in the late 1940s and early 1950s were bought from the Scottish Special Housing Association (SSHA) under the “right to buy” scheme in the 1980s.
However, an issue was later found regarding their non-standard construction. Homeowners were given the option to sell the property back to SSHA at full market value, with no reduction in value due to the construction issue. These were then rebuilt and passed to the council and housing associations.
It was the subject of a campaign involving late Tory MP Alick Buchanan-Smith, who died the year after the last Orlit house was demolished in 1990.
North East MSP Mr Kerr said:
“There is a £20m which has yet to be touched because nothing in the North East has qualified under the criteria.
“There is still a year to go for the city deal, and I don’t see any other way, or crucially any better way, in which this can be spent.
“That money would top up the existing council offer to market value and go towards demolition, rebuilding and redeveloping the area which would otherwise be too expensive to do. This would meet the HIF’s specifications.
“Developers and the council got Orlit sorted out in the eighties. I’m going to put this before Paul McLennan as a pragmatic use of cash that should already have been spent on Aberdeen.
“There is precedent for redevelopment where it’s otherwise too prohibitive, such as when Edinburgh Council got almost £16m for the Granton waterfront alone.
“It’s time the north east got a fair deal and the people of Balnagask stopped getting a raw deal.”
