Meeting of the Parliament 12 February 2026 [Draft]
I am grateful to Ben Macpherson for intervening, although I think that he has shown that he is probably more qualified than I am to speak on the topic. His wider point is absolutely right: we need collaboration and co-operation and, critically, we need local authorities to come to the table and to work proactively with local organisations, because they have the wherewithal and structures to do that. Volunteers bring an awful lot of willingness and enthusiasm, but that must be facilitated.
Ultimately, we are talking about public assets and public land that belong to the people who are seeking to develop and use them. The issue has a long timeline. Plans looking at how the Inch park nursery site could be developed were commissioned in 2020. A masterplan designed in conjunction with the City of Edinburgh Council was submitted as part of an application for levelling up funding in 2022. Despite that effort and those detailed plans, and despite all the engagement, there has been a lack of progress.
I will widen out the subject. I recognise that not every member who signed my motion or will speak today wants to speak about Inch park, but community sport matters more widely. I note that Brian Whittle is going to speak, and I suspect that he is about to make a point about the hugely important wider health impacts of participation in sport. We know that sport is important for mental health. I am not necessarily good at playing team sport, but I know what I learned from doing that. If you play football or rugby at school, you learn about teamwork, discipline and communication. It is not all about becoming good at sport, because many people will not—I can attest to that—but you learn how to work with other people and you gain incredible health benefits.
I want the project to move forward, ending a situation in which people in the Inch look through the railings and wonder what they could do with the land if they were allowed to make better use of it and develop it. That land belongs to them. We were debating the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill the other day and discussing what happens when communities are enabled and when there is a presumption that we will say yes to them. It does not feel as if that is happening here. We must bring the council to the table to get the plan moving. Rather than talk about storage facilities, or parking—that is what the council says the groups need to find—we should see that land being used for the people who live in the Inch.
That should be the wider approach. Land that is owned by the public should be used by the public for the benefit of the public. That is what community empowerment and community wealth building are about, and we need to see much more of it.