£10m land sale to help pay bill for trams

Published on Monday 17 December 2007 09:38

AROUND £10 million worth of council land is to be sold off to help pay for the city's tram line.

Parcels of land that flank the Newhaven to airport route will be sold, mainly for housing, by council chiefs to make up the city's 45m contribution to the scheme. Among the plots earmarked to be sold off is land around Balgreen Primary School, Bankhead Drive and Constitution Street Yards. Land left over after changes to accommodate trams on the Greenside Place roundabout could also be sold off.

Around half of the 45m will come from developers' contributions though, in order to fulfil its commitments now, city leaders are planning to borrow against future contributions. They have only banked 2.2m of contributions so far though a further 6.5m is expected.

The council's trams fundraising package has today been described as "very prudent" in an independent review by economic consultants DTZ. But critics said the local authority had still to show how it would pay for any overruns on the 498m project.

Councillor Nick Elliot-Cannon, the SNP's finance spokesman, said: "We still have real concerns over the tram scheme, not least because nearly every major public construction project in recent history has run over budget and it is Edinburgh's taxpayers who will pick up the bill."