Category: Leith Links Community Council

Next Meeting of Leith Links Community Council, 27 January 2025, 6:30, Duncan Place

The next meeting of the Leith Links Community Council will be held on Monday 27 January 2025 at 6:30pm. The meeting will be in person, at Duncan Place.

This meeting is open to the public and as usual is a chance for local residents to make contact, catch up with or raise any local issues that concern them. It can also be a good opportunity to ‘meet’ elected councillors and sometimes a representative from Police Scotland.

As the next elections for Community Councils are coming up soon (March 2025), it is also a really good chance to come along and see what a Community Council is all about and whether you might like to put yourself forward to join.

Your Community Council needs you!

If you would like to attend, just come along.

If you want to join online, please email in advance contact@leithlinkscc.org.uk and you will be sent a link for the meeting. But please note, the quality of online participation is poor, as we don’t have specialised equipment.

Agenda is here

Previous Minutes (November 2024) are here

 

Leith Links in the news, next phase of Leith Connections

UPDATE

We have recently been made aware that the words of Transport and Environment Committee Convener Stephen Jenkinson quoted recently in the press about how keen he is to ‘press ahead’ with Traffic Regulation Orders for Leith Connection’ plans refers to the previous/current phase of Leith Connections (and not to the proposals discussed in the accompanying article).

He has now been made more aware of the newest proposals for the next, future, phase, and the controversy they are currently stirring up…

In a recent email to local resident Robert Drysdale, whose illustration of a potential alternative route appears below in this post, Cllr. Jenkinson said  –

“….the Hawthornvale to Seafield section is still in the design phase and…no traffic orders have yet been advertised. I can confirm that the Leith Connections project team are currently processing the feedback from the latest engagement phase and the outcomes on this will be shared in due course. The feedback received, including I’m sure yours, will help inform the way forward for this project so I would like to thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and your concerns.”

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Leith Links Community Council is in the news currently. The media has picked up the story of the proposed new cycle route from Seafield to Hawthornevale, which we objected to, in the recent consultation (along with Edinburgh Bus Users Group, Living Streets Edinburgh, and others!)

Read the 03/01/2025 Edinburgh Evening News article here.

Read the original, full LLCC response / objection here.

View the clip with LLCC input on STV News (on 7.01.25) here.

View another interview on the topic with EBUG, here, and also see here

The proposed Leith Connections scheme would run alongside the busy traffic on Seafield Road, Salamander Street, Bernard Street, Commercial Street and Lindsay Road. We think the proposed scheme is very bad for pedestrians, and for public transport users, as it means narrowed pavements, removal and relocation of bus stops, dangerous floating bus stops and removal of bus lanes. We also think that very busy and polluted arterial roadway is not a good or a safe route for cyclists!

Instead, we support an alternative route for cyclists, through the Links and the newly calmed Low Traffic Neighbourhood, as illustrated (in blue) below by local resident Robert Drysdale. After all, what was the point of closing off the roads in the Leith Low Traffic Neighbourhood in the first place, if not to provide a nice quiet and safe route for cyclists as well as for pedestrians?

Please keep yourselves informed about this scheme as it progresses, as there are still opportunities for local people to voice their opinions on the design.

 

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Update on permanent Public Toilets for the Links, 2025

Leith Links Community Council has received the following letter which aims to update local residents and park users about the plan to install permanent public toilets on Leith Links. The short version of all this is that there WILL be toilets installed next year, although the final date cannot be guaranteed. Members of the Community Council and the local community were consulted about the matter, and although we are not terribly enthusiastic about the location the Council has chosen to install them, and although the design is much pared back from the original suggestions, we nonetheless welcome the development. We will be following the timeline of the installation closely, and pressing the Council to install temporary toiets again, if the new ones are delayed.

From Thriving Green Spaces, City of Edinburgh Council:

“… We are pleased to share an update on our progress with the public toilets in parks project. Please find here the finalised design, which showcases the thoughtful integration of accessibility and environmental sustainability. Details can also be found under Latest News webpage.

Further information about the project, including locations, key features, decision-making and FAQ, can be found on Public Toilets in Edinburgh’s Parks website.

The finalised design of the new facilities reflects our shared commitment to creating accessible, sustainable, and inclusive spaces for all. Each facility includes energy-efficient lighting, water-saving fixtures, and unisex cubicles designed to accommodate people of all abilities. Features like grab rails, baby changers, and enhanced safety measures are incorporated to ensure ease of use and accessibility for everyone.

