What’s happening in Leith Links?

Monday 26th February – next Leith Links Community Council meeting, 6:30pm. This will be an ONLINE ONLY meeting (TEAMS). Agenda available here.

Email contact@leithlinkscc.org.uk if you wish to attend, and you will be sent a link.

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£EITH CHOOSES Results night 22th February 

The results of which local charities / community groups have been successsful in winning funding will be announced ‘live’ at 6:30 pm at Leith Community Centre (cafe area). All welcome, do come along to hear the news, and for refreshments and a chat. Short meeting.

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February  – Leith Links Community Council survey about traffic and parking changes. Have you filled in this survey yet? Please do so, to have your voice heard, regarding how your life as a local resident, is affected – positively and/or negatively – by all the recent changes to traffic and parking in our area. Timing is key, as some of the changes which were temporary (such as the ‘bus gate’ on Links Gardens / Links Place) are about to be made permanent unless people report that they are not working well.

Give your views via the Community Council survey here

You can also make your views known direct to the council via this link:

edinburgh.gov.uk/leithconnections

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Events on the Links 2024 

We have just been informed that the City of Edinburgh Council has REFUSED permission for the proposed event FLY Summer Of Love’92 to take place on the Links, in May 2024. This is good news, as the community council and many local residents had objected to the application, feeling that this particular large scale, long and very loud event and Leith Links, so close to residents, were not a good fit for each other.

Music Encounters March 2024

Provided by the Council, there will be some live music on the Links for all local residents and ‘ordinary’ park users to enjoy, free of charge, on Saturday 16th March, from 1300h to 1500h. More details to follow later.

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Leith Links Activity Park Consultation – please give your views now!

You may remember a community picnic we ran in July 2021 to ask local people what they would like to see developed on the Links, and in particular in the derelict building and the bowling greens area.
      
Since then, a Working Group has been developing a 10yr concept Masterplan for Leith Links. The group is composed of Leith Councillors, City of Edinburgh Council staff (the ‘Thriving Greenspaces Project’), and representatives of a number of local organisations, such as Leith Links Community Council, Earth in Common, Duncan Place. The draft master plan (which was put out to public consultation in summer 2022 and received very positive support) creates a vision for the future, but in order for it to happen, it needs funding (which is currently not yet in place), resource and – very importantly – local support.
The masterplan includes suggestions for a number of interesting developments, in various areas of the park. An ‘urgent’ area for development is the old bowling greens area, and this is being addressed by a sub group of the Working Group,calling itself Leith Links Activity Park. Along with some landscape architects, they have put together a vision of what this could look like.
It includes a skatepark – which consistently came out top in all earlier consultations – but also a number of other exciting possibilities such as a pump track/bike trail, roller skate rink, bouldering rocks, petanque court, water play area etc. Now consultation is needed to see which of these are most popular.
A public consultation is live until the 10 October to get feedback from the community on the design and all the ideas. Please fill in your views! And please share as widely as possible across all your networks to make sure everyone who might be affected gets to see it and comment.:

Your Community Council

There will be no Leith Links Community Council meeting in July, although work will still be going on behind the scenes, and this page will provide updates.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Do you like the stickers we had made for the Proclaimers concerts? We gave them out to people coming in, and it turned out to be a really good way to welcome people to Leith Links and to start a conversation.

Meanwhile, here is some background.

What actually is the Community Council?

Leith Links Community Council, like all Community Councils, is a voluntary organisation set up by statute by the Local Authority, that is City of Edinburgh Council, and run by local residents to act on behalf of its area. Community Councils are the most local tier of elected representation and as such can /should play an important role in local democracy (although in practice they do not really have much power…)

Community Councils are basically groups of people who care about their community and want to make their area a better place to live. Their main role is to engage with the locall community, to share information to ensure that the local community is informed about things going on locally that will affect them, and to listen to members of the local community and try to represent their views and wishes to the City Council, to ensure that communities ‘have a voice’. The Community Council also has a statutory role in responding to Planning and Licensing applications in the area. CCs are non political.

The role of Community Councils is explained more fully on the Improvement Service website, here.

You can see more about CCs in Edinburgh here on the Council website

How can I find out more about what the Leith Links Community Council does?

You can use this website to explore areas of our work, and we are also on Facebook (/LeithLinksCC) and Twitter (@LeithLinks_CC) You are very welcome to attend meetings, which are held on the last Monday of every month (except July and December).

You don’t have to be a member of the Community Council to come along to meetings. The meetings are held in public (whether online or in person) and anyone who lives in the area is welcome to attend and can be given a chance to speak.

How is the Community Council funded?

The Community Council gets an annual grant from the City Council which is to cover things like hire of meeting venue, payment of a Minutes Secretary, stationery, payment of website domain name & hosting charges, Zoom subscription, payment of essential Third Party insurances, Data Protection fees, and things like getting leaflets printed. Our grant for 2023 was £737. You’ll be able to work out that that doesn’t go very far at all, indeed only barely covers these essential costs (and that explains why we simply do not have the money to make donations or grants to other community organisations, sadly.).

