How You Can Stop The Wrecking Ball

Save Our Old Town Campaign

what would be lost

To Stop Caltongate individuals and organisations need to

1. Write to the following Scottish Ministers urging them that Caltongate be called in and determination sought through a public inquiry

Cabinet Secretary John Swinney Minister for - Finance & Sustainable Growth

Linda Fabiani - Minister for Europe, External Affairs Affairs & Culture

More on their responsibilities here Scottish Government

you can email them at this address marking your letters for the attention of each individual minister scottish.ministers@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

Write to them at
St Andrew`s House
Regent Road
Edinburgh EH1 3DG

2. You should also write to your constituency and regional MSPs find them here MSP FINDER by your postcode urging them that Caltongate should be called in and a Public Inquiry held.

3. You can also write to your MP and MEPS Find MP and MEPS (Scottish ones are listed even although it doesn’t say on home page, you just enter your postcode and they will appear)

4. You could also write to your local councillor(s) (although yours may be one of the planning committee that voted the plans through on the 6th Feb! (check here) asking them to write to The Scottish Government to press for for call in and determination through the Public Inquiry System.

All councillors emails or write to them C/O The City of Edinburgh Council, City Chambers, High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1YJ Find your councillors

Among points you could make are the following, do add your own and include any material you feel important, especially if you think it hasn`t been considered, and do let others know they can do this too.

It is understood that all the Caltongate Planning Applications must be sent to ministers under the Notification of Applications procedures for a number of reasons -

1. The council has a significant financial interest in the proposed applications and stands to receive financial payment on the delivery of planning consent.

2. The proposals ( in particular the demolition of structurally sound, in use buildings, both listed and unlisted in an Outstanding Conservation Area and World Heritage Site) conflict with key policies contained in the approved Structure and Local Plans and as such is a significant departure from the Development Plan.

3. There have been a significant level of objections received from community organisations and heritage groups in addition to the numerous individuals.

4. New legislation, policies, planning guidence is at a crucial stage and the proposals could set a dangerous precedent which would prejudice the effectiveness of these new policies.

5. The Caltongate Masterplan has been imbedded in the Finalised Local Plan for the area which has provoked many objections which have been requested to be heard at a LPI. The protection of listed and unlisted buildings, reference to the World Heritage Site, protection of housing and has yet to be tested through the Development Plan process.

6. The consultation process has been heavily critisised as not being inclusive, balanced or transparent and conflicts with new government guidance on growing community assets, partnership working, and community engagement.

7. The site lies in an area with international importance, a World Heritage Site.

8. This is a crucial time to send out the right message to developers.

9. The claimed economic benefits of the scheme could equally be made for a far more appropriate scheme, retaining homes and listed buildings, and with a far less detrimental impact on the WHS.

You should also write to ICOMOS UK as its ICOMOS who advises UNESCO

International Council on Monuments & Sites UK, 70 Cowcross Street, London, EC1M 6EJ

Email
admin@icomos-uk.org

You could also inform UNESCO

The List of World Heritage in Danger is designed to inform the international community of conditions which threaten the very characteristics for which a property was inscribed on the World Heritage List, and to encourage corrective action.

Edinburgh`s Inscription

Edinburgh World Heritage Trust

Private individuals, non-governmental organizations, or other groups can draw the World Heritage Committee's attention to existing threats. If the alert is justified and the problem serious enough, the Committee may consider including the site on the List of World Heritage in Danger.

To inform the World Heritage Committee about threats to sites, you may contact the Committee's Secretariat at:

E-mail: wh-info@unesco.org

World Heritage CentreUNESCO7, place de Fontenoy75352, Paris, 07 SPFrance

Brutalism of The Old Town

Above is the Malcolm Fraser building for Jeffrey St, this is seeing it looking along East Market St toward the former Bus Depot Site


Brutalism Architecture

Caltongate plan too big for Old Town

SHAME on Edinburgh City Council for voting in favour of Caltongate.

