People speak but the council doesn’t listen - Iain Whyte

Craigentinny/Duddingston Councillor Iain Whyte

The news came in a budget consultation that told Councillors they should be concentrating on improving basic services. Other key priorities for the public were improving schools, waste collection and street cleaning.

The public also told the Council it should listen more. However, I won’t hold my breath. The phalanx of left-wing councillors who are the vast majority of the Council didn’t accept what the public said, wanted extra, “more representative” focus groups to be conducted. Presumably they hope they will get a different result. More singing la, la, la with their fingers in their ears than listening!

The Council’s current “values” ludicrously include “flexibility”. Hard to believe when the report says participants “felt their wishes were ignored” and that “It was felt to be very difficult to change something once the Council had made up its mind”.

Potholes are a top issue for many Edinburgh residents

Paradoxically, the report slanted its presentation suggesting people were “most positive” about “waste collection” when the data showed that this ranked third in services for improvement.

Officers also highlighted money saving or generating ideas for the Council saying that people favoured increasing Council Tax and parking charges. Again, the data said otherwise with only 7 per cent and 5 per cent suggesting these. They didn’t highlight that 25 per cent suggested saving money on LTNs and Spaces for People schemes and 21 per cent wanted to reduce the Active travel budget.

To put this in context, 588 people suggested cutting Active Travel funding to save money while only 145 suggested it was an area that needed improvement. This flies in the face of what we are told by the lefty Councillors and the Council officers who are being paid to implement these schemes.

Finally, the Council currently prioritises reaching Net Zero by 2030 and “ending poverty” by 2030 in its Business Plan. While laudable they are not things the Council can achieve and largely rely on national or international action.

The public were very clear that the first of these targets was impossible and we should instead match the national target of 2045. While the poverty issue doesn’t seem to have been mentioned even though the survey did capture the demographic groups we are told are most at risk. Women, parents, carers and the disabled were all very well represented.

Maybe the Business Plan needs a rethink so that it concentrates on fixing the basics.

There were plenty of other money saving ideas from the public and your Conservative councillors will be looking closely at these to see whether they can work.

I can also assure you that your Conservative councillors are listening as the survey confirms what constituents tell us every day. That means your priorities will be our priorities as we push for improvements and better budget spending going forward.

Iain Whyte is Conservative councillor for Craigentinny/Duddingston