Aiming to live up to the civic pride of our neighbours

Small towns and villages in the UK manage to show a better sense of civic pride than we do at home, says Iain Whyte

Almost universally I am impressed that small towns and villages manage to show a better sense of civic pride than we do at home.

This week I’ve been in East Yorkshire, and I have been impressed by the maintenance and cleanliness of beaches, parks and public spaces regardless of county, town or parish council responsibility.

The most obvious difference is planters. In Edinburgh these are often weed-strewn wastelands with broken tree saplings and no obvious maintenance scheme.

They become unemptied auxiliary bins whether it is on Princes Street or a small local park. I suppose it doesn’t help that we don’t even have an asset register for them.

In Yorkshire planters are numerous, have bright seasonal blooms and are well looked after. They often state who is responsible and sometimes get local company sponsorship. Planters are not an isolated blind spot – East Yorkshire’s public areas feel better maintained.

Public facilities like children’s paddling pools by the beach or numerous public toilets are still there and clean. In Edinburgh we are having to find money to replace closed toilets.

People make this happen and this week I have seen council operatives weeding a roundabout on the hottest day of the year, people stationed to give helpful advice on public transport and keep order and cleanliness and a well-marked Community Payback Team maintaining park benches and bins.

We are often told that these issues are down to funding as government grants were cut in the 2010s. Yet the figures show that English councils lost up to 40 per cent of grants and Scottish ones about 10 per cent back then.

Edinburgh falling behind is all about priorities and ways of working. It is time we did better. We could start by aiming to live up to the civic pride of our neighbours in the Lothians. Then we can try to match the best in the UK.

Iain Whyte is Conservative Councillor for Craigentinny/Duddingston Ward and Leader of the Conservative Group on Edinburgh City Council