Christian Allard: 'Raac is the next Post Office scandal without government help'

Press and Journal

15-05-2025

Torry families Trapped by Raac charged us with pinning down Aberdeen City Council co-leader Christian Allard – to answer their questions on the concrete crisis.
After spending months with these Balnagask homeowners, we've heard their concerns and criticisms, shared their stories and launched a campaign to join them in a fight for justice.
In an with Lindsay Bruce – for the first time since the Raac bombshell dropped – we put Councillor Allard in the hot seat.
We asked:
CA: They all got a letter.
CA: What do you think the letters say?
CA: So what does it say?
CA: It says contact us for support and we'll help you through.
We can't force people to give them support. What do you want? For me to knock on the door?
We had sessions [extends arms to suggest a large session].
CA: No, no, a large session with one-to-one support. Okay. We had 10 officers. 10 officers, and they were meeting family to family. One-to-one support.
We didn't do a public meeting because what does that show? It shows what? Everybody's in a different situation. You are tenants and you are owner occupiers, you are private tenants, you are landlords. Will be the one who shouts the loudest who will be heard.
So you need to have that one-to-one support. And we have extended that offer all the way through. It's still rare for people to want it. But we can't force people to do it.
CA: I can't comment about an individual case. But if you give me the name, I'll look into it.
CA: I understand, and I understand as well that as a much as I think our team are fantastic doing what they do, that's stretched them to the limits. Our level of support has maybe not been as good between one, and another one. I can understand that.
CA: I want to make it very clear when I talked about success, I was talking about the relocation of our tenants.
CA: And the work put through. Now, it's not a success for tenants. Nobody wanted to be relocated, maybe a few did, but on the whole nobody wanted to be relocated. Nobody wanted to be in that situation. So that is not a success.
What I'm talking about is the operation put in place and our officers doing a fantastic job to deal with this.
It's so difficult. You have to deal one-to-one, with each person. It breaks your heart to hear the stories. You will have experienced similar as a journalist. It's a very difficult task.
CA: I don't meet one-to-one.
CA: Because it's silly. You know, it's officers to do that. I'm an elected member. They contact me and I respond to them. I meet them in public meetings.
CA: I think it would be unrealistic for me to knock on doors of tenants or owner occupiers… to tell them what?
You know, it's officers who do the work.
If they want to contact me and they do, I respond to them.
They've got their groups – which are a very important – they meet regularly.
But I'm not here to do either the job of our fantastic team, or to do the fantastic job that groups organised by themselves are doing.
This is not my role, you know. People are all welcome to contact me at any time.
CA: In which context do I meet them? I'm not going to knock on doors and disturb people, if that's one thing.
What I can do and what I've done since the start is to go to every meeting that I can go to.
Where people can call me names, by all means. Because I have felt their frustration, I felt the anger, and we are right to be frustrated and to be angry.
But I don't know, are you asking me to actually go and knock at the doors of people?
CA: [Mr Allard points to an email from March 2024 addressed to then First Minister Humza Yousaf.]
CA: That's the answer. [Points to email]
CA:[Nods].
CA: The same thing that I asked a local government minister, when he first came at the end of 2023.
I took him through the houses in Torry and I said we need greater flexibility or any kind of funding, for local authority, tenants, and our owner occupiers.
CA: What specific do you want me to ask?
CA: It's not a claim I'm telling you! [Points to dossier of emails]
[LB reads emails]
CA: We had many meetings and many correspondences. I have asked and had many, many meetings. We had meetings last Friday [with Paul McLennan].
CA: Which we asked the same thing again. Can we have funding? Please, we need access to funding now.
CA: Response from two Governments so far is there is no Raac funding.
CA: Do you know how much it's going to cost me for the owner occupiers? No, because I said we do a one-to-one.
CA: We've got two obstacles.
First obstacle, there's no Raac funding anyway. Obstacle number one.
Obstacle number two, I can tell you how much we have spent so far. I can't tell you on how much I'm going to spend. Because as you said, some of the owner occupiers have not interacted yet.
[Long pause]
CA: We've given details of where we are all the time. All approximate figures. Of course we did, because we have to.
CA: I was not there. I was not invited to the meeting. So I can't comment on what Paul said.
CA: But what do you mean no detailed proposal? How can I give a detailed proposal for something I've not secured?
CA: We did. We did broad figures, approximate figures, of how much it will cost.
CA: They would be exchanged between our officials.
CA: I can check it. I can check if you want.
CA: Who me?
CA: Me?
CA: How would we know this?
CA: By whom?
CA: But why on earth would somebody say that?
It's got nothing to do with them, whatever I think, or don't think. If somebody wants to know what I think, they should ask me, like you are doing today.
CA: First of all, I've not seen the papers yet. I don't know how it will end up. So I don't know what officers recommend.
CA: I'll follow officers' recommendations as much as I can, if I disagree with officers, I'll disagree with officers, but I can't answer until I know exactly what the recommendation is of the officers.
CA: Why would I do that? Imagine if this is the recommendation of the officers, and I will block them. Why would I do that?
Now, if officers' recommendation is no, then I'll have to look at it and make my mind up, and it's not me only. It's not only the SNP and Liberal Democratic parties…
CA: If I was not open to, I don't think we would have decided, as a council, as a local authority, to look at it.
CA: What?
CA: I've changed at least three times on bus gates, gone to two round tables. If I could have avoided all that and did what you just said I would have done it.
On the contrary, I kept on speaking about it and I kept on changing.
CA: We have not made up our mind up yet, as you know, and when the group went to us and said that they wanted us to have an open mind we said, yes, bring the proposals to us, we'll look at them, and we'll take them to committee and decide.
One thing can't be done, and it would be very strict on that.
I don't want people to live in these houses, a day more than they are living in them.
You know, for all that pressure, whether it's financial, mental life, or physical health. In terms of physical health – something can happen, it's very high risk.
And I will not give people false hope. I can't make promises.
CA: I never have been.
CA: No, it's never enough because it's through no fault of your own. It's no fault of your own. And to be truthful, I know why the petition was created.
They put on it for a Raac UK fund to be created, and they put on it about a public inquiry. And I didn't sign it at the time because a public inquiry is for 10 or 20 years time. We need to have help now, we don't need help in 10 or 20 years time.
Never mind this. Public enquiries can be an absolute nightmare. You know, they compensate people when we're dead, you've seen what happened with the Post Office, you know. It's just a scandal.
So I signed it when you took over the campaign, because I thought, okay, if it's validated by the Press and Journal and by the other Raac group, I was happy to sign it, of course, because as you can see, it's the same.
I asked for the same thing from day one.
We need to unlock that funding. That will be the best solution.
CA: I don't know. I don't know what the limitation will be, you know. There will be limitations on cladding as well. There are limitations on everything.
Will it give us a lot more flexibility to our programme financially? Yes.
CA: No. Legally, no.
But that doesn't mean we haven't got a moral obligation. As I said, earlier on, you know, anybody in the city in financial difficulty can come to Aberdeen City Council and they'll get support.
Listen to Mr Allard's response here: