The city of Glasgow should undertake a “radical and very honest” review of the way it manages its heritage buildings after the fire that gutted the Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh building, according to a local MP.

Paul Sweeney, the Scottish Labour MP for Glasgow North East, who viewed the damage to the Mackintosh building with the fire service on Saturday evening, the night after the blaze, said the city urgently needed a comprehensive strategy for preserving its ageing stock of Victorian architecture.

Sweeney, who sits on the board of the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust and was involved in the award-winning restoration of Fairfields shipbuilding offices in Govan, said: “A lot of the Victorian stock is extremely vulnerable to fire, but there hasn’t been a proper survey. No one envisaged the art school going on fire until 2014. Are we even aware of the scale of the problem?”

This video has been removed. This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason. Aerial footage of Glasgow School of Art shows aftermath of fire - video

Referring to buildings such as Glasgow University, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and the City Chambers, Sweeney added: “It’s an incredible global legacy. These buildings were all constructed within a 30- to 40-year period in the late 19th to early 20th century, during Glasgow’s gilded age of huge wealth, enterprise and municipal ambition, but we are going to end up with a glut of problems as they age if we don’t take precautions now.”



A review should take in fire prevention policy as a priority, he said, suggesting a regular MOT-style review of safety obligations. “Then there are things like: can we promote active use of derelict land, can we avoid having de-rating of derelict properties to remove the perverse incentive on vacant buildings, like the notorious example of Alexander “Greek” Thomson’s Egyptian Halls? The city has a really poor track record of addressing these problems.”

There has been debate about whether the Mackintosh building should be saved and rebuilt in its entirety or replaced by a new one. Prof Billy Hare, of Glasgow Caledonian University, suggested rebuilding could cost in the region of £100m or more. Sweeney insisted the building had to be reconstructed in full.

Alan Dunlop, an architect who trained at Glasgow School of Art, and is visiting professor of architecture at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, said the building was now gone and should not be rebuilt.

“We should resist the calls to rebuilt it as before stone by stone. That would not be restoration, it would be replication – a process I believe Mackintosh himself would resist as he was an innovator not a copyist,” he said.

“It is certainly possible to rebuild but you cannot replicate 110 years of history, the students, artists and architects who have worked there and whose presence permeated the building. That’s what has been lost in the fire.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Susan Aitken: the city has a ‘history of neglect’. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Susan Aitken, the leader of Glasgow city council, said the weekend’s terrible events offered “an opportunity to do things differently”.

“Built heritage was a priority for us when we [the SNP] came into office [in 2017] and there’s no two ways about it that the city has a history of neglect in this area,” she said.



Pointing out that the section of Sauchiehall Street that backed on to the Mackintosh building was already benefiting from a £7.2m transformation plan, Aitken said the council and business partners must act strategically to take in the damage sustained when the art school fire spread to the O2 ABC music venue.

Further along that stretch of road, a full block is undergoing a lengthy demolition process after a fire that began in Victoria’s nightclub in March and also damaged the 114-year-old Pavilion theatre, one of the city’s music hall venues.

“This is an opportunity for the council to do things differently,” Aitken said. “The old approach to development was a bit laissez-faire and the city council has historically been reluctant to make compulsory purchase orders, but we need to look at the ABC and Victoria’s block. If we want something of lasting benefit to come out of this tragedy, we need to have more control over planning. From Monday officials will be looking at CPOs and sending the message to property owners to get with the programme.”

On fire prevention policy, Aitken said investigations were continuing into both fires. “We are being much more proactive about our approach to built heritage but there is a very significant cost to it and we have a lot of other commitments for our capital budget. Both the Scottish and UK governments have made offers in the wake of this weekend’s fire and I hope we can persuade them to be generous and to look beyond ‘the Mack’ itself and that the momentum will gather.”

Sweeney agreed that intervention must go beyond local government. “This needs to have the commitment of the Scottish and UK governments. It’s not just a problem that exists in Glasgow, it’s a problem that’s facing all large British cities. They were all built at the peak of Britain’s industrial and economic power. We enjoy the legacy architecturally but we can’t just rely on the national lottery and ad hoc projects to fund it.”