A familiar scene. Huge clouds of smoke wafting into the city centre as flames lick ferociously at the roof of a treasured building. A torrent of rain hammering down on clusters of spectators, adding insult to injury. Another beautiful piece of Glasgow’s built heritage left to wreck and ruin.

I can hardly blame the person that set the former Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice on fire earlier this week. It’s the second time this year a fire has broken out at the row of Georgian townhouses that line the banks of the River Clyde. An old cannabis farm inside the building was torched in January. Glasgow City Council was alerted in April that drug users had moved in after the fire. But the building was never properly secured despite its importance to the city and the city’s history. If the local government doesn’t care, why should the squatters?

The anger that boils up within me makes me feel like ripping my skin off. Glasgow is not blessed with much natural beauty. There are no snow tipped mountains to look up at, no coastline on which to watch the sunset. The beauty of the city is in its architecture. And the parks when they cut the grass. Every time the council allows for a piece of the city’s history to fall into disrepair or dereliction it’s a blow to the heart. It’s like the city is on pause, in limbo, waiting for buildings to topple so abstract foreign developers can turn them into student boxes. Who wants to live in purgatory? Maybe we should just raze everything and turn the city into a big parking lot.

(Image: GT)

Glasgow has more derelict buildings than any other city in Scotland. A lot of them are owned by the council. Others are in the hands of mysterious companies. The scorched Carlton Place townhouse is owned by an English development firm, MMLL Apartments Ltd. Speaking out after the fire, MSP Paul Sweeney called on the council to use the powers at its disposal to tackle the city’s built heritage crisis: Use of an Urgent Works Notice under Section 49 of Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997 and a Listed Building Repairs Notice (with possibility of escalation to Compulsory Purchase Order) under Section 43 and 42.

Urgent Works Notices allow the local authority to carry out urgent repairs on unoccupied listed buildings and then bill the owners. If that doesn’t work, the council can escalate it with a Listed Building Repairs Notice if more substantial works are needed to protect the asset. If the owner fails to comply, Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) demand they sell the building back to the council. Another less common option, Compulsory Sales Orders (CSOs), force owners to sell their assets on the open market if they have been poorly neglected and become a blight on the area.

I think that building owners should be given a month to sort out their listed assets before they are handed back to the city or hit with a CSO. A girl can dream. Unfortunately, the CSO process sounds a lot better than it is, what with all the arduous legal paper pushing, market uncertainty and resource constraints. Also, God forbid we spook those who want to invest in the city. Compulsory Purchase Orders are also a bureaucratic nightmare. Legally tortuous, fraught with delays. A Scottish Government project to reform CPO legislation seems to have been kicked into the tall buddleia growing out of every orifice of our built heritage.

I’m told it would be hypocritical for the council to impose all of these legal sucker punches on private firms when their own buildings are falling apart. Oh, and there’s no money in the coffers. The council can’t afford to fix its own buildings, let alone front the repair costs on privately owned ones or buy them back altogether.

So how do we incentivise developers to bring treasured listed buildings back into use? For a start, the UK Government could take a long hard look at why they charge VAT on renovation work but not on new builds. That is just encouraging developers to wait until a building is in such a state that they can come in like a wrecking ball and throw up a big boring box in its place.

(Image: GT)

This is what appears to have happened with the O2 ABC on Sauchiehall Street this week, six years after the gem went up in flames. Glasgow City Council has officially whacked it with a Dangerous Building Notice. Developer OBARCS must “demolish and remove the front and side façades along with their immediately attached floor and roof structures along with any other unstable, collapsed or affected and adjoining construction, fixtures and fittings" before the end of next month. Then Vita Group can get in there and build their purpose-built student accommodation and “first in Scotland” food hall that sounds a lot like Dockyard Social.

A Dangerous Building Notice is the only thing that trumps listed building protection. It’s the same thing that happened in Ayr with the old Station Hotel (despite most of it not being a risk at all). SAVE Britain’s Heritage are currently petitioning the Scottish Parliament to introduce simple, minimum levels of evidence before a listed building can be demolished under the guise of public safety.

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Like most problems in Scotland, protecting built heritage comes down to money. Fear not, for I have a plan. The UK Government, the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council love to bang on about Net Zero targets so let’s put some of that rhetoric to the test. The construction sector is “by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for a staggering 37% of global emissions”, according to a UN Environment Programme report. Retrofitting an existing building emits between 50 to 75 per cent less carbon than constructing the same building new, reports think tank RMI. The Scottish Government alone has invested billions into climate change initiatives, so why not pump some of that money into bringing Glasgow’s sorely neglected buildings back in to use? Glasgow City Council alone raked in £1 million in LEZ fines in just one year – money which can be spent to help the city meet net zero targets.

Something needs to be done, urgently. It’s embarrassing, infuriating and an absolute scandal. It’s been going on for far too long. Investing in bringing our derelict listed buildings back into use is beneficial for the morale of the city and it makes both mid- and long-term economic sense. Once these buildings are gone, they’re gone. The council and the Scottish Government should be doing everything in its power to get creative and sort this out. Imagine going down in the history books as the administration that let the city’s pride go up in flames.