INSIDE Hartwood Hospital’s overgrown courtyard, a derelict nursing home is being strangled by a net of ivy that creeps up its crumbling facade and vanishes into the tattered roof.
A cage of spiked fencing is doing its best to keep the public out of this once-grand North Lanarkshire building. But it’s not working.
“The noise coming from the hospital and the number of times the police have been up and down has just been ridiculous,” one local tells The Ferret. “Sometimes you come up and there’s six or seven police cars, there’s ambulances, there’s fire engines. It’s really getting out of hand”.
Despite efforts from the Scottish Government, councils and local groups, vacant and derelict property in Scotland collectively makes up an area around 1.5 times the size of Dundee, according to official statistics.
For communities, a crumbling building can be more than just an inconvenient eyesore. It can be a magnet for intimidating anti-social behaviour and arson, leaving locals fearful to walk their own area. Derelict sites can also impact residents’ physical and mental health, and deter local investment and tourism, according to government advisers.
Hartwood Hospital, which opened in 1895, was one of the largest psychiatric complexes in Europe, holding up to 2500 residents before a huge shift in mental health policy caused such large institutions to be shut down.
Some residents in the nearby village of Hartwood fondly recall the lush grounds speckled with wildlife that pooled around the Victorian facility. It was entirely self-sustaining, with its own farm, power plant, reservoir and even a railway line.
But since its gradual abandonment began in 1998, the asylum has suffered natural decay, anti-social behaviour and vandalism. Now, some locals want it razed to the ground.
Arson attacks saw a fire rip through the asbestos-ridden main building in 2004, destroying offices, a dining hall, and damaging the clock towers. Another blaze hit in 2011, then a third fire engulfed the site in 2016.
The following year, someone was pictured in the clock tower, after 15 young people reportedly entered the grounds. Yet, the hospital building still stands – skeletal, vulnerable to decay, and dangerous.
Hartwood residents aren’t alone in their concerns about a dilapidated building, however.
In wider North Lanarkshire, around seven in 10 people live within 500 metres of derelict land, according to the Scottish Government’s latest statistics. Deserted manors, redundant industrial facilities and abandoned homes are common sights.
They include Wishaw’s Cambusnethan Priory, which has been littered with graffiti, despite a local group’s efforts to “clean up” and save the historic building.
Such issues are not confined to North Lanarkshire either – derelict buildings are commonplace for communities across the country. While the exact number of empty properties in Scotland is unknown, more than 8850 hectares of urban vacant and derelict land were recorded in the latest government survey, in 2024.
The Ferret previously investigated Scotland’s largest vacant and derelict sites – which have included the “world’s biggest” explosive plant, sprawling opencast coal mines and RAF airfields – as well as the barriers to their remediation. We’ve also explored how dereliction has impacted communities in Dumfries and Galloway and Glasgow.
The Scottish Land Commission (SLC) found that half of the population live within a kilometre of vacant or derelict land. This is more common for people living in poorer areas, and “can be harmful to physical and mental health”, it added.
The SLC says derelict buildings can also harm communities by deterring investment and tourism. But the visitors that some derelict buildings attract can create more immediate disruption.
“You couldn’t take the children over [to the nearby playground] because it was full of these young adults swearing, smoking vapes, and drinking,” claimed one Hartwood resident, who asked to remain anonymous.
Residents believe the problems caused by the building now overshadow the nostalgia and history it once bore, and want it to be reduced to rubble. However, the grounds are home to listed buildings, which are protected due to historical or architectural interest.
A ‘mammoth task'
TO demolish a listed building, the owner must gain consent from the local planning authority, which is only granted if there is no other viable means to save it.
“There is a strong presumption in favour of retaining listed buildings,” according to Historic Environment Scotland (HES). Demolition applications “should be refused unless their loss has been fully considered and justified”.
In fact, it is a criminal offence to knock down a listed building without consent.
More than 2000 historic listed buildings now lie in ruin and, if demolition is denied, repairs can be equally costly and time-consuming. Because of the age of most listed buildings, HES recommends only specialist tradespeople carry out any repairs or maintenance.