The scale of this development is enormous leading to the demolition of two listed buildings and one or two fine MacRae tenements in favour of a hotel, conference centre, some housing and yet more bars, cafes, restaurants.
It will ruin the area for residents of the Old Town especially the Canongate. It will lead to traffic congestion, pollution and increased noise as well as threatening the World Heritage site.

In spite of massive objections the council has decided to proceed for the sake of commercial gain.The designs seen so far look like brutal Soviet-style buildings more akin to a ghetto. The use of wood is questionable as in a polluted, damp atmosphere it doesn't weather well unless it is regularly maintained.A development of a more modest scale, catering more for residents is required.

Mrs M E Hodges, Meadowbank, Edinburgh

Grandstand view of city's priority list

IT has been announced that the council is about to commit £3 million towards the replacement of the stands used on the Castle Esplanade during the Military Tattoo.

In the same budget we are to face school cut backs or closures, delayed school refurbishments, cuts to the Adult Education Budget, and cuts to services elsewhere. Where is their sense of priorities?

Supporting the Tattoo, laudable though that is in times of plenty, is using public money to subsidise a commercial enterprise. The council can argue the benefits of the tourist trade that the Tattoo attracts, but these are commercial benefits which principally accrue to the business community. The business community in its turn will argue that the Tattoo generates jobs...but jobs for whom? Most jobs generated by seasonal tourist activities are low paid, and increasingly filled by seasonal, migrant workers.

Building new grandstands for rich tourists' bums, while at the same time savagely pruning the education (or any other social) budget is simply wrong: morally wrong. Why can't the council see that?

We have a council sitting in the City Chambers that has quite lost its moral compass. Business interests – as in the Caltongate affair – get whatever they want; while the city residents get what they are given.

The unstable and unhealthy relationship between council, business and voter must be rebalanced in the residents' favour.Politicians always claim that they answer to the voter at the ballot box. At the next local election we can all easily make this happen; just cast our votes for anyone except the sitting member in your ward. If every voter in the city did that, every ward in the council chamber should change hands. A clean sweep.

We desperately need a council better able to balance the needs of community and business interests. Power to the people!

David Fiddimore, Nether Craigwell, Calton Road, Edinburgh
Evening News Letters

Save Our Old Town Campaign Website www.eh8.org.uk

The Mad Hatters Tea Party

Green councillor Steve Burgess and the SNP's Colin Keir opposed many of the separate plans for the Old Town site, but Lib Dem convener Jim Lowrie spoke out in support of the scheme.The project will now progress to Scottish Ministers for a final decision.

TodaysArticle

Todaysarticle

TodaysArticle

Address for all councillors: The City of Edinburgh Council, City Chambers, High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1YJ

emailshere

The following councillors were in favour

Jim Lowrie Planning Convener
Scottish Liberal Democrat
Ward 9 - Fountainbridge/Craiglockhart

Charles Dundas Caltongate in his ward

Scottish Liberal Democrat
Ward 11 - City Centre

Gary Peacock
Scottish Liberal Democrats
Ward 14 - Craigentinny/Duddingston

Marjorie Thomas
Scottish Liberal Democrat
Ward 13 - Leith

Elaine Morris

Liberal Democrat Party
Ward 4 - Forth

Joanna Mowat Caltongate in her ward

Scottish Conservative

Ward 11 - City Centre

Cameron Rose

Scottish Conservative
Ward 15 - Southside/Newington

Alastair Paisley
Scottish Conservative Party
Ward 2 - Pentland Hills

Eric Milligan
Scottish Labour Party
Ward 7 - Sighthill/Gorgie

Lesley Hinds
Scottish Labour Party
Ward 5 - Inverleith

Norma Hart
Scottish Labour Party
Ward 16 - Liberton/Gilmerton

Rob Munn

Scottish National Party

(SNP)Ward 13 - Leith

Stuart Roy McIvor
Scottish National Party (SNP)
Ward 5 - Inverleith