Not quite getting a consistent big picture plan for social housing in this area.

Calvay Crescent area described above -- limited upgrade at £20K per unit to improve the "thermal efficiency" of the houses.

Garvel Crescent / 400m away -- similar houses were demolished and the site then lay empty for 10 years until newbuild social housing was built at much lower density and at a cost of £200K approx for a 3 bed terrace property.

Reeks of inconsistent management -- hobby horsing with new build if the funds are available or limited upgrades when times are tight.

Is more public money making our housing crisis worse -- demolishing high density units and leaving the site empty for 10 years and then replacing them with fewer properties as the housing waiting list grows and the emergency becomes a crisis?

I fear the HA sector is making it up as they go along or their management abilities mean that any issue means demolition rather than incremental improvement.

Calvay Crescent -- £20K a flat for some cladding seems a bit expensive for the work involved plus there would appear to be no ASHP involved which points to a further upgrade in 10 years time at even more cost.

HA sector -- very good at spending other people's money / some innovation would be nice.

If the solution for Calvay Crescent is incremental improvement then why was the same solution not put forward for Darvel Crescent?

Hi - Director of Calvay HA here. I've only been here around seven years, and Garvel Crescent was demolished before I arrived, however my understanding is that it was demolished due to low demand. Barlanark is a very different place to what is was 40 years ago. Demand is now high and the area is well managed. 40 years ago the whole of Easterhouse was on the verge of failure - the Community Based HAs saved Easterhouse and saved the public purse a small fortune in the process. Without the Community Based HAs I believe the whole area would have been demolished at great expense.

We have installed one ASHP as a pilot to see how it performs in one of the upgraded properties. ASHP is more expensive to install and has other issues namely the supply chain for on-going maintenance is immature and other HAs have experienced end-user acceptance issues. We are keen to find out how our pilot performs and will use the data gathered to inform our next steps.

Our approach has necessarily been incremental due to the availaibility of funding and our relsatively small scale. The diverse neighbourhood that has been created by this process and Calvay's ongoing stewardship is successful and popular - not always the case with large-scale area wide redevelopment schemes (think Hulme demolished twice in little over a generation or the failed Southgate Estate in Runcorn)

Hi Nic, I grew as a young yin up in a nearby east end scheme 40 yrs so have first hand experience of seeing how bad it was!

Great to see so much good work taking place in the likes of Barlanark, Easterhouse and other areas in this part of the city that were pretty much ghettos a few decades ago.

Hi #2 - thank you for your considered and informative contribution to the discussion, and for clarifying a number of points for us. However - I'm not sure you've grasped the function served by the Comments on this site? The goal here is to post grumpy, cantankerous comments complaining about any organisation or individual making decisions about the built environment (in Glasgow, predominantly) and explaining how they are inept, corrupt philistines who couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery despite being given other people's money to waste on the wrong projects. You will find that many of the regular posters here are far better qualified to decide what should happen to the city than the likes of people responsible for social housing organisations. As you were...

#4 I laughed out loud, thank you!

#4 Bravo. So true!

I do agree we should all try to be more positive in our thinking.

However, perhaps the reason why there are so many negative appraisals here is because the standard of design and urbanism in Scotland at the moment, especially in Glasgow, is so very poor at the moment....

Kudos to Nick for leaving a comment to explain the HA's approach, it's not always the case that decision makers engage with website commenters.

#7 - There's a straightforward solution to raising the standard of design and urbanism in Scotland – appoint FatBOT as head of A+DS, then stand well back.