Digging up green fields to accommodate displaced businesses takes the petticoat tail shortbread - John McLellan

The designated 'employment area' is effectively a huge extension to the Newbridge industrial estate, above, says John McLellan (Picture: Google Maps)

You’d be forgiven for missing it as you whizz past along the M8, but if City of Edinburgh Council gets its way, the city’s industrial future lies in open fields on the West Lothian boundary.

The site lies in a crook of the River Almond, between a pig farm and Cliftonhall Road, and is designated as an “employment area” in the CityPlan 2030 blueprint published in 2021.

It is effectively a huge extension to the Newbridge industrial estate, just across from the Menzies distribution depot, and in principle there should be comparatively little controversy about growing an industrial estate near a motorway if few people are directly affected and it meets demand.

But the council aims to generate the demand by driving businesses out of the main urban area to make way for badly needed housing, which according to a study submitted to the CityPlan consultation involves around 400 companies.

For example, the council has designated Bonnington for houses and a new school, currently occupied by businesses which presumably the council imagines will be content to move to Newbridge, even though customers and staff may be close at hand in Leith and the potential disruption a lot more than just moving some kit.

It’s a similar story at Seafield. Why, the council seems to think, wouldn’t all those car showrooms and builders’ merchants be just as happy next to the M8?

But wait a minute, didn’t the council proudly claim to be protecting green belt land? After all, the official report which accompanied the CityPlan, clearly stated it “does not seek to allocate new greenfield sites”.

The planning convener at the time, Councillor Neil Gardiner, said: “Land is a finite resource – once it’s gone it’s gone. We want to use our land sparingly and to its best advantage because it is some of the prime agricultural land in Scotland.”

But it appears this leafy spot, which includes a flood plain, doesn’t qualify, even though under the previous local development plan, which CityPlan replaces, it was clearly designated as a “countryside policy” area.

Here is what the council’s own rules said about such sites: “Countryside areas which are not designated green belt are considered to be of equivalent environmental importance. For this reason, it is appropriate to apply the same level of protection to both green belt and countryside areas.”

Seemingly not in this case, and in the CityPlan details which run to over 1,400 pages, all they have to say about turning a blind eye to the policy is: “An area of land to the south-west of Newbridge has been brought within the urban area as an extension to the settlement’s Business and Industry Area.”

So how did the authority manage to claim it did not want greenfield development when that was exactly what it was proposing?

Oh, sorry, it was all a big mistake, say officers. “The Council acknowledges the reference to ‘does not allocate any new greenfield’ is an error,” they have now admitted, adding that “maximising the use of brownfield land rather than greenfield land” is a better description.

Well, that’s ok then. Double standards are hardly unknown in Edinburgh’s planning system, but digging up green fields to accommodate displaced businesses just to claim the council has not allowed more houses on the green belt takes the petticoat tail shortbread.