The remains of the fire-ravaged Glasgow School of Art are largely "structurally solid", initial assessments suggest.

Glasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken said the building was not being written off, with hope that the facade could be salvaged.

Ms Aitken told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme that, while no-one had yet had full access to the building, initial "superficial" assessments had been carried out.

She said: "Certainly I think the consensus is that there's hope and we're certainly not writing off the Mackintosh Building.

"Our intention and our focus will be to try to save that building and to find a future for it but it is very, very early days."

Experts have estimated the cost of rebuilding the gutted Mackintosh Building would be at least £100 million, if anything can be salvaged at all.

Asked if it would be restored "at any cost", Ms Aitken added: "We don't know about that yet, it's far too early to start talking about cost.

"We've seen lots of figures flying about but they are purely speculative, there's no-one who is able to put a price on this at the moment.

"Any assessment done so far has been purely superficial based on looking at the stability of the facade of the building.

"It is very early days but the initial assessments are that the facade, what remains of the building, is largely structurally solid."

She added: "The consensus is that if we are able, in partnership with all of the other organisations and with support from the UK and Scottish Government, if we are able to save and restore the Mackintosh Building then that is the road that we would like to go down, but there are many, many issues to be explored before we can give definitive answers on that."

Ms Aitken said she was convening a meeting on Tuesday with partners and business representatives to discuss the future of the building and the wider Sauchiehall Street area, adding that businesses inside the cordon following the fire would be exempted from non-domestic rates for its duration.

The fire broke out in the historic Mackintosh Building at 11.19pm on Friday and spread to nearby buildings, including the O2 ABC venue.

The blaze is the second in four years to hit the art school building, which was undergoing a multimillion-pound restoration project to return it to its former glory.