I did attend the EACC online mtg on Thurs 25th - for me it was an interesting mtg and generally seemed quite constructive as regards the future of EACC. I would like to be kept informed about future EACC meetings. Maybe because I'd attended quite a few EACC meetings in recent years when our official rep (e.g. Joan or Tim) couldn't attend, I think I was on their direct email list because I seemed to be getting info about their meetings directly from Simon Holledge, who was their secretary until he resigned on 28th June. Notice of the mtg on 25th, however, only came via you as SCC secy, so I may no longer be on their direct list. I will assume info about EACC mtgs in future will be just sent to the SCC secy and then circulated to members.
I'm not 100% sure who our current official EACC rep is (Joan probably?), but should there be a vacancy for that position, I'd just like to say again that I would not like to be our rep, though I may be willing to attend sometimes if the official rep is unable to or even as a member of the public, if the agenda looks to be of particular interest.
It may be helpful to say a little about some of the main things discussed at the mtg. on 25th. My notes of this mtg, however, are a bit sketchy. Also, I sometimes felt a bit out of touch with EACC matters and thus didn't fully understand the discussion. So please treat the summary below accordingly as just my rough account.
With its new constitution as approved on 20th January, which was circulated to all CCs, EACC now elects an EACC Members Board to act as a forum for developing EACC policy positions for subsequent endorsement by the EACC membership. The new constitution says this MB will act to provide a management structure for that purpose. The EACC Members Board will comprise a minimum of five and a maximum of 12 Community Councillors from different parts of the city, plus the EACC office bearers. As I understand it, EACC is now also forming a smallish steering group (or groups?) which can meet more often than the usual 4 or 5 meetings of the EACC per year and also arrange meetings with city officials and councillors on issues of particular concern to the city's CCs. It was claimed that at times in the past, meetings between CEC officials and EACC had worked quite well.
Lezley-Marion Cameron, Deputy Lord Provost in the new Labour minority administration (Labour has 13 councillors of a total of 63), outlined the new administration's priorities as being to have a fairer, more inclusive city and to do whatever was within its limited powers to help the city's residents cope with the financial difficulties now facing us, particularly the less well off. She said the city's budget had suffered cuts now for a decade and the city is inadequately funded for its size, particularly when it's been growing by some 30-35,000 people per year, which, of course, adds to the difficulties. As I understood it, she also implied that the city therefore faced the prospect of some deterioration in provision of services, including possibly even those for the homeless. She also said the Labour administration had some misgivings about the ways CEC had done online public consultations on various issues in the past and would be reviewing this.
Another problem was that there is now a considerable extra burden for the staff in the Planning Department in dealing with the huge number of applications for planning permission for short term lets, as these now require planning permission for change of use. There is a danger that with limited staff other issues in planning may get less attention. CEC had asked the Scottish Government to make provision for local authorities to designate 'areas of overprovision' which would have mitigated this burden, but the SG apparently knocked that back.
It was noted that the EACC web site currently needs to be updated. EACC is planning to put a business case to the Edinburgh Partnership Board (it has a rep on the EP) for funding to support its activities, presumably including updating and refreshing its web site and use of zoom, among other things.
EACC used to provide quite detailed minutes of its mtgs on its web site. The current office bearers and others were suggesting that this was rather time consuming and involved much delay until the minutes were formally approved at the next meeting 3 months or so later. The suggestion therefore was that shorter 'notes of meetings' concentrating on what had been agreed and points of decision and action could be circulated more quickly, so members of CCs across the city and perhaps also members of the public could be informed more quickly about EACC's activities.
I think this seemed to be agreed for EACC mtgs themselves but I'm not sure if it was agreed to to be applied to meetings of the Members Board and the steering groups and whether normal minutes of the EACC mtgs themselves will still be produced eventually. There seemed to be some uncertainty about the latter point. Sorry I can't be clearer on this, but it came up right at the end of the meeting as discussion was being curtailed and it was only afterwards I wondered about whether there were to be notes of meetings from meetings of the MB and steering groups. If I attend the next EACC mtg, planned for 29th Sept, I will try to get this clarified.
It may be of particular interest to us that this next meeting will be attended by Andrew Field, who is CEC's Head of Community Engagement and has a staff of 17, if I've remembered this right. I hope members find at least some of this helpful as regards the current situation of EACC.
Bob Hodgart