Edinburgh City Local Plan

[Maria]

An article in today's EN about this document contains several items of interest to Portobello:

City digging itself out of a whole lot of trouble

The proposed plan, which is to go to a public inquiry in Sept, makes provision for the Powderhall waste site to remain open until 2015, as it has withdrawn plans for housing on the site.

However, it opens the door to housing development on the prom ,at the bottom of Bath Street, on the area of ground in front of the Bath Place Georgian cottages.

[seanie]

I think that the area at the bottom of Bath Street was designated as residential in the previous plan.

[Maria]

When the last planning application was refused (see http://www.scotland.gov.uk/planning/sei ... 30_855.pdf) the Inquiry Reporters Unit mentioned that one of the reasons was that the application was against the North East Edinburgh local plan which 'identifies the site for council aquisition for open space purposes'. The council have now dropped this proposal.

[seanie]

I don't think it was ever actually designated as open space though. It came under the general category of an area suitable for "Housing and Compatible Uses." It had been identified as a site for acquisition to create an open amenity space but at the time of that last planning application the Council had already dropped that idea.

They revived it following the planning refusal and sought to designate it for an open space proposal in the draft of the new local plan. But they'd already established, in principle, that housing could be an acceptable use for the site. So any purchase of the site would have to be at the market rate for residential not open space land. That makes it considerably more expensive.

That's why the Council's backing out once again.