Large sections of two buildings in Red Road estate left undamaged after they proved too resilient for planned explosion

An independent technical review will be carried out to examine why the demolition of Glasgow’s Red Road tower blocks failed to go according to plan, leaving two of the six towers looming defiantly out of the rubble.

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Glasgow Housing Association also apologised to about 2,500 local residents who lived inside the exclusion zone set up for the demolition and faced delays in returning to their homes, on the north-eastern edge of the city, on Sunday evening.

A spokesman for GHA said: “Although it was always intended that 10 storeys in each of the six blocks would remain for dismantling after the blowdown, this didn’t go completely to plan. Two of the blocks at 123 Petershill Drive and 10 Red Road Court were left with 11 and 13 storeys respectively still standing.

“Our demolition contractor Safedem has confirmed these two remaining blocks are stable and they will now determine in the days ahead the best method for completing their demolition.

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“In the meantime, we have commissioned an independent technical review of Sunday’s blowdown and would like to thank again the residents who were asked to leave their homes.”



The MSP for the area, Patricia Ferguson, is a former resident of the flats, which were hailed as the solution to Glasgow’s tenement slums when they were built in the 1960s, but later came to represent the failings of 20th-century high-rise housing. Ferguson’s family was one of the first to move into 10 Red Road Court – one of the blocks left partially standing – in December 1966.

Increasingly run down by the turn of the millennium, the Red Road flats became synonymous with squalor, violence and drug abuse. Two of the original eight 30-story blocks, built as a “scheme in the sky” to house more than 5,000 residents, were levelled in controlled explosions in 2012 and 2013.

After visiting the site on Monday, Ferguson said: “My initial concerns were about safety but having been round today, ironically quite close to the block where I used to live, I’ve been told that the remaining blocks are pretty stable and that work has already begun to bring them down properly.”

In the longer term, Ferguson said she hoped any future housing in the area would be planned with greater foresight than there had been in the 1960s.

“One of my criticisms of the original building was the lack of facilities. There was one tiny corner shop that served the area when we moved in, and no local school. Whatever happens to the site now has to be done with full consultation with local people about community provision as well as housing development.”

Ferguson believes that the clear-up after the demolition will take at least two years to complete.

Chris Leslie, a photographer and film-maker who has been documenting changes to the Red Road community over the past five years, also visited the site this morning. “There is a mountain of metal but there was a beautiful blue sky, the rain had washed away most of the dust and everything was calm.”

Leslie said residents had taken the botched demolition in their stride. “What local people are really interested to see is what will happen to the area next. There has been seven years of buildup to the demolition, so I don’t think that they mind if it takes another few days, as long as there were no smashed windows in their homes.

“There was plenty of Glasgow humour on social media about it last night,” he said.