ONE of Scotland's largest councils is to write-off £5.5million in unpaid debt after a major home repairs scandal.
Edinburgh City Council's home and business repairs department collapsed after claims of it charged inflated prices for emergency or statutory repairs.
It was disbanded but £22m of unsettled bills remains.
A new update revealed £5.5m of that is to be written off as the extent of the problem is finally unravelled.
Hundreds of homeowners were hit by the scandal and many await a resolution..
Alasdair Rankin, Edinburgh City Council's finance convener, said: "We are acutely aware of the issues faced by the former property conservation service and continue to make good progress towards closing these off.
"Whilst we are making every effort to fairly recover any money due to the council, this does not include billing for works that should not have been carried out in the first place.
"The council has already made provision for the non recovery of debts."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article