Project Timeline and Phased Installation

We are progressing according to a carefully structured and conservative programme, with a targeted timeline designed to minimise impact and accommodate potential challenges. Key phases include:

  • Factory design and build: Began on Monday 4th November 2024, covering the detailed design of both the buildings and groundworks. This stage is essential for ensuring that each component is precisely tailored to meet the required standards before installation on-site.
  • Groundworks: Expected to start in early February, following the appointment of groundwork contractors by Healthmatic. Groundworks will be staggered, allowing for the Healthmatic project manager to supervise each phase closely and ensures the concrete can cure without rushing.
  • Phased Completion Dates: Installation completion is set for April 21st, May 5th, and May 19th 2025 for the three facilities. The specific order of completion will depend on contractor availability, connections to utility services, and external factors. This flexibility enables us to address any site-specific challenges that may arise; if one site requires additional work, we can proceed with another to keep the overall timeline on track.

This conservative approach includes allowances for unforeseen elements such as contractor scheduling, utility connections, and weather-related delays.

We are reviewing options to retain the temporary public toilets until the new facilities are built, and I will update you once a plan for this has been agreed.

Focus on Landscape

As installation moves forward, our attention will turn to enhancing the surrounding landscapes. Wildlife-sensitive lighting, bike racks, and benches will complement the facilities, ensuring a welcoming, comfortable environment that supports both people and nature.

Maintenance and Operational Readiness

We have also initiated close collaboration with the waste and cleanliness team to co-develop a maintenance plan tailored to the new facilities. Our goal is to ensure the team has the necessary resources and tools to maintain the toilets to a high standard, keeping them in excellent condition for all park visitors. We will also be working with the grounds maintenance teams to develop maintenance guidelines for the sedum roofs and to arrange any necessary training.

Thank you once again for your ongoing support and involvement in this ambitious project. If you have any questions or would like more detailed information, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Warm regards,

Thriving Green Spaces
City of Edinburgh Council – Parks and Greenspace – Place
Level 2.1 Waverley Court – 4 East Market Street – Edinburgh – EH8 8BG

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Next meeting Leith Links Community Council, Mon 25 November, 6:30pm, in-person

The next meeting of the Leith Links Community Council will be held on Monday 25 November 2024 at 6:30pm. The meeting will be in person, at Duncan Place.

This meeting is open to the public and is a chance for local residents to make contact, catch up with local issues, and raise any local issues that concern them. It can also be a good opportunity to ‘meet’ elected councillors and sometimes a representative from Police Scotland. If you would like to attend, please email in advance (as the room has limited capacity) contact@leithlinkscc.org.uk

If you want to join online, please email as above and you will be sent a link for the meeting. But please note, the quality of online participation is poor, as we don’t have specialised equipment.

Agenda is here.

Previous Minutes (October 2024) are here

 

Cycle lane from Hawthornevale to Seafield

Leith Links Community Council has sent in a response to the consultation on the proposed changes to the road (A199) between Seafield and Hawthornevale path, incorporating a new cycleway alongside the road. We have concerns about the scheme as a whole, as it narrows one of the busiest roads in the city, and disadvantages users of public transport, while there is an existing alternative cycleway through Leith Links, which – although it needs to be improved and extended  – would keep cyclists safer. We have sent in a detailed comment addressing the whole scheme (i.e. not just commenting on small parts of the scheme as the Consultation Hub survey invites us to).

You can see our response here LLCC Response to Hawthornevale – Seafield route

The survey on the consultation hub closes today, 17th November, but comments will also be accepted by email, which may mean that you could squeeze a response into their mailbox a little past the consultation hub deadline: leithconnections@edinburgh.gov.uk

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Cycle lane from Hawthornevale to Seafield – Send in your views NOW!

If you do JUST ONE THING this weekend – please do this!

We have only until Sunday 17th November to respond to the current consultation on the proposals for a new cycle path to be built all along Seafield Street, Salamander Street, Bernard Street, Commercial Street, Lindsay Road, narrowing the road, removing or moving bus stops, removing bus lanes, and many other features such as new crossings, revamped junctions etc.

All the plans are here, in the form of very detailed drawings https://consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/sfc/leithconnections/supporting_documents/30197119ARCHGNZZDRHE00001to00023%20Updated%20Notes.pdf

It may be easier to make sense of them via the survey at: https://consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/sfc/leithconnections/

You can respond with your views in two ways. Either fill in the survey at https://consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/sfc/leithconnections/

Or, send an email expressing your views to LeithConnections@edinburgh.gov.ukf

Or do both!

