SCC CHAIR’S REPORT, for meeting of January 9, 2017

  1. City of Edinburgh Council’s Annual Events Review Consultation – As agreed at the November meeting, a response was made to this consultation welcoming the positive management and consultation related to some recent events on the Meadows, but stating our support of a policy of fifteen days’ maximum stay for any event on the Meadows, in keeping with practice in other Edinburgh parks. Our response was welcomed by FoMBL.
  2. Southside Association Christmas Event – A number of members supported this excellent community event. It was very well attended, as always. Our financial support of £100 was generously acknowledged. The event proved a useful opportunity to make contact and have informal discussion with a number of local luminaries, including most significantly for me, the newly appointed local police representative, David Cuthbert, who appeared keen to attend our meetings, despite some recent messages received from police locally that they would prefer to provide written reports to our meetings.
  3. South Central Neighbourhood Partnership – (5 December) As well as agreeing two small grant requests, from FoMBL for an information signboard on the Meadows, and from an organisation proposing to reduce fuel poverty amongst Dumbiedykes residents, most of this meeting was spent in workshop mode consulting on priorities for the Locality Improvement Plan, which I believe will be implemented from autumn 2017, and also the 2050 City Vision. It was a rather ad hoc and to my mind, not very well set up session. To be honest, I get rather lost in all the consultation activities going on around these two strands and activities, as well as all the other strategic level consultations being facilitated by the Council. I propose that we invite a representative from the Council to a future CC meeting who can explain all these various levels of consultation, how they all relate to each other and how we should seek to engage best with them. I think a future meeting on this dedicated topic could be useful.
  4. SCNP AOB’s – I subsequently raised a number of ‘AOB’s’ to the SCNP meeting that had been raised with me by members with Sarah Burns, and received prompt responses:
    • A-boards – a report on the current pilot ban of A-boards in city-entre areas would be reported to the March meeting of the SCNP with recommendations for further rollout if appropriate;
    • flyposting – flyposting is a significant nuisance in the Southside area, including by projects funded by the SCNP! Sarah agreed to look into revising funding documentation to prohibit flyposting of funded projects, and also asked us to forward future examples, and
    • Xmas lighting – following disappointing and confusing provision for Xmas lighting in the Southside, Sarah apologised for the lack of communication with the Community Council as much as with anybody else on this matter and committed to clearer communication in 2017. Other reports have suggested that there will be room for additional investment in Xmas lighting in 2017.
  5. Neighbourhood Environmental Programme 2017/8 – We were alerted to the opportunity to submit bids to the above funding programme for improvements to either i) pavements and roads in the area or ii) environmental areas in the vicinity of (formerly) council-owned housing, i.e., Dumbiedykes. A proposal was made to install a dropped kerb at the foot of the path from the old Crags Sports Centre to Dumbiedykes Road, in order to facilitate cycling down this route. This could be funded under either funding stream. This proposal received support from our representatives in the Dumbiedykes, although they also raised concern about the speed of cycles coming down this shared path. The proposal will be discussed at the January meeting and submitted in advance of the deadline of 20th January.