Tuesday June 2nd 2026
Edinburgh City Chambers
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Joe Sullivan
Edinburgh Council will no longer serve as a factor in a number of mid- and high-rise blocks where it has minority ownership, after a vote by councillors.
The decision was made at Monday’s housing committee meeting, and will likely affect hundreds of tenants in four blocks.
These include Coillesdene House in Joppa, and three of the four Saunders Street blocks in Stockbridge.
One of the Saunders Street blocks, as well as part of another, have transitioned to a non-council factor.
The council will also slowly work to divest itself from those blocks, and sell its properties in them to private ownership.
Housing convener Tim Pogson said it was a difficult position where the council’s role in the buildings came from the ‘multiple hats’ the council was wearing.
He added: “There is significant confusion with the roles of the council, the multiple hats the council is wearing, and the potential for conflicts of interest or even perceptions of conflicts of interest in all that.
“So I can see sense in the proposals before that. We’ve made it clear that Westfield Court is a very clear exception in all of this by nature of its physical circumstances.”
A six-month transitional period will follow, where the council will help to arrange new factors for the properties.
After it concludes, the council will continue to pay its share of shared repair costs based on the number of units it still has in each affected building.
According to a report presented to councillors at the meeting, the council does not charge owners for providing an overall factoring service.
It does charge a 15% management fee for repair activities, but council officers said the council faces ‘high and unrecoverable’ administrative costs.
They add that they believe the council is not ‘suitably equipped or resourced’ to provide a factoring service where it is not a majority owner.
In Coillesdene House, 34 properties are privately owned, while seven are owned by the council, giving it a 17% stake in the building.
Meanwhile, in the remaining Saunders Street blocks, the council owns 16 of 107 flats, giving it just under a 15% stake.
The report initially included another block, Maidencraig Court, where the council holds just 7%.
But at the meeting, officers stated that it should be excluded from the plans to step back from factoring due to issues with communal heating at the site.
Westfield Court, another high-rise block where the council has minority ownership, was excluded from the plans from the outset.
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