All eyes west as we face the challenge of homelessness - Jane Meagher

Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work Convener Cllr Jane Meagher

With over 5000 households facing homelessness every night in Edinburgh and Scottish Government cuts to the council’s housebuilding budgets, we face a huge challenge providing everyone with a suitable and affordable place to call home.

A major highlight of City Plan 2030 - approved by Planning Committee last month - is setting aside enough land to accommodate 53,000 much-needed homes. And a huge percentage of these could be built in the west of the city, where the success of the tramline is said to be leading developers to eye up previously untapped opportunities.

Widely hailed as the biggest housing-led development in Edinburgh of modern times, West Town is a £2 billion development of 7000 homes to buy and rent, alongside shops, schools and local businesses. It will provide a huge number of the new homes our city needs and greenspace and I’m pleased council officers and developers have worked together to get a great result, with planning approval in principle approved last week.

If further permissions are granted, the development will ultimately span over 200 acres stretching between Ingliston Park and Ride and Gogar Roundabout, creating a new settlement equivalent in size to Linlithgow. In time, the whole development also has the potential to generate an economic impact worth up to £1bn through the creation of over 1000 new jobs, hotels and businesses.

Consider this alongside our £1.3bn regeneration of the Granton Waterfront, which is the biggest development of its kind in Scotland, with over £250 million invested with partners and good progress being made towards delivering around 3500 new net zero carbon homes.

Then there is West Craigs, which is already taking shape into a new community of at least 1700 new homes, along with a new primary school, two five-acre public parks and protected woodland, plus Elements Edinburgh, a £1 billion, 3000-home development by Crosswinds Developments which planners will be considering soon.

We desperately need homes and more opportunities for people who are renting. So, all of this private development is welcome news for the city, for our climate ambitions and for our economy – which is bucking national trends and continues to grow.

We know West Edinburgh is an area which has already built up a large workforce, being home to much of the city’s industry along with multiple office headquarters. But that’s not all. The area is reinventing itself as a lively destination to spend time outside office hours – with plans for a new 8500-capacity world-class music venue at Edinburgh Park moving forward and the opening of Lost Shore Surf Resort in Ratho, adding to the existing appeal of the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena and Ingliston’s Royal Highland Centre.

This is an exciting time for the city and it will be our job to make sure we manage growth sustainably and fairly. The Towards West Edinburgh 2050 study sets out opportunities to support development and is focused on sustainable living, living well locally and 20 minute neighbourhood principles. That means creating places where most of our daily needs can be met within a 20-minute round trip. To that end, making sure communities are connected needs to be a priority.

Something that I’m particularly proud to see set in stone in the new City Plan 2030 is that each new housing development will need to include a minimum of 35 per cent affordable homes, up from 25 per cent. When combined with all of our work in the North of the city, this could mean over 12,000 new homes agreed this year and over 4200 new affordable homes – the biggest development of affordable homes in the city for decades.

With urgent solutions to our housing and climate emergencies needed, the West offers the best opportunity for building sustainable, affordable homes at scale.

Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work Convener Cllr Jane Meagher