Council do nothing as summer of emergencies heads our way - John McLellan
Cast your mind back to the first days of the pandemic and it was abundantly clear that not even the scientists knew what they were dealing with. It didn’t need a public inquiry to conclude that both the UK and Scottish Governments were totally unprepared.
Like a 2021 Audit Scotland report, Baroness Heather Hallett’s interim Covid findings criticised the Scottish Government for not acting “with sufficient urgency, or at all” on the results of previous planning exercises, and “simply copied” a UK-wide flu epidemic strategy.
Hindsight, as they say, is 20:20, but what was inexcusable in both London and Edinburgh was the failure to challenge “group think”, even when there were different approaches elsewhere, like Sweden, from which lessons should have been learnt.
But lessons, it seems, are very hard for public authorities to heed, and this summer there are two emergencies heading our way, neither are unforeseen. Unfortunately, group think is again dictating responses, or lack of them, and it appears effective contingency planning is the last thing being discussed in Edinburgh’s City Chambers.
The most immediate issue now only days away is that of a national bin strike, the “Stinking Summer” public service unions are promising if a pay offer from the local authority umbrella organisation COSLA is not improved.
Admittedly, 3.2 per cent isn’t great, and as it’s apparently the same as was offered two months ago, no wonder the unions are miffed. But with the prospect of rat-infested piles of suppurating garbage piling up during the Festival, the response from council leader Cammy Day is just to ask the Scottish Government to stump up some cash.
The council knows what’s coming because the same thing happened two years ago and knows it’s a health hazard which should be tackled. But no, making alternative arrangements to clear the filth by calling in private contractors would be strike-breaking so the answer is to do nothing and watch it mount.
When the s**t hits the streets, we and our visitors are just expected to pull on our wellies to “respect the right to take industrial action”. And there was me thinking the council existed to serve the public, not assist a particular group of workers in a pay dispute.
Similarly, now the Labour Government is determined to hit private school fees with VAT in January. Parents of the 9,000 or so privately educated pupils in Edinburgh must decide now before the new academic year starts whether to quit and take up a place at their local state school.
Sure, many will be able to take the hit, but an estimated 13 per cent will not. Yet Labour’s answer is denial that anything will change because they believe every family can afford it, as if they have details of their private finances. Meanwhile, Labour-run Edinburgh Council’s strategy is to massage school rolls to make it look like they have acres of space.
That neither is true is glaringly obvious, and the council has a duty to the parents of its schools to explain to them what will happen if the 13 per cent proves to be an underestimate. The authority is fond of rejecting planning applications because a design might not be able to cope with a theoretical once-in-200-years weather event but seems incapable of planning for worst-case scenarios when real problems are just days away.