Edinburgh Christmas market: Architects of this shambolic affair must be held to account – Steve Cardownie

A report in the Evening News under the headline “Christmas festival to go ahead with new operators” will be greeted with a collective sigh of relief from many in the city.

Edinburgh's Christmas market has been a fixture in the city for nearly 30 years (Picture: Getty Images)

But how did it get to the stage where a last-minute decision by councillors, at an emergency meeting, had to be made?

Meeting in October to award the contract for the six-week-long Christmas festival hardly seems like efficient business.

Unique Events and Fringe venue operator Assembly have been given the reins and will now put together a scaled-down festival which nevertheless will feature more than 70 market stalls and bars, as well as funfair rides and attractions, including an ice-rink in George Street.

Perversely, Angel Events Experience – a German Christmas market operator who won the original tender to provide the market for up to five years, paying Edinburgh Council £5.4 million in the process, only to inform the council at the last minute that it was unable to meet the terms of the contract – is to be engaged by Unique and Assembly to, wait for it, provide a Christmas market!

Angel Events Experience, having tried unsuccessfully to force the council to drastically reduce the contractual payments, and I mean drastically, before tearing up the contract, is still getting the job of setting up the market.

One concern is that, in their haste to award the contract to new operators, council officials may not have carried out sufficient due diligence to determine whether the company could indeed meet the £5.4 million payment. Obviously, it couldn’t, and the Christmas festivities came perilously close to being cancelled all together.

So, what officials were involved in this debacle which has left the council seriously out of pocket? What motivated them to recommend awarding the contract to Angel Events Experience and did they properly check whether or not the company could meet the financial commitments detailed in the contract?

I trust that when councillors have stopped patting themselves on the back for saving Edinburgh’s Christmas, they will ask serious questions as to why they were put in this unsatisfactory position in the first place.

The architects of this shambolic affair should not be let off the hook and should bear the consequences of their actions. For Angel Events Experience, it’s a win-win situation.