Comment: Councillors must get this decision right

The Cammo residents will no doubt have been preparing their protests for some time, certainly since the Local Plan was thrashed out.

The scale of the proposed development, however, will certainly have taken many by surprise.

Of course there is a long, long way to go before this outline planning application gets anywhere near being approved.

The whole issue of building in this area is highly politicised topic as shown by the fact that agreeing the Local Plan in the first place almost brought down the coalition earlier this year.

And there are huge issues to consider with regards to schools and certainly road links to the area.

Two things are clear, however.

Edinburgh desperately needs more housing, and development on land which was previously deemed as protected green belt is going to have to happen sooner or later.

House builders are not going to go away while there is such a massive supply and demand issue in the Capital and so communities across the city are going to face more applications like this. There will have to be some compromise and inevitably not everyone will be happy.

Our councillors must get decisions like this right.

It is crucial to ensure that as Edinburgh expands, it does so in harmony with established communities and in full consultation with the views of local residents.

We want more people to come and live in Edinburgh. We want people who cannot afford to live in the city at the moment to have the opportunity to move into new affordable housing developments.

What we don’t want is to make any more massive planning mistakes which will take generations to put right.