Campaigner walks out of Holyrood in disgust as petition rebuffed
A campaigner fighting to get more help for home-owners hit by the RAAC scandal walked out of the Scottish Parliament in disgust this afternoon [Wednesday] after MSPs rejected their petition.
The National UK RAAC campaign had asked for the Scottish Housing Regulator to expand powers to include owners of former council homes.
But a meeting of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee 'refused to budge' according to veteran campaigner Livingston RAAC campaigner Kerry Macintosh.
She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that when the call to change rules was declined: 'I was so angry when I came out of the committee room. It was very hard not to say anything. I stood up and said 'shocking' and walked out.'
Speaking after the meeting she told the LDRS: 'The people in parliament, the SNP government. They don't give a toss. They are not listening to what people are going through. They are overlooking things that are affecting people's lives.
'This is as bad as the Post Office scandal. I'm just so annoyed at watching how homeowners are getting treated. The people in parliament are not living with what the people with RAAC in their homes are living with- the stress, the fear and the worry. There's five and half thousand people in Scotland suffering with this.'
RAAC affected homeowners from across Scotland had gathered outside Holyrood on Wednesday morning ahead of scheduled hearing of a petition submitted by the UK RAAC Campaign group calling for an urgent amendment to the remit of the Scottish Housing Regulator to include private owners of ex-council properties.
Currently, the SHR's responsibilities are restricted to social tenants—those who rent from councils or housing associations.
This means that when a private homeowner in an ex-council house discovers dangerous materials like RAAC, they have no regulator to turn to, no statutory advocate, and no co-ordinated government response.
The petition called for an alternative creation of an altogether new body to ensure that owners of ex-council homes are protected during structural crises such as the one currently unfolding because of the use of Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete RAAC in the 1960s/ 70s.
Campaign leader Wilson Chowdhry has written to the new Housing Minister Mairi McAllan asking her to meet with homeowners in Tillicoultry and West Lothian.
By Stuart Sommerville, Local Democracy Reporter
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