GLASGOW City Council’s self-build housing project -– featuring six plots at Maryhill Locks -– has won a national award.

The scheme triumphed in the Best Council category at the Build It Awards.

The awards organisers stated: “The team at Glasgow have been doing a great job at creating self-build plots in urban locations and those efforts are really coming to fruition, proving that self and custom-build can be a genuine option in bustling towns and cities.”

Glasgow City Council was the first in Scotland to set up a self-build register (now with more than 300 entries), facilitate a unique council enabled self-build pilot, and from that create a self-build programme.

Following the success of the pilot project and the clear demand for affordable, serviced plots, a programme of self-build has been created, with a rolling release of plots (four council-owned sites over the next year).

In Scotland so far, the majority of self-build has been in rural sites, on individual, unserviced plots, but Glasgow City Council believes self-build has an important part to play in urban regeneration and can breathe new life into deprived areas, often overlooked by mainstream developers.

The approach adopted has encouraged affordable, high-quality, sustainable, innovative and highly individual house designs within a planning process which is much easier for the people to navigate.

The pilot project chosen from hundreds of entries to be shortlisted for the RTPI (Royal Town Planning Institute) Awards for Planning Excellence 2020 (small schemes).

Making self-build affordable is a priority for the council with plans to produce a council-funded ‘help to build’ scheme as well as working with housing associations and co-operatives to offer self-build across tenures.

Councillor Kenny McLean, city convener for neighbourhoods, housing and public rrealm, said: “Self-build housing is another way in which sites in the city can be developed to create homes that meet the different needs of people wanting to live here.

“The pilot scheme at Maryhill Locks is progressing very well, and it is great to see this special project receiving recognition.

“We can look forward to more self-build sites being developed in Glasgow over the next few years.”