Edinburgh developments: Council demands action over George IV Bridge hotel shrouded in scaffolding for years

Council chiefs are angry that continued delays to the work on the G&V Hotel at the corner of the Royal Mile and George IV Bridge have meant part of the road and pavement have been out of action for such a long time.

And council leader Cammy Day has tabled a motion for Thursday's full council meeting, branding the prolonged project "a blight on the local historic environment" and calling for the Radisson Hotels, the group behind the project, to be charged for the overrun.    

TSPL

The five-star, 136-bedroom hotel was built following demolition of the former Lothian Regional Council offices on the site and opened amid great fanfare in late 2009. It was a partnership between fashion brand Missoni and the Rezidor Hotel Group, but that came to an end in 2014. The hotel was renamed G&V (George and Victoria) and is now part of the Radisson group. 

Councillor Day said: "I hope this will be a great refurbished hotel.  However, I'm told it has been under scaffolding for over five years.   It is a prime site in the city's heritage centre, so I do not want to see prolonged building works and scaffolding unless it's absolutely necessary.  

"And perhaps more importantly, the roadway is blocked - one and a  half lanes plus the cycle lane - and the temporary footpath is not particularly accessible. I simply want our footpaths and roads back into use as they should be. 

“Despite our officials having met with them a couple  times, there seems to be no plan coming forward about when this is going to be resolved.  So I've told our officials I want the road back to public use as a matter of urgency.”

Cllr Day’s motion, which he hopes will win unanimous support across the council, notes “the continued delays in one of the city’s premier streets, due to excessive delays in development and refurbishment” and calls for a report from officials on “the shortest timescale possible, to return the footpath and road network back into proper usage”. 

And it also calls for “a policy statement on charging developers for over run and or excessive use of our active travel networks and roadways”.

Cllr Day said: "I'm a leader who is hugely supportive of business and redevelopment to grow the city and offer more jobs.  However we can't have developers pick and choose however long they want to block up our streets.”

He claimed the fenced-off roadway was now being used as “a general car park” for cars and vans belonging to those carrying out the work on the hotel.

"The reason I brought the motion is to get things moving and establish a policy that if you don't meet the deadlines and there's not a good enough reason why, we will look to bring in penalties or increased charges for the use of our public highways  and footpaths.

“The city has had to put up with this eyesore for five years now and we need to push the developer to get a  move on with it - and at the very least we want the public footway returned to the city as quickly as possible.”

Radisson has been approached for comment.