An Angus housing provider has spoken of his frustrations at the “bureaucracy” surrounding bids to the Scottish Government’s Empty Homes Fund.
Graeme Carling Sr, commercial director of housing company Carling Properties, said he was left disappointed with the Government and Angus Council after a joint bid between the company and the local authority to the fund fell apart.
Mr Carling and his son, also Graeme, who runs the company, said the firm had entered into a partnership agreement with the local authority to apply for funding to refurbish seven properties on Arbroath’s Keptie Street and subsequently let them at affordable rates.
Mr Carling Sr said the agreement would have seen the two organisations working in partnership to then fill the properties with tenants but said that the council backed out of the plans and that the Government would then not provide the company access to the fund individually.
However, a spokeswoman for the council denied there was any such agreement and said that the two organisations had merely submitted a joint bid for funding.
The Scottish Government also said that the bid was eventually rejected because Carling Properties had tried to take the lead role in the application and it could not provide funding because of the housing provider’s “financial standing”.
Graeme Carling Sr said: “We wanted to bring the properties back into living condition and approached Angus Council and they were very keen to talk to us about this.
“We decided to submit a joint bid to the fund and in their submission to the Scottish Government Angus Council had said we were in partnership and they would allow us referrals to people from housing.
“However, when it came to the crunch they said that the council could not be in partnership with anyone and that gave us a problem.”
Mr Carling said he then contacted the Scottish Government directly but was denied access to funds to refurbish the properties as the Newco business he wanted to set up to handle the job would have no credit history.
“After that we decided to just go ahead and do the refurbishment ourselves and we had them (the flats) finished before the council’s one flat in Montrose,” added Mr Carling.
“They were completely ready at the end of April. We did it all in six weeks and have five rented out already.”
A spokeswoman for the council said: “The council made a loan fund application with Carling Properties to the Scottish Government.
“There was no formal contract or partnership with Carling Properties it was merely a funding bid with the final decision being made by the Government.
“The Scottish Government’s decision was that Carling Properties did not meet the necessary criteria and they informed Carling Properties of this directly.
“The council has had no further dealings with Carling Properties on this matter.”
A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government also said that it received a joint application from Carling and the council to refurbish flats on Keptie Street.
The application had the council as the lead bidder and this application was successful.
She added: “Carling then asked for the council to be removed from the application to make them the lead bidder.
“Following investigation we were unable to comply due to the financial standing of the company.”
Graeme Carling Jr, company owner, said his firm eventually completed the work on its own but was disappointed the initial plan fell apart.
“I’m absolutely delighted that we have managed to get this done but it could have been done a lot quicker and we could have done more if it had panned out,” he said.
“However, the bureaucracy would have slowed everything down. I’m frustrated by that but we were going to refurbish these flats anyway so I’m delighted in spite of what happened.”