Edinburgh's city centre needs better offices and the return of working people – John McLellan

A new report paints a positive picture for retailing in Edinburgh, with figures gathered by property consultants Knight Frank even before the St James Quarter opened showing the city has the most productive shopping environment outside London.

Lockdown saw many start working from home and more high-quality offices are needed in Edinburgh's city centre to entice people back (Picture: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)

The eventual closure of Glasgow’s Buchanan Street Galleries will make Edinburgh the shopping capital of Scotland, augmented when Jenners is re-opened with some sort of retail facility as well as the proposed hotel conversion.

But it still leaves the question of the increasingly tired and shabby West End, and the splendid new Johnnie Walker Centre can’t be left in glorious isolation as all around it crumbles.

Nor can the West End rely on every empty shop becoming a restaurant if the year-round footfall remains low as office workers either stay at home or migrate to peripheral sites.

The announcement that Deloitte is to move from Castle Terrace to Haymarket is a good example of the demand for new, top-quality office space, and this has been the big challenge for some time.

Haymarket is full because of the scarcity of quality office space in the city centre, so a plan to meet that shortage is as badly needed as Multrees Walk and St James were for the revival of Edinburgh’s flagging retail offer, and as vital as developing a credible plan to meet the housing crisis.

The priority for the city centre’s future economic health is the return of working people and maintaining its attractiveness as a place to live, and that needs a lot more thought than just banning cars.

John McLellan is a Conservative councillor for Craigentinny/Duddingston

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