Aberdeen is a city of contrasts. Scores of millionaires, made wealthy by decades of oil and gas exploration, reside in its leafy suburbs. On average, these men and women will live a decade longer than those who live in some of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods.
Cross the Victoria Bridge into Torry, one of these deprived areas, and the first thing you’ll see is a massive garbage incinerator. Featuring a chrome exterior which looms over the surrounding landscape, it’s hard to miss. In the shadow of the incinerator… sorry, the “energy from waste plant”, is the neighbourhood of Balnagask.
Constructed in the late 1960s, the homes of Balnagask suffer from the common ailments of ageing council properties: grey concrete walls, small gardens, and chipped paint. Known as the “hen houses”, due to the sloped design of their roofs, these units have seen generations of “Torry folk” pass through their doors.
Read more
- Over 500 RAAC-affected homes in Aberdeen to be demolished and rebuilt
- Campaigners demand councils are held 'accountable' over RAAC issues
However, the hen houses possess a malady of a more dangerous nature. Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, or RAAC, was used in the construction of the units’ roofs. Often compared to the internal composition of an Aero bar, RAAC has been found within thousands of publicly-owned buildings built between the 1950s and 1990s.
Concerns over the sturdiness of the material had been raised as early as the mid-1990s. Yet, significant action to renovate RAAC-affected buildings did not begin until last year. In August 2023, the UK Government’s Health and Safety Executive declared: “RAAC is now life-expired. It is liable to collapse with little or no notice.”
Those 14 words have turned the lives of hundreds of families across Scotland upside down. In Aberdeen, more than 500 homes were declared at risk of containing the material. Earlier this year, the city council announced that tenants living in RAAC-affected council-owned flats would be "rehomed". In the following months, hundreds of families moved out of Balnagask.
Now, councillors have voted to demolish and rebuild all of the RAAC-affected homes, including 138 privately-owned units. Tenants will be rehomed, and homeowners will be offered market value (at post-RAAC value) for their properties. According to the local authority, demolition will take three or four years to complete, with rebuilding due to last anywhere between five and 15 years. In the interim, the neighbourhood will become a no-go zone. Already, fly-tipping and boarded up homes have proliferated.
On a community Facebook page set up for affected tenants and homeowners, people discuss an upcoming protest at the Scottish Parliament and angrily question the council’s decision, raising concerns over what the mass evacuation will mean for shops and schools in the area. There’s a sense of defiance amidst the sorrow of losing one’s home.
One commenter asked: “Why can they not sort out this mess first, or are we yesterday's news to them?”
Another resident added: “We are all still in limbo. I wish they could put themselves in our shoes. If they did we’d all receive what our homes are worth and compensation.”
Ian, a homeowner from Balnagask, told The Herald he felt angry because “we knew it was coming.”
“Once it was decided, the council didn’t even have the decency to tell us what the decision was. They just moved on with the meeting.”
He said that the council showed a lack of consideration for the residents of Balnagask, adding: “They’ve had no respect for us from day one.”
Ian’s view is historically informed.
The energy boom of the 1970s, which gave Aberdeen the moniker of “Europe’s Oil and Gas Capital”, did not take place without casualties. Most of "Old Torry", a historic fishing village along the banks of the River Dee, was bulldozed to make room for oil and gas storage facilities and an expanded harbour. City councillors voted overwhelmingly to approve the destruction of the properties, issuing compulsory purchase orders to remove people from their homes. The fabric of the community was ripped apart.
History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. While there is no indication that the decision to demolish the RAAC-affected homes has anything to do with commercial interests, some Torry residents, scarred by generational trauma, believe that the bulldozers are a pretext to claim the area for the city’s South Harbour expansion.
The council has strenuously denied these claims. Earlier this year, housing convenor Miranda Radley noted: “It’s absolutely not a ‘conspiracy’, we would not be doing this if there wasn’t a real health and safety risk.”
“We would never want to disrupt tenants in their own homes, it just is something we would not do at all. I know there have been several 'conspiracies' going around but it definitely isn’t.”
Nevertheless, time and time again, Torry folk get the short straw. The area’s only publicly accessible green space is earmarked for an industrial park. An incinerator dominates the landscape, a few hundred yards from a primary school. The nearby sewage treatment plant has become infamous for the noxious “Torry Pong.” It’s no wonder residents don’t trust the city council’s plans for Balnagask. In the words of one resident: “If you want something big and nasty, give it to Torry.”
Where will the residents of Balnagask go from here? Many council tenants have already been rehoused elsewhere in the city. Homeowners will be offered market value for their properties. Let down by a council who built homes containing substandard concrete and then failed to inform them of this fact, residents will have to rebuild their lives. They will find employment, enrol their children in new schools, and repay mortgages for homes they no longer own.
The public will move on, as will the press. Yet, for those who have lived, worked, loved, and cried amongst the hen houses; nothing will ever be the same.
Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco is the winner of the Herald’s 2024 Student Journalist of the Year award
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here