Sunday 8 February 2009

Crombie tenants deserve better


For twenty years tenants in Central and Farm Road in the small village of Crombie have had to put up with substandard housing. In the late eighties the Government declared that the Unitroy design of houses were Statutory Defective at which point the landlords, Scottish Homes (now Fife Housing), stopped almost all investment in the properties as it was estimated that they would only have a short life and therefore any investment would be wasted.

Twenty years on the houses are still standing but are not wind and watertight and are expensive to heat because of the poor heating systems and insulation. Further investigations have found that the properties could last for a further fifteen to twenty years but that isn't long enough to justify any investment (thirty years is the usual return period) and it's not short enough to demolish.

So the residents are left in limbo, living in substandard housing. Yet Housing Minister Stewart Maxwell has turned down pleas for assistance. That's why the residents are launching a campaign to urge the Government to take action. They're not taking no for an answer - and quite right too!

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