Dundee City Council supplied Raac campaigners with incorrect information regarding how many homes in the area were affected by the crisis.
The local authority made the mistake in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the UK Raac Campaign Group seeking to know how many individual properties contained the defective concrete.
The error was only discovered after The Courier questioned the council on the two different datasets being presented.
By that time the numbers had already been included in multiple representations to the Scottish Parliament for different committees, including an evidence session with the housing minister Paul McLennan.
In the FOI response, Dundee City Council said 975 properties were affected.
However, they now claim some of the homes were counted twice and the real figure is 887.
As The Courier exclusively revealed on Monday, this figure means Dundee has the highest number of Raac homes in Scotland.
‘It is deeply concerning’
Wilson Chowdhry, UK Raac Campaign Group leader, was scathing of the local authority’s mistake and impact it will have on his representations to the Scottish Government.
He told The Courier: “It is deeply concerning that Dundee City Council has significantly overreported the number of Raac-affected properties in their constituency.
“This error is particularly troubling given that I have already shared the incorrect data with the Scottish Parliament.
“Not only am I perplexed that such a glaring mistake has occurred, but I am also disappointed that neither I nor the volunteer who obtained the data has received an apology and were informed by a news reporter.
“Furthermore, we collected this data specifically to support our Scottish Parliament petition, aiming to provide a more accurate representation of the scale of Scotland-wide concerns.”
Trapped by Raac campaign needs your help
With Dundee at the epicentre of the issue, The Courier has launched our Trapped by Raac campaign with the help of residents and Homes Under the Hammer presenter Martel Maxwell.
Homeowners and tenants need 10,000 people to sign this petition to give them a voice – so we’re asking our readers to help them achieve that goal.
Leader of the Dundee campaign branch, Yvette Hoskins, will attend the Scottish parliament today (Tuesday) to give evidence on the crisis.
Explaining the error, a spokesperson for Dundee City Council said: “Unfortunately, some properties were double counted for the FOISA response.
“The information for FOISA answers is supplied to the council’s information governance service by colleagues in the relevant service area.
“In this case the information was collated and provided by neighbourhood services.
“The figures that have been consistently supplied and which were reported to the neighbourhood regeneration, housing and estate management committee in May 2024 remain correct.”
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