If you want to see the finances of LLCC, these are presented each year at the AGM, and subsequently can be found in the AGM Minutes and the Annual Report. These can be viewed on this website, on the Our Library page

How many people make up Leith Links Community Council?

The number of members of any Community Council is determined by the population of their designated area. Currently Leith Links has 12 places. This is based on 2011 Census figures (Leith Links’ head count is probably very out of date now as so many new flats have been built in the area since 2011, and more to come).

We had 12 members in 2019, but over the period, some members have resigned and some new members have been coopted; we currently have 10. So there are spaces right now; if anyone is interested, please do get in touch.

There are also places for extra members who represent established community groups. We currently have members representing two such groups  – Leith Festival, and Leith Rotary (but this position was recently vacated as former rep. just retired). Would your local group be interested in this? Do get in touch.

Who can be a Community Councillor? 

To be a member of a Community Council, you have to live within the Community Council area, and you have to be on the Electoral Register (although there could be special ‘Youth Member’ arrangements for someone who is not yet old enough to vote but will be soon, if they are keen to join). You are expected to attend as many of the monthly meetings as possible, though obviously nobody can make every single one, and to contribute to ongoing activities.

Members of the Community Council are elected every four years. Often local people are unaware of these elections, but our aim for the next election in 2024 is to try and attract as many people as possible to put themselves forward to become members, and for as many people in the local community as possible to vote, so that the process is as open and democratic as possible.

New MasterPlan to improve Leith Links – your views? Urgent!

Leith Links is a great park and we all love it –  BUT it could certainly be EVEN BETTER!
In
recent months, a new 10 year ‘concept MasterPlan’ for improving the Links has been developed, by a team led by the City of Edinburgh Council’s ‘Thriving Greenspaces Project’ and including representatives from a number of local organisations; ourselves i.e. Leith Links Community Council, Earth in Common / Links Activity Park group, Leith Councillors, some local residents, and consulting a wide range of ‘stakeholders’ such as Leith Athletic, Leith Franklin Cricket Club, Duncan Place, local Primary Schools etc.

The final draft has now been published and it is open to public consultation  RIGHT NOW (closing on 22 July 2022).

        
You can see the plans and give your views via the Council web site
If you don’t like using the Consultation Hub with its usual forced route through leading questions, then please feel free to write / email in with your thoughts and ideas to thrivinggreenspaces@edinburgh.gov.uk (and it’s a good idea to copy to your local Councillors),  and/ or use the comments facility below to record your thoughts and we will forward them to the project team.
Whichever route(s) you choose, please do it NOW, before the holidays, otherwise you might forget, and miss your chance!
The draft master plan is based on the conversations we have been leading and facilitating  over the past year, about what local people need and want. It lays out a vision of what could happen in the future, but there is no guarantee at this stage that it will actually happen; significant new funding is still to be found, and support from the local community is vital (if there are objections or new suggestions, there is plenty time for these to be taken into account, the details of the plan are NOT a ‘foregone conclusion’).
  
The plan includes lots of great ideas (yes, including permanent toilets!), such as nicer benches, better bins, improved lighting, wheelchair accessible picnic tables, cycle parking, wildflower meadow, use of surfaces for heritage mural, arboretum (started already), ping pong tables, a ‘trim trail’ and 3km fitness loop and a ‘natural play area’ at the east of the Links. Also a modern bandstand (or ‘outdoor performance space’), and many other upgrades.
         
To bring the old bowling greens area back into productive use, there is a proposal for an ‘Activity Park’ that could incorporate a bike pump track and a skatepark.
A skatepark came out as a very popular suggestion, in last year’s surveys that we carried out, and is likely to be heavily promoted by its supporters – but there are also issues to be explored about what impact it might have on near neighbours.
Please make sure YOUR voice is heard!
 

Consultation Report about Leith Links former Bowling Greens

Report on a consultation with the local community on possible future development at the former bowling greens area (and building) on Leith Links Spring / Summer 2021

Between May and September 2021 Leith Links Community Council led a consultation exercise with the local community about possible future development of the currently derelict ‘Former Bowling Greens area’ on Leith Links. We are now publishing in full the results and views that emerged, and this report has also been forwarded to City of Edinburgh Council. This consultation took place in three parts:

  1.    The Community Council held a series of 3 public meeting, online, that were well attended, by around 30-40 people at each of three meetings. Discussions were Chaired and semi-structured but open to all, and free flowing.
  2.    The Community Council organised and hosted, with the help of volunteers from other local community groups, a Community Picnic, 17th July 2021. This was an in-person ‘live’ community event on site, attended by approximately 100 folk.
  3.    An Online Survey was hosted on the Leith Links Community Council website and disseminated also via social media (Facebook, Twitter). The survey was open for 2 weeks and attracted 199 responses.

