Tender

West Dunbartonshire tenders window works at listed Balloch Castle

By Staff Writer  |  06-09-2026

West Dunbartonshire Council is seeking a contractor to replace the windows at Balloch Castle, a Category A listed building. The estimated value is 297,000 pounds excluding value added tax. The scope reaches past the windows into rot works and structural works within the west elevation. Tenders close at 12:00 on 2 October 2026.

Windows, rot and structure in one lot

West Dunbartonshire Council have a requirement for the replacement of the windows within the Category A listed building of Balloch Castle. These works will consist of window refurbishment and replacement, rot works as well as structural works within the west elevation.

West Dunbartonshire Council, contract notice

The title of the notice says replacement. The scope says refurbishment and replacement, which are different operations on different windows, and the notice does not say how many fall into each category or how that split is to be decided. On a listed building that decision is usually taken window by window once the frames are opened up, and a bidder pricing this has no published schedule to work from.

Rot works sit next in the sentence. Rot in window joinery in a stone building tends to run into the surrounding timber, and the extent is rarely known before the opening up. The notice carries no allowance, no provisional sum and no schedule of rates on the public record, so how that uncertainty is priced is settled in the tender documents rather than here.

The third strand is structural works within the west elevation. That is not a window operation and it is not described further anywhere on the release. It fixes one elevation as carrying work the other elevations do not, which is the single clearest signal on the notice about where the condition problem lies.

Category A listing and what it does to the job

Scottish listed buildings are placed in one of three categories, A, B or C, according to their relative importance. Category A covers buildings of special architectural or historic interest that are outstanding examples of a period, style or building type. Historic Environment Scotland states that the categories themselves have no legal status and are advisory: the statutory protection comes from the listing, not from the letter.

What that means on this job is that the protection bites whatever the category, and altering or removing protected fabric is a matter for listed building consent rather than for the specification alone. The category is the record of how the building has been assessed, and this one is assessed at the top of the three.

The notice does not state whether listed building consent is already in place, who obtained it, or what it permits. Neither does it name the window type, the glazing specification, the material of the replacement frames or the treatment of the existing openings. A bidder can read from the notice that the constraint exists and must look to the tender documents for its terms.

The estimated value of 297,000 pounds excluding value added tax is recorded once on the release, as the estimated total value. It is not split between the window works, the rot works and the structural works, and no separate figure attaches to the west elevation.

The process, the dates and the missing detail

The procurement is a single lot run under the open procedure, categorised as works, with the classification code for construction work for buildings. The delivery location is recorded as West Dunbartonshire. The tender period ends at 12:00 on 2 October 2026, and the notice reached the register on 4 September 2026, which leaves bidders four weeks.

The council records that it is running the invitation to tender through the Scottish public sector tendering portal under project code 28367. That is where the documents sit, and the register itself publishes none of them.

What is not on the record is the programme. No start date, no completion date and no contract period appear anywhere on the release, and nothing states whether the building is occupied during the works or what access the contractor will have. On a Category A listed building with structural works to one elevation, scaffolding design, access and the sequence of opening up are the items that move a price, and none of them is published.