Depute Council Leader Brian McGinley has made a plea for extra powers to help South Ayrshire Council deal with the Station Hotel debacle and avoid similar problems in the future.
Ayr East Councillor McGinley raised the issue with Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar when he visited Ayr on Thursday.
The Labour member bemoaned the cost to the taxpayer of dealing with the issue, adding that it should have been dealt with 20 years ago.
Maintaining the crumbling building is costing the council £52,000 a month.
Cllr McGinley said: “We don’t own these buildings, so the only way the council can intervene is when it is causing a danger to the public.
“We need a wee bit of the carrot and the stick. I spoke to Anas Sarwar and asked him to raise the matter".
“We need the powers to say to owners ‘are you interested in this building?’, ‘do you have plans for it?’.
“This is too important a building, a major part of our landscape.
“We would repurpose the building, make a compulsory purchase order, whatever we need to in order protect it for the community.
“But we are left with these problems and end up spending millions of pounds just to keep something shored up that should have been dealt with twenty years ago.
“So we really need these powers. I hope he will be able to bring it up in Parliament.”
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