The team at Bannockburn House Trust, a group working to restore the historic 17th-century mansion in Stirlingshire, which served as an important headquarters during the Jacobite uprising of 1745, has experienced such difficulties first-hand.
“We can’t just go and dig a hole in the back garden,” says conservation trustee Dr Catherine Bradley. “We have to do archaeology and geophysics and then we have to interpret it. We can only have conservation-accredited people work on the building. Structural engineers come at a cost of more than £200 an hour.”
After visiting the building, HES told the trust that restoration would be a “mammoth task”. Due to the damage caused by decay, many developers will simply not be interested because it does not stack up economically, explains Fiona McLachlan, a professor of architectural practice at the University of Edinburgh.
VAT is applicable to repairs on an old building, adding 20% to the bill, she says. “So, in many cases, it’s much cheaper for a developer to try and knock down a building and build a new one than it is to repair an existing building.”
HES has raised the same issue. VAT was not charged on approved alterations to listed buildings until 2012. Zero-rates of VAT apply to new homes, or any demolition required to make way for them, which generally makes a new build a cheaper option than restoration.
In January, the National Trust for Scotland called for VAT cuts on heritage buildings, urging all political parties ahead of the Holyrood election to “commit to action to save the nation’s built heritage”.
Fiona said that architects are also campaigning for a change to the VAT rules on repairs. Removing VAT, she believes, is the best thing the Government can do to protect listed buildings. “Certainly, in the UK, it’s a really big issue, and it’s used as an excuse,” McLachlan added.
The UK Government said renovations can benefit from a reduced rate of VAT of 5%, but only if they are for residential purposes and meet certain conditions.
The Ferret has previously revealed the rise of taxable derelict land, prompting opposition parties to argue that the rates are too low to discourage owners from allowing land to fall into disuse.
In 2018, the SLC and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency created a task force with the aim of tackling Scotland’s derelict land issue. In 2020, it made 13 recommendations to the Scottish Government.
They included altering the tax system to make repurposing derelict properties more appealing to landowners, increasing funding for local authorities to help them bring vacant land back into use, and making long-term derelict sites a top priority in Scotland’s national planning framework.
An SLC report, published in July, outlined how ministers could use tax powers, it said, to encourage the reuse of hundreds of derelict sites and save them from a fate of further neglect.
Funding, and the climate cost
ACCORDING to Public Finance Minister Hannah Mary Goodlad, the Scottish Government put £13m into its regeneration capital grant fund in 2025/26 to help councils remediate 5.9 hectares of vacant and derelict land. This support helped bring sites back into productive use, including for housing, she told The Ferret.
“In addition, work is being undertaken alongside local authorities to explore potential opportunities to deliver affordable housing on vacant and derelict land and in empty town and city centre buildings,” Goodlad added.
“We will continue to work with the Scottish Land Commission and others to consider how land and property taxation can support the productive use of land.”
McLachlan argues that rescuing buildings can not only begin to reverse the effects that derelict land has on a community – it can also preserve Scotland’s heritage and boost sustainability.
“It’d be catastrophic for all sorts of reasons if these buildings were to disappear,” she said. “They contain all sorts of civic, social and cultural memories, as well as being valuable architecturally.
“History happens in and around buildings, so they’re vital in terms of maintaining that understanding of society through time. From a sustainability point of view, we’re now teaching that you shouldn’t be building new buildings if there are ones that actually can be used because of their embodied carbon.”
A 2023 UN environment programme report named the buildings and construction sector as the largest producer of greenhouse gases, making up 37% of global emissions. Producing and using materials such as steel, aluminium, and cement has “a significant carbon footprint”, it stressed.
“Carbon dioxide is the problem in terms of the climate crisis,” McLachlan adds. “So, if we don’t have to build new buildings, that’s much better – we don’t release more carbon. The more we can make use of these buildings, the better.”
Back in Hartwood, the creaking, fire-ravaged structures stand stark against the otherwise serene grounds. Saddened by the state of the old hospital, a local resident told us that as long as the building still stands, troublemakers are sure to return time after time.
She’s hopeful that the destruction of the former nurses’ home will deter any future visitors. But as to whether this will actually happen, she’s far from certain: “I’ve got a feeling it’s not going to get better soon.”
