John McLellan: Council blind to planning problems
Without any irony, council leader Adam McVey has welcomed the Scottish Government's intervention to sort out ongoing problems in Edinburgh's building standards department.
“They have a huge amount of experience in this area and our team can only benefit from their expertise and advice,” he said.
So one of Scotland’s biggest building control departments, with decades of experience dealing with complex applications in a historic capital city, needs advice about handling its workload? By any stretch of the imagination this points to significant unaddressed problems going back many years, and far from a helping hand this suggests government exasperation.
Taking on two or three extra staff might get the department close to meeting its basic responsibilities, but turning it into a streamlined service which helps attract investment will need a lot more attention from an administration seemingly blind to the problem. Maybe a campaign for the Chamber of Commerce?