How can Edinburgh Council ignore pleas from elderly and disabled people? – John McLellan

The scrapping of Edinburgh’s No 69 bus would leave some elderly people in one community isolated in their own homes, writes John McLellan.

Lesley Macinnes is being asked to intervene in the No.69 bus issue. Picture: Ian Georgeson

While SNP councillors were slapping themselves on the back at the Scottish Government’s willingness to entertain the Greens’ demand for free travel for under-19s, there has been silence about a decision taken by the council-owned Lothian Buses which will leave elderly people in Edinburgh isolated.

From the way the company’s managing director Richard Hall was ousted, we can presume it is not just council-owned but council-controlled, so this supposedly inclusive authority is, as I have written here before, presiding over the scrapping of a small but vital service in arguably the most difficult route in the urban network.

The 69 in Willowbrae and Lady Nairne can’t exist without subsidy but while new Finance Secretary Kate Forbes is prepared to buy Green support for her budget with £15m to implement free bus travel for teenagers, a lifeline for a community with many elderly people will cease at the end of the month because of a lack of cash.

“Lothian Buses can no longer financially support the service to allow continued operation on a commercial basis,” I was told by a senior manager. “For the service to continue a source of external funding would need to be found to offset the gap between costs and revenues.”

But when asked how much, strangely the company can’t say.

The Northfield & Willowbrae Community Council is writing to council transport convener Lesley Macinnes to ask her to intervene, and if there is an ounce of truth in the administration’s claim that its transport policy is properly inclusive then money will be found to keep this service going.

Failure to do so will tell those residents that the council places less value on them than Marchmont academic types tootling across the Meadows to the Old Town on their electric bikes.

‘Housebound without the 69 bus’

But as always, don’t take my word for it. Here are the voices of local people, through an excellent survey collated by the community council’s Angi Lamb, in which their feelings are laid bare.

“I am disabled and totally depend on the 69. Myself and most residents in Lady Nairne depend on the 69 bus and one neighbour is a blind man who took a good while to familiarise himself with the route. Him, myself and most others would be housebound totally without the 69 bus.”

“It is an essential service for many people in my area, people who through no fault of their own are unfit and/or unwell and who depend on the availability of this service.”

“I have problems with arthritis. It will be very hard for the other people who are older and live at the top of the hill. This is the only way to get out of house to go to doctors, chemist which are on bus route. The elderly will suffer the most to be confined to the house.”

“The Ulster Crescent and Paisley Drive hill is a killer for the elderly. Until recently one chap whose mother was wheelchair-bound used the bus would now need to push a wheelchair up Paisley Drive. The No 69 bus is our community centre where we can meet and keep in touch.”

“My parents and auntie & uncle rely on this bus they are all in their eighties. My uncle has recently been told he can no longer drive.”

“I wouldn’t be able to do any shopping as I can’t carry heavy parcels, as I also have back problems.”

The implementation of the under-19s scheme alone will cost £15m, but the actual funding will run to an estimated £80m a year. The current budget for the City Centre Transformation plan is £314m and laying three miles of tram track could cost £250m, but as of the end of the month people who genuinely rely on a little bus service are being abandoned. Someone’s priorities need a shake.

Community facilities can’t survive cuts

The decision to delay a decision on council grants to services for young people is only a stay of execution for some excellent organisations, many of which will face extinction if the plans go through unaltered.

In what is purely a cost-cutting exercise, a supposedly transparent and measurable exercise has become anything but, but the wider issue is whether a review will address the need for genuine reform but also take in the wider implications. Lochend/Restalrig, one of the city’s most deprived communities, is well-served by the Ripple Hub, the only significant community facility in the area, which cannot survive the loss of a third of its income in one go.

That means scores of otherwise isolated people who socialise there every day will have nowhere to go. Is that really in the area’s best interests?