For the latest Newsletter with an overview of all the Leith Connections plans, see https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/35786/leith-connections-newsletter-october-2024

 

Next meeting Leith Links Community Council, Mon 28 October, 6:30pm

The next meeting of the Leith Links Community Council will be held on Monday 28 October 2024 at 6:30pm. The meeting will be online, via Microsoft Teams. We will be welcoming a guest speaker, Dr. Sam Gallacher, new Director of the Scottish Historical Buildings Trust, to speak about the new plans for a museum at the Leith Customs House. 

This meeting is open to the public and is a chance for local residents to make contact, catch up with local issues, and raise any local issues that concern them. It can also be a good opportunity to ‘meet’ elected councillors and sometimes a representative from Police Scotland. If you would like to attend, please email contact@leithlinkscc.org.uk and you will be sent a link for the meeting.

Agenda is here.

Previous Minutes (September 2024) are here

 

Important – Leith Community Centre, Tuesday 29.10.2024 2pm-6pm

You need to know about more big changes proposed for Leith roads!The next phase of the Leith Connections scheme is about to be launched, and we are entering a very important consultation phase. Some residents have had leaflets delivered but many locals are totally in the dark about what is planned. The plans are very extensive: the creation of  new cyclepaths on the main roads through Leith for vehicles including public transport will have a big effect on many Leith residents.The following streets will be affected:

  • Great Junction Street
  • Henderson Street
  • Sandport Place Bridge
  • Yardheads
  • Parliament Street
  • Salamander Street / Baltic Street
  • Bernard Street
  • Commercial Street
  • Lindsay Road
  • Hawthornvale path to Seafield Road
  • Replacement of Lindsay Road Bridge

 

You can see more details (and can sign up to receive the email Newsletter, to keep up to date) on the Leith Connections website

Please go along to the Leith Community Centre on 29th October between 2pm and 6pm to view the plans and give your feedback to the development team.

And/ or please fill in the online survey to be found at consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/sfc/leithconnections

You can also email your views directly to the team at LeithConnections@edinburgh.gov.uk (copy to Miles.Wilkinson@edinburgh.gov.uk)

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Worrying…

We recently posted here a discussion about the heavy concentration and ever-increasing number of ‘hotel’ rooms around our area. There have been recent further developments.

Local residents may have seen press coverage last week that Edinburgh City Council is using unlicensed HMOs to house homeless people. This is very relevant to Leith Links area, indeed quite possibly the issue disproportionately affects this area, compared to other parts of the City.

In Scotland an HMO (house in multiple occupation) licence is mandatory for properties that meet the following conditions:

  • The property is rented to three or more unrelated people.
  • The occupants share basic amenities such as bathrooms and kitchens.
  • The property is their primary residence.

So, any property ranging from individual flats shared by 3 or more unrelated people to student halls of residence with hundreds of occupants must have an HMO licence.

There are quite a few HMOs, mostly former hotels or hotels that combine HMO and hotel operations around Leith Links. Where the Council houses people in a hotel for longer than a few days we understand that because this becomes the person’s place of residence and their home, then if there are 3 or more unrelated people living there, the property becomes an HMO.

Yesterday the Council received a report at its meeting which highlighted that ‘The Council therefore remains in breach of its HMO Licensing Duty by maintaining the support of homeless persons and households in some unlicensed HMO properties’. This has also been reported in the local press as ‘Council breaking law ‘on industrial scale’ by use of unlicensed temporary accommodation’ with the numbers involved said to be 30 properties and 700 rooms.

The full report can be viewed here Item 7.4 – Monitoring Officer Report Conflict of Legal Obligations.pdf (edinburgh.gov.uk)

The public register of licences applied for and granted can be found here: Licensing registers civic – The City of Edinburgh Council  It’s a clunky excel spreadsheet on which all applications over time are recorded, so searching for an address will bring up all previous applications as well as any current licence.

We will not list here, for the moment, the exact addresses of the particular properties around Leith Links that apparently fall into the category of premises used by the Council that do not currently have HMO licences (though they may have had such licences in the past).  However, searching the register just for Hermitage Place and Johns Place alone (there are several other locations as well) revealed: 3 large properties (total of 65 occupants) with expired licences; one new application not yet determined (10 occupants); 3 applications for ‘continuation of licence ‘ which have been marked as ‘incomplete’, ‘incompetent’ or ‘invalid’ (60 occupants); and 1 application for continuation that is as yet undetermined, with no details of capacity or occupancy.

