Scots heritage chiefs criticised over national treasure rebuild fail

But they have remained non-committal about having any involvement after being quizzed by Professor Alan Dunlop, one of Scotland's leading architects who once put his hat in the ring to become the next chair of the GSA and is a stakeholder consultee for the project. And it rejected any involvement in supporting the project financially.

A June 2018 fire destroyed the building as it neared the end of a multi-million pound restoration project following an earlier blaze in May 2014.

While a design team was supposed to have been in place, according to the GSA itinerary, by August 2022 - that still has not happened with hopes of getting any council planning approval for the project not expected until the spring of 2026 the earliest, according to estimates based on the GSA's own schedule.

It was confirmed at the end of March, that no new architect procurement process was currently being undertaken nor had any new timescale for this been defined. According to the school's project itinerary, that process alone is expected to take four months.

Funding arrangements had still not been confirmed and neither the Scottish nor UK Governments have been approached to date by the GSA in any bid to secure funds to cover the capital costs of any restoration. The business case schedule talked of confirming funding arrangements in April 2022.

And no steps have yet been taken to appoint a main contractor for the reinstatement of one of Scotland's most internationally renowned landmarks.

An original GSA risk management analysis categorised a delay of more than six months with the project as "catastrophic".

A contrast was made with the work done on the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which was severely damaged by a blaze in 2019 and is scheduled to reopen at the end of this year.

Mr Dunlop who has been pushing for an end to the inertia sought action from HES having approached its chief executive Alex Paterson with articles from the Herald's series about the future of the building.

He asked: "Given that the Mackintosh School of Art was probably Scotland's most important work of architecture and of international renown, does HES have a view on the future of the rebuilding?"

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Its director of heritage Elizabeth McCrone responded: "We’re consulted by local authorities about works to A and B-listed buildings. As we’ll be a statutory consultee for listed building consent applications coming forward for the building, we’ll provide advice to the local authority, who are the decision-maker, when they ask us for our input."

He also asked that about issues surrounding funding for a faithful reinstatement and whether HES would be contributing to any rescue bid.

The response from Ms McCrone was a 'no'.

"Funding for our grants comes from Grant in Aid received from the Scottish Government and so our grants are considered public funding," she said.

"Conservation projects we can support focus on the repair of historic fabric in favour of reinstatement work, and so the proposed reinstatement of the School of Art building would not be something that we could directly financially support.

"Given the proposed traditional nature of the work there may be additional areas of activity which we may be able to support, such as training in traditional skills or community engagement with heritage. Project activities of this nature would need to meet our grants priorities and would be assessed using our competitive application process.

"Should the project team be interested in discussing this they can submit an Expression of Interest..."

Mr Dunlop said he was "disappointed" by the response saying: "HES are not committing to anything that could direct or determine the future of the building..."

He said: "They won't commit their opinion on the direction the project should take, sadly what I expected.

"I believe Historic Environment Scotland should be clearer and more forthright in their opinions regarding the future of the GSA particularly regarding reinstatement and replication, which would not be possible today without in my view massive compromises to the original Mackintosh design.

"They are after all the main conservation advisory body."

One of the issues understood to have put a spanner in the works is a botched process for procuring architects to design the project.

The search to lead the project was canned in March, last year in advance of a reset that has never happened.

Architects John McAslan + Partners were the original top scorers in the bid to oversee the rebuild. But it was then awarded to another firm, understood to be Hawkins\Brown after a recalculation.

Prominent architects and painters have expressed despair at the lack of action and believe government should be stepping in to ensure that Scotland retains the the Charles Rennie Mackintosh legacy.

The art school’s business plan envisages a “fundable and affordable” reconstruction project over a timeline of around five years.

Muriel Gray, the first female chair of the board of governors at the GSA, said five-and-a-half years ago, three months after the 2018 fire that people argued that a rebuild would take "anywhere between four and seven years" but that it would "depend on insurance money, getting the right people in place to do it, building regulations, all the standard technical and financial stuff".

An HES spokesman said: “As outlined in our response to Mr Dunlop, as a statutory consultee in the planning system we will be consulted on plans for the art school once these have been developed, and will be happy to provide advice once we have a proposal to comment on."