A neglected five-bedroom house in Ibrox which has been empty for seven years will be bought by City Council who want to use it for a homeless family.

The property which sits on Ibrox Terrace has been described as being in “a state of serious disrepair” and is a “blight” on the area.

During Thursday’s contracts and property committee, members agreed to buy the house through a compulsory purchase order (CPO) before handing it over to Linthouse Housing Association to run.

The house has been lying empty since October 5, 2017 when the owner passed away – but the late owners’ children have not taken the necessary steps to legally inherit the property to date.

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As a result, it has been neglected and allowed to deteriorate and is now deemed to be in a state of serious disrepair impacting negatively on the neighbouring properties and causing environmental blight.

During the meeting questions were raised on whether a CPO was necessary or if the council could have looked into a compulsory sales order -a proposed power for local authorities in Scotland to force the sale of vacant or derelict land and buildings – instead.

Councillor Ken Andrew said: “When you are assessing something like this in terms of a CPO how does that work when you are thinking about a compulsory sales order.

“Or am I getting ahead of legislation at the moment as looking at the property online it looks like quite a valuable property so I am kind of curious as to how you would assess that compared to essentially forcing a sale of the property.”

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A council officer said: “The property is in really poor condition but it probably could be quite valuable if it was invested in. Currently we don’t have the legislation in place to compulsory sales orders – compulsory purchase order is the only option really to get these moved on.

“This will deliver a five bedroom property into the social rented sector which is really difficult to deliver through newbuilds which I think is a really good outcome.”