Edinburgh Council faces serious questions about Granton Marina fiasco – John McLellan

Edinburgh Council lost a planning appeal over the Granton Marina development, then lost an expensive legal bid to challenge the Scottish Government’s decision, writes John McLellan.

An artist's impression of the planned marina

While all attention is rightly on how communities, associations and businesses survive the coronavirus lockdown, it doesn’t mean that problems are suddenly swept away and disputes still need to be resolved.

For months, if not years, Edinburgh Council has been fighting with the developers behind the Granton Marina regeneration, with housing, a hotel and leisure facilities on hold because of disagreements over planning permissions and infrastructure payments.

The developers won an appeal to the Scottish Government and the council then took the Scottish Government to court and last week three of Scotland’s most senior judges quietly threw out the council’s case, leaving the authority with an enormous legal bill and a very red face.

In response to a written question I put down in March, the council admitted to spending just over £26,000 on the case, which seemed somewhat conservative to me, but now it must meet court costs and the other side’s fees, including the services of John Campbell QC who even spent time at the housing committee as he worked on the case.

Who knows when this development or any other will get going, but it should bring a welcome boost to housing numbers and also give the whole area a new focal point it badly needs.

But as normal business returns there are serious questions for the council to answer about why public money was spent fighting what seemed like a very clear decision by the Scottish Government reporter, and with which their Lordships fully agreed.

Scottish Government needs to act to help struggling businesses

As businesses large and small struggle with the effects of lockdown, it’s obvious that whatever fine words politicians may be making, it’s taking far too long for financial support to reach where it’s needed.

The argument and partial U-turn over Scottish Government grants to Scottish retail, hospitality and leisure businesses was a waste of valuable time, cloaked in claims it was all about helping key businesses omitted from the UK Government scheme.

Which other businesses was not accurately defined, creating the impression that being different from the UK Government was prioritised ahead of urgency.

Scottish news publishing has been recognised as a key service but there has been no meaningful intervention to support journalism at a time when advertising has disappeared and many readers, particularly the elderly, cannot get to the shops and home delivery is difficult. Time for action.