So apparently in these properties alone, where data is available from the register on proposed occupancy, at least 135 people are being housed in unlicensed HMOs around Leith Links.

It is our understanding that the Council has called for a report.

Having done a bit of digging recently into HMO standards, we suspect that these properties are perhaps unable to meet the physical standards for HMOs. It is a Licence Condition that ‘The licence holder must ensure that the physical standards for HMO living accommodation assessed as suitable by the local authority when approving the licence application are met at all times.’ (HMO3)  However it so far appears to be impossible to find a copy of the physical standards the Council has adopted against which HMO3 is judged – they can only be found in a pre 2012 Committee paper when read with 2012 guidance from SG.  (By contrast,interestingly, they are easily found for many other Councils as standalone policy documents.)

In response to a recent FOI request on this, the Council said they would improve the information on the website about the standards – but that has yet to appear.  It appears that the Council may have ‘adopted’ without change the suggested physical standards that appear in the body text and Annex A to the Scottish Government’s guidance for Councils on HMO licensing issued in February 2012 Microsoft Word – HMO licensing – Guidance – updated for overprovision and discretionary link – 20 January 2012.doc (www.gov.scot).  Would all these local properties be able to meet the requirements in relation to kitchen facilities and space per person?  Back in 2012, the Council apparently decided to not apply some of the expectations on renewals of extant licences as a ‘transition’ to the new standards, but there seems to have been no end date for that transition. We also noet that, framed in 2012, the requirements for HMOs are actually less extensive than they are for STLs.

This is worrying. We think a review and update is overdue.

 

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Trams to Newhaven Project – Road Safety Audit Report Published

The following is taken from a document issued by the Community Councils Together for Trams group following the recent publication of a report regarding the Trams to Newhaven Project Road Safety Audit.

‘The independent Stage 3 Road Safety Audit of the Trams to Newhaven project recommends 145 changes to improve the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and other road users. In their response, the Council (CEC) and the Contractor (SFN) have agreed to implement only 49.’

After several direct requests and two Freedom of Information requests over a 12 month period, a report responding to the independent Road Safety Audit (RSA) of the project undertaken in mid 2023 on completion of the construction phase has just been published.

The RSA makes 145 recommendations to improve the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and other road users. Of these recommendations, 91 were carried over from the Stage 2 RSA conducted in 2021 which examined the project’s detailed designs.
In response to the RSA’s recommendations, SFN and CEC have agreed to undertake remedial work on only 44 of the recommendations. In a further 5 cases, it was reported that the recommended work had been already completed by the time that this report was approved in November 2023.

This leaves just under 100 recommendations for which the Council intends to take no action (apart from some monitoring) nor require the Contractor to take any action.

The recommendations include areas that have been identified as being serious safety concerns by the community councils, active travel groups and accessibility groups over the last two years. Issues highlighted by these groups and now confirmed by the RSA include:

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Lack of tactile paving to warn visually impaired pedestrians of crossings,
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Risks to cyclists crossing tram tracks,
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Poor signage and lack of clear visibility for vehicles emerging from side streets,
  • 
Uneven surfaces on cycle paths leading to loss of control,
  • Excessive surface water due to poor drainage leading to increased risk of skidding,
  • Narrow pavements and poor segregation resulting in an increased risk of pedestrians being struck by cyclists.

Although the report is dated November 2023, it remains unclear how many of the 44 recommendations agreed to be actioned by SFN or the Council have been completed since then. We have certainly not seen evidence of much work being undertaken despite promises made by the Council on several occasions. The Trams to Newhaven team is due to be providing the Transport and Environment Committee with an update on their progress on resolving the many issues identified as requiring attention, at their October meeting.

We will be making representations to the Council seeking assurances that the issues identified in the audit and by the local community will be urgently resolved to limit the risks to all pedestrians, cyclists and other road users. 

We will also be seeking assurance that the final RSA, usually undertaken one year after operations commence, is scheduled and reports back promptly. There needs to be much greater transparency about the work that remains to be completed and the resources available to do so. In addition to the safety issues raised by the RSA, progress on defects remediation by the contractor, scope changes and design adjustments all require to be put in the public domain for scrutiny.

If you have direct experience of problems with the design and construction of the public realm surrounding the new tram extension, please let us know and contact your local Councillors.

Further information about the RSA can be found in the attached CCTT-Briefing Note on Stage 3 Road Safety Audit for Trams to Newhaven Project.

Community Councils Together for Trams (CCTT) is a coalition of the four community councils on the tram extension route:

25 September 2024

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