Hansard

Good morning. My name is Stephen Carr and I have lived in Portobello, about a mile from the park, for five years. I will cover objections concerning the loss of amenity that will be caused by the proposed development.That parks provide an important amenity to local residents is well established. Indeed, the executive summary of the City of Edinburgh Council’s own parks and gardens strategy of 2006 contains the ringing statement that“parks are an essential element in the modern city ... Parks are the barometers of a city’s health.”The parks strategy’s far-sighted and laudable objectives are to“Ensure that there is an equitable distribution of parks so that everyone can have access to them”and to“Provide a diverse range of open spaces for recreation, relaxation and enjoyment”.The point about providing a diverse range of open space is important. I personally use Portobello park to walk my two dogs—I am one of the much-maligned dog walkers. It is unique among the local parks in that it consists of a large open, undeveloped but safe space. Many of the other local parks are smaller and contain things such as play equipment, so a large open field that is fenced off from the road and bordered by attractive woodland on the edge and on the golf course side is particularly valuable to me as a dog walker. I am not alone in that.The council acknowledged in its parks strategy that“dog-walkers are amongst the most regular of park users, and ... there are demonstrable health benefits accruing ... from dog ownership.”Dr McCulloch will touch on those health benefits later.In the past, the park has provided a broader range of amenities. There used to be football goalposts, which were removed and have not been replaced. Going further back, I believe that there were softball pitches, and there has also been the scope for informal games. As a result of the council’s neglect, the full potential of the park has not been realised.As Ironside Farrar’s December 2009 report into the usage of the park noted,“Provision of facilities ... is limited. There are no facilities for young children, school aged children or young adults”,apart from the football pitches, which are now gone. It continued:“There are only 3 benches in the park”—that is now down to one—“located along ... the busy Milton Road”,and“there are no other facilities”.It concluded:“Therefore, the park offers very little reason/opportunity for visitors, other than footballers and dog walkers to use the park. This will have a bearing on the overall visitor numbers.”Nevertheless, despite that neglect, the park remains a valuable public asset. The woodland along both sides gives the park an unusual natural feel. Many of the other local parks are smaller and more enclosed and feel much more urban. Many mature trees, woodland plants and wild flowers in the corridor between the park and the golf course and in the millennium wood will be either lost, made inaccessible or put at risk by the development. The council’s promise that the wooded areas will be improved by active management begs the question why they have been so neglected for so long by the same council and ignores the impact of the development and the sheer scale of the school’s population. A walk in the woods is not the same as a walk round a school.While walking in the park, I enjoy the spectacular views of Arthur’s Seat from the Hope Lane end and the views from the Milton Road end across the Firth of Forth towards Fife. Such views are an important amenity in themselves. To quote the council again, this time from the skyline study,“Edinburgh’s iconic skyline forms an essential part of the character and appearance of the city and is a unique asset that it is important to protect.”Indeed, the view towards Arthur’s Seat is what is known as a “protected view”, but maybe that just means that it is protected until the council changes its mind. If the park is developed, the view will no longer be available from within the park and the view from the Hope Lane end will be marred by the erection of fencing round the school and by the school building.Although there are other parks in Portobello, parts of the community, particularly in the Christians area on the other side of Hope Lane, where many properties have limited private garden space, will no longer benefit from being within a 400m walking distance of accessible green space of at least 500m2, which is an objective that is identified in the council’s open space strategy of September 2010.Ideas for compensatory space—should we choose to believe the promises—on the site of the existing school or through improvements at Magdalene glen ignore the distances from Portobello park, in the case of the site of the existing school, or the very different nature of the steeply sloping Magdalene glen site. In other words, we will still lose a space that is unique in terms of its openness, its use for dog walkers, its natural setting and the superb views that it provides.The open space strategy that I referred to identified Portobello park as one of the city’s large parks that were to be improved to a standard of good. Given that the council was already planning to build on the park, under plans that were first unveiled in 2006, that statement was misleading, to say the least. The park usage audit from March 2010 stated:“existing uses of the park, mainly as a walking venue, should not only be preserved but improved wherever possible.”That is plainly incompatible with current plans.I hope that I have demonstrated that there is absolutely nothing particularly remarkable or controversial about the values that we seek to protect. Indeed, those values are enshrined in successive City of Edinburgh Council policies on parks, open space and skylines that have been expressed over a decade or more, but the same council now finds it convenient and expedient to ignore them.