The Report in full is very long, but well worth reading. You can download and read the whole report here. We present a summary of the report below:

Brief Summary

The community in Leith Links has been consulted, and has engaged in large numbers (250) and with, in many cases, lengthy responses. The views of the community are that:

  • The bowling greens area pavilion should not be demolished but should be refurbished at the Council’s expense and repurposed to include permanent public toilet facilities and a mix of other facilities (details to be determined) that will be at least partially open for use by the community, not ‘private’. Security lights, cameras and alarm system should be installed.
  • The outdoor area surrounding the building, currently delineated by the hedging, should be refurbished and repurposed so that it is attractive and thus will be well-used by a mix of people (all ages, no one particular age range), which should reduce the incidence of anti-social behaviour. A slight majority favour repurposing as an area primarily for outdoor activity / sport / fitness use (e.g. skatepark), although significant numbers also favoured ‘mixed use’ and a ‘quiet relaxing garden area’ – and many other possible uses, see Section 4 in the full Report.
  • This refurbishment is long overdue and should be at least started as soon as possible, rather than further delayed until the proposed Leith Links Master Plan can be completed. (It could be done in stages, as partners emerge, funding can be sourced etc.) In the immediate / short term, a cleanup, and installation of benches and litter bins is required.
  • The community must be properly consulted at all stages and properly represented as an equal partner throughout the process eg. via representation on Project Steering Group / Governance body, Master Planning team etc.. The community is also open to providing support in the form of volunteer input on agreed projects, if / as capacity permits.

The Community Council itself at this point does not have any particular stance or plan that it wishes to ‘back’ or promote, but rather sees itself primarily as a means by which information can be shared and community views collected, recorded and communicated to the Council. We trust there will be further two-way and ongoing communication with the Council.

Having said that, we should nonetheless make clear that the Community Council does have some views. We favour refurbishment of the building and the outdoor area, and we award very high priority to the installation of permanent public toilets. We do not oppose ideas for sports / activities, but would strongly argue to keep at least some of the area retained as green space, rather than being completely concreted over. Given the very wide ranging (and in some cases directly opposing) views from the community, it is clear that ‘you can’t please everybody’ and on that basis we might favour a solution that involves a degree of compromise or mixed use,  that might involve splitting the area into sub-areas, partnerships between different groups etc.

Download the whole report here

or just read on here….
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Duncan Place £300 Community Enterprise Fund

Leith Links Community Council is happy to share this great news from our friends at Duncan Place:

Duncan Place is excited to announce that we have 6 pots of £300 available to make good things happen in Leith! 

Community Ownership is awesome! Profits made at Duncan Place Community & Enterprise Hub in Leith stay in Leith! It’s not about landlords getting richer. It’s about bringing people together.

If you have an idea for a community event tell us about it and maybe we can help make it happen.We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Pots of £300 will be awarded as follows:

  • for an event for those aged 12yrs and under.
  • for an event for those aged 13-18yrs.
  • for an event for senior members of our community.
  • for a multi-generational event.
  • others.

Criteria

  1. Your community event must take place in Duncan Place and be open to the Leith community.
  2. If your event will cost more than £300 you must be able to evidence that the remaining budget is in place.
  3. All health and safety and covid guidance in place at the time of the event must be followed.
  4. Any required insurance must be in place by the time of the event.
  5. Any re-usable equipment purchased for the events will remain the property of Duncan Place for use at future community events.

Download and Complete the application form and return it by Mon 1st November 2021.

More information is available here, on the Duncan Place website.

Arboretum planned for Leith Links

Four organisations are working together to develop part of Leith Links as an arboretum, with work already having began some weeks ago when planting of the arboretum began at the Seafield end of the links.

City of Edinburgh Council, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and the Edinburgh & Lothians Greenspaces Trust are working together to develop the arboretum on Leith Links, with some funding provided by The Mushroom Trust.

An arboretum is a specially designed area of different types of trees for scientific, educational and ornamental purposes. Eighty four trees are planned for the Leith Links arboretum.

We are encouraging citizens with an interest in Leith Links to take part in the consultation, and to make their views known.

 

Citizens may also leave comments below for the Community Councils information, and they may also wish to email Councillors Booth, McVey and Munro who represent Leith Ward 13.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Community Councils Together on Trams: Minutes of meeting held on Thursday 28 May 2020

Leith Links Community Council is a member of ‘Community Councils Together on Trams’ alongside Leith Central Community CouncilLeith Harbour & Newhaven Community Council and New Town & Broughton Community Council. CCTT is the coalition of Community Councils who meet regularly to discuss, scrutinise and influence the intended continuation of the Edinburgh Tram system to Newhaven.

Minutes of the meeting held on Thursday 28 May 2020 are copied below for our communities information.

Actions and decisions are in italic.

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About us | FAQs | How are you funded?

Leith Links Community Council revives a small grant each year from City of Edinburgh Council, less than £1,000. This grant is provided to fund our administrative costs. Every Community Council in Edinburgh receives such an annual grant however, the amount varies. This is because the grant is partly made up of an amount per head of population in the Community

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