An Edinburgh householder has launched an online petition calling for government incentives to repair Scotland's tenements and preserve the country's traditional inner-city housing stock for generations to come.
Florance Kennedy created it after her owners association organised repairs costing £200,000 and then realised that VAT alone would add £40,000 to the cost.
‘There are no grants or subsidies available,’ says Kennedy, ‘even though the problem of our crumbling city has been recognised for more than a decade. It was June 2000 when Christine Foster was killed by falling masonry at Ryan’s Bar in the West End, but no effective action has been taken since to prevent further accidents or deaths. Indeed, Edinburgh’s statutory repairs system has crumbled and fallen under the strain.'
The construction industry is desperate for work, Kennedy claims, but the task of organising mutual repairs is daunting at best and impossible at worst without incentives or an effective means of enforcement.
She now hopes to publicise the petition nationwide. She is calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to continue lobbying Westminster for a reduction in the VAT rate for repairs and maintenance in line with the rates levied on new-build projects and conversion to dwellings.
She is also pressing for Holyrood to use its own resources to provide incentives, through subsidy or matched funding.
The petition, which has attracted over 100 e-signatures in a week, will stay open until the end of October at: http://bit.ly/MZhnhd.
'I think there is a really strong case for cutting VAT for work like this,' Edinburgh North and Leith MP Mark Lazarowicz (Labour) told Spurtle this evening. 'As well as helping thousands of householders in a city like Edinburgh with many older buildings, it would also boost the construction industry, particularly many smaller businesses which desperately need the work.
'In fact, I've been calling for a reduction of VAT to 5 per cent for this type of work for some time (a reduction to zero is not possible under EU rules) as has a wide coalition of organisations like builders, architects, and engineers. There had been some hopes the Chancellor might have done something about this in his last budget. He didn't, of course – he made the situation worse, so this petition and campaign are very timely.'
Edinburgh Central MSP Marco Biagi (SNP) was also supportive: 'Westminster's continued refusal to relent on VAT repairs is shocking. It shows a disregard for the importance of repairing our city's housing, and also the calls of the hard-pressed construction industry whose members have argued the step would be a simple and cost-effective way of protecting building jobs.'
However, Biagi struck a note of caution about seeking funds from Holyrood: 'It would ... set a dangerous precedent for the Scottish Government to take up the slack where the UK Government is being wilfully unhelpful in an area that legally is their responsibility.
'This example just shows yet again that decisions about Scotland would be best taken here in Scotland.'