Hansard

Good morning, convener. You introduced us, so I will not take up time doing that again. First, I thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to attend today. I hope that we can address the issues and concerns that the objectors are raising and respond to the points that they make. I apologise once again for being unable to attend the previous evidence session, and I thank the committee for its understanding regarding the circumstances that prevented me from doing so. I am pleased that my colleagues were able to address all the questions that arose during that session, as I expected.Portobello high school, which is Edinburgh’s largest school, is in urgent need of replacement. It is outdated, it is in poor condition and it is not suited to modern teaching requirements. Since 2009, more than £2 million has been spent on essential works just to keep the school open, and significant further investment is required to keep it safe and fully operational until a new school is built.There has been extensive assessment of other potential sites in several locations, and the council firmly believes that Portobello park is by far the best, most cost-effective and quickest location on which we could deliver the new school. We appreciate that building on an area of open space is an emotive issue, but the decision was not taken lightly or without thorough consideration.We believe that the new school will have fantastic new pitches that will be freely accessible to the local community, and the compensatory and impact-mitigating measures that will accompany the project will result in significant community benefits, more than compensating for the loss of part of Portobello park. We believe that that is reflected in the very strong local support for the proposals.As you have said, convener, many of the issues to be discussed today—including loss of open space and amenity; social, environmental and financial impact; visual impact; and road safety and traffic impact—were also raised by objectors in the planning process, including many of the objectors to the private bill. They have therefore already been considered in great detail by the council’s development management sub-committee, both when the original application was considered and approved several years ago and during the more recent renewal of the planning consent. Where valid concerns were identified, appropriate mitigating measures were proposed and have already been approved, and those will be put in place should the project proceed.We stress that such issues are not directly relevant to the consideration of the bill, which concerns the status of the park and the council’s powers in relation to it. The bill does not authorise the construction of the school, nor does it contain provisions relating to any of the issues that were dealt with in the planning process. We note from the committee’s preliminary stage report that it is conscious that its role is to scrutinise and come to a view on a bill that has been referred to it, and not to take over the council’s role as a local planning authority. Nevertheless, we note that the objectors continue to raise the detail of matters that have already been dealt with during the planning process, and we will cover many of those today.Throughout the project, we have listened to the local community and tried to respond to its concerns whenever we can, including by introducing the new area of open space on part of the existing combined site of Portobello high school and St John’s Roman Catholic primary school as a direct consequence of concerns being raised about the overall loss of space. In the introductory remarks, the objectors suggested that the park is “a free development site”. Far from it—the significant area of open space that we will reprovide on the existing school site comes at a value that will be very close to that which would be offered by the existing park site, so it is by no means free.We have consulted the local community on what it would like to see on the new area of open space and we have agreed that local people could book and use the new sports facilities free of charge when they are not being used by the school, to address the concerns that were expressed that local people may not otherwise have been able to access them. As the committee heard previously, during the original planning process we removed from the plans a proposed entrance to the north of the site in response to concerns that it could lead to the golf course being used as a shortcut to and from the school. In addition, the school design is very sympathetic to its location, being set well back from Milton Road and using the existing landform to minimise the building’s height and impact.Other compensation and mitigation measures have also been proposed and will be put in place in respect of many of the other issues that have been identified. The council is confident that the mitigating measures will be effective, but we would nevertheless be happy to engage with any concerned parties who believe otherwise. Such engagement would be usual for the consideration stage of a private bill. Indeed, we invited the objectors to get in touch with us in a letter to you, convener, of 31 January, which was circulated to all the objectors. However, to date no objector has approached the council to discuss any issue or to provide any proposals for enhanced or alternative measures that they believe would address their concerns. We hope that today’s evidence session will shed some light on whether there is anything that we can do to alleviate the objectors’ concerns.09:45