Tenants at one of Glasgow’s leading cultural hubs are battling what they describe as “unsustainable” rent increases, with critics describing the landlord responsible as a “rogue agency” imposing similar rises on vulnerable organisations across the city.
With tenants expected to sign new leases or receive notices to quit this week, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the offices of City Property last Friday. The demonstration reflects growing concern about the conduct and accountability of the arm’s-length organisation that manages hundreds of buildings on behalf of Glasgow city council.
At first minister’s questions in Holyrood last Wednesday, Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney was told “City Property is out of control”.
The Scottish Labour MSP for Glasgow, Paul Sweeney, asked Swinney to intervene urgently to prevent City Property from “forcing out” the seven tenants at the Trongate 103 cultural hub “with £700,000 a year extra costs that are four times previous rent, and 10 times service charges”.
The Trongate building, renovated in 2009 with £8m of public investment to create a sustainable grassroots arts community, is home to leading cultural organisations including Transmission Gallery, Street Level Photography and Glasgow Print Studio.
City Property has vehemently denied it is evicting people, stressing that the notices to quit are standard process in lease renewal and that the new rents are still significantly cheaper than commercial terms.
Trongate 103 tenants wrote to the Scottish government’s cabinet secretary for culture, Angus Robertson, and all MSPs, saying the “current trajectory risks dismantling one of Glasgow’s most important cultural assets”.
Artists facing displacement protesting outside Trongate 103. Photograph: Kirsty AndersonMark Langdon, the chair of Glasgow Media Access Centre, which has moved out to a nearby community centre, “After 17 years in the building we were given only four weeks to decide. We feel our experience has been coercive and unfair, and very far from the values of diversity and community that City Property champions on their website.”
A spokesperson for the agency said: “City Property are continuing to discuss new leases with the tenants of 103 Trongate on sustainable and acceptable terms for both parties. It is City Property’s firm intention to work with all tenants to secure their long-term occupation of 103 Trongate.
“These discussions are being conducted in a fair, reasonable and professional manner by both parties.”
Glasgow Print Studio said it had been in effect forced to sign an interim monthly lease “to maintain our operations” but made clear to City Property it was doing so “under duress” and without accepting the “unsustainable increases” to rent and uncapped service charge.
But other organisations in Glasgow describe a different experience. Turning Point Scotland (TPS), a leading provider of social care services to the city, is in dispute with City Property over £805,000 “dilapidation” charges after it moved out of a property. Turning Point says it had spent £1m on building repairs.
Chris Wallace, who works as a consultant for TPS, said: “City Property likes to say this is a negotiation. The council says it’s a commercial dispute and won’t get involved.”
City Property said it was unable to comment on ongoing matters but had “acted in accordance with our respective procedure, the lease provisions” and have been guided professional standards.
Wallace told the Guardian he was aware of other cases in which charity tenants had faced unsustainable rent increases or service charges from City Property, but that they were unwilling to come forward because of ongoing lease disputes.
“This is a rogue agency running amok in the city, banking that tenants don’t want to fall out with the council. Because City Property are an arm’s-length organisation, they seem to avoid scrutiny and don’t recognise any duty of public value that the council certainly has.”
Another well-known charity, which rents several properties from City Property, told the Guardian on condition of anonymity: “I’m worried that if they get away with this they will roll it out to even more vulnerable organisations. Their maintenance of properties has been a complete shambles but there’s no accountability for an arm’s-length organisation.”
City Property denied what it described as “baseless claims”, pointing out that it is “fully accountable to and scrutinised by its Board which comprises both elected members and senior officers of Glasgow city council”.
“City Property fully complies with Glasgow city council’s concessionary rent policy and will continue to do so. The maintenance of our properties is professionally managed within the terms of the leases, and where we recover these costs from tenants, this is a transparent and regulated process,” a spokesperson said.
The Scottish Greens are bringing a motion to the city council next week calling for “greater collective intervention” to support Trongate 103 tenants and better oversight for arm’s-length organisations such as City Property.
The Scottish Greens councillor and deputy provost, Christy Mearns, said: “Although the Council’s landlord, City Property, are doing what they were set up to do when the then-Labour administration passed the council’s commercial properties to them, Trongate 103 should never have been passed over as a purely commercial asset, as the organisations within it are not commercial by their very nature and nor should they be.”
Sweeney also called for greater oversight. “This is a public agency that should have the public interest at its core,” he said. “After the disaster that we witnessed in Union Street [the recent fire that gutted a historic Victorian building], it adds to the sense that there is no coherence driving the care of Glasgow city centre.”
A Glasgow city council spokesperson said: “Our understanding is that the discussions on the new leases for spaces at Trongate 103 are ongoing, and that these are taking place in a reasonable way between all concerned.”
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