The Sighthill housing estate in Glasgow, notorious as one of the most deprived urban areas in Britain, is facing demolition.

Glasgow Housing Association has started the process that could lead to the demolition of the houses on the rundown estate.

The association, a registered social landlord, wants to upgrade its stock of 82,000 houses in the city and put out a tender last month for a consortium to start looking at what to do with areas like Sighthill.

A project insider said the chosen developer might decide to refurbish the area, or demolish it.

Sighthill gained notoriety in 2001 when 22-year-old Firsat Yildiz was stabbed as he walked through the estate, in what was believed to be a racially motivated attack.

The area contains a large number of refugees and asylum seekers.

  • The National Centre for Sustainable Communities Skills will not be a physical building, despite government indications last autumn that a landmark building might be constructed in Leeds.

The skills centre will instead be a virtual resource to organise conferences and seminars. The cost of building and maintaining a centre was deemed to be prohibitive.

The RICS is also working on drawing together all the disparate pieces of work on sustainability to come up with some simplified guidelines on sustainable communities.