University-supported project could help “extend lives” of Glasgow’s historic tenements
A tenement building in Glasgow’s Southside is the focus of a five-month project to test whether older properties in the city can be more energy-efficient.
Scottish trade, investment and innovation minister Ivan McKee MSP announced £500,000 of funding for projects to tackle the climate crisis involving the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, with the latter hoping to bring 107 Niddrie Road in the Strathbungo area to improved standards.
Many groups are collaborating for this, including property owners Southside Housing Association, funders Glasgow City Council, architects John Gilbert, construction firm CCG, and academics, aiming for an improvement of between 75 and 90%.
“The fact is in Glasgow we have tens of thousands of older tenements which are going to be challenging to maintain and sustain and extend their lives,” Ken Gibb, a professor in housing economics at the University of Glasgow, told Glasgow Standard.
“That’s an important positive thing because tenements are iconic to what Glasgow looks like and what we feel about Glasgow, people who live here. They are threatened – they are old buildings, they have finite lives.
“This would extend their lives. It would also mean that their contribution would be greater if they can effectively reduce carbon emissions that they currently have.”
This experiment involves a pre-1919 sandstone tenement which will have insulation, heating and air-tightness alterations to attempt to reduce the large amount of carbon generated from it.
Mr Gibb outlined how their efforts could help both existing areas of Scotland and the people who call tenements home.
“For everyone in society, it should reduce carbon emissions significantly per unit,” the 56 year-old continued.
Secondly, it should provide a more energy-efficient warm home. Thirdly, it should actually tackle some of the broader fabric and fixture issues that tenements have, in that they are usually often in quite poor maintenance.
“These are very old properties that have a varied history of maintenance and upgrading.”
The opportunity has been presented as they have full access to all areas of the premises, which it said to be rare, with the potential to learn about possible intervention.
“The property we have is very unusual in that we have control of an eight-property empty block so the construction works are unfettered,” Mr Gibb added.
“There is nobody living in the properties, nobody has to be moved elsewhere while the work is going on, and it is all under the control of one owner. Most tenements have multiple owners, they have owner-occupiers, private landlords, housing associations.”
“Another really important issue is that it is not just about changing the property, but you have to bring the occupant with you. They have to buy in and we need to train and support these people as to how to use them as effectively as they can. It should actually increase affordable warmth and things like that too.”
Through analysis, the possible carbon reduction levels can be generated to attempt to reach the Scottish Government’s targets for 2045, when the country hopes to be net-zero and prevent any more greenhouse gas damage to the world.
“If you are going to do go for redevelopment and building new homes then you have to demolish the old buildings as well as bringing all the costs of developing new things.
Currently as things stand it is much more expensive to redevelop than it is to refurbish – that is not to say that it is cheap to refurbish either.
“I would say the new build sector is separate from all of this. It is important to recognise that four-fifths of the housing we will have in 2045 is already built now. The new-build sector is only a small proportion of what happens in the housing sector.”
Glasgow City Council’s leader Susan Aitken believes in the scheme succeeding and helping towards the targets.
“The two really big things that we have to crack in terms of carbon emissions are transport and domestic heat,” Ms Aitken said.
“If we can crack both of those, particularly in Glasgow, that is an enormous contribution to national, and indeed global, targets on decarbonisation.
“It’s really testing out whether it is possible. We think it is, and it’s very exciting. The work’s beginning very soon.”
However, Mr Gibb did warn that if they are successful, the scaling up of protecting tenements could be costly.
“It is very important to say that is not a panacea – this is a demonstration project.
“We want to see what this funded demonstration project will generate but this is a big challenge looking on a bigger scale, it is also going to be quite expensive.”
Additional reporting by Valentina Servera Clavell.
