The tenement at the corner of Cross Street and Main Street in Campbeltown has been made safe, Argyll and Bute Council has said.

The work has been completed ahead of schedule allowing the road to be reopened early.

Due to concerns over the safety of the tenement, the local authority erected an exclusion zone around it, closing Cross Street to vehicles, although keeping it open for pedestrians to access the businesses in the street.

Since then, work has been carried out to ensure the safety of the property. A contractor was hired to buttress the outside of the building with an external scaffold, as well as propping the interior with a steel scaffold structure.

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The work is the final target building for the Campbeltown Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI), which is part of the wider CHORD regeneration project for the town. Around £390,000 of THI funding has been ring-fenced to fully repair and renovate the building, bringing it back in to full use.

It is understood a developer has been identified and the THI-led project can now move forward – subject to planning and grant approval.

Chair of the MAKI Area Committee, which has assumed the responsibility of the old CHORD Project Board, Councillor Rory Colville, said: "We have secured the building for the moment, ahead of the main work beginning in the summer.

"Without the intervention of the council, the building may well have been demolished leaving a gap site on the Main Street. Now it will be renovated, with the shop-fronts on the bottom level enhanced and flats for private let on the upper levels, bringing the whole building back in to use.

"This propping work is complementary to the future renovation of the building, with the contractor able to use the scaffold in the initial stage of the development."

(JP/IT)