Edinburgh council’s big plans for city might as well include aerodrome for pigs – John McLellan

Edinburgh City Council wants the public’s views on its plans for the city but good luck to anyone trying to make sense of documents written in riddles, pie-in-the-sky schemes and contradictory ambitions, writes John McLelland

Master plan: An affordable housing development scheme lined up for Fountainbridge

With a record of cherry-picking support and ignoring unhelpful responses, it’s easy to be cynical about Edinburgh Council’s public consultations and only when placards are being waved outside the City Chambers is there a screeching change of direction.

We have still to see detailed budget proposals for the coming year, with protests inevitable such are the depth of cuts necessary to deal with the slow strangulation of local government imposed by the SNP, but the consultations and investigations are coming thick and fast.

Residents are supposed to be having a ‘conversation’, whatever that means, about Princes Street Gardens and the Winter Festival, a tourism strategy document written in riddles awaits public reaction and now the Choices 2030 paper to set the framework for development over the next ten years is out for responses.

Of the three, the latter has the wider implication as it will affect every nook and cranny of the city, not just the visitor hot-spots, as the council tries to squeeze every square foot from the city for affordable housing. There are only a few weeks for views to be submitted because the paper was delayed by the general election and the administration is sticking to the original aim of finishing consultation by the end of February, despite losing the best part of two months.

As the title suggests, the paper sets out 16 choices the administration wants to make, but in laying out its preferred options it also gives reasons for rejecting alternatives, so is skewed towards a pre-determined plan rather than laying out different approaches to see what comes back.

Admittedly, asking the general public about something as complex as the future shape of a city is unlikely to produce a clear direction, other than most opposing new developments near where they live and wanting more nice things like parks and shops. Everyone is a NIMBY at heart, it’s only natural. But at long last a council document looking at housing demand accepts there isn’t enough land, but Choices or, more accurately, Choice, tries to create the impression that answers are relatively simple. Apparently all it has to do is simply appropriate the land it wants through compulsory purchase orders.

The reality is that by the time 2030 comes around the council’s legal department will be embroiled in scores of Lands Tribunal disputes over the value of blighted industrial and retail sites, while existing neighbourhoods fight against new homes being packed into their areas without infrastructure investment.

For example, housing and planning experts agreed the part of Meadowbank not needed for new sports facilities was ideal for high-density housing, but the surrounding communities had other ideas and the plans have been scaled back, leaving a deepening financial hole as the sports centre costs escalate.

The council wants to force housebuilders to make 35 per cent of their new homes affordable but is yet to understand what that means for viability. It says it wants all student flats to have drying areas and more open space which is just a means to make such developments less attractive. Maybe that’s the right thing to do, but what are the implications for the universities and houses in multiple occupation?

It wants to lay out new parks the size of the Meadows but at the same time admits there isn’t enough land for housing. It wants to create new communities around public transport services which don’t exist. And much of this to be carried out on land the current owners and occupiers might not want to vacate.

Facing a swathe of new costs and restrictions, development consultants will be all over the proposals because the implications are so far-reaching, and several already believe it has little chance of being approved by the Scottish Government.

Last week councillors were told it was important to get public buy-in, but the question is a buy-in to what? At the moment it looks like the priority might be an aerodrome for pigs and pies.