Cockburn Society strikes a jarring note

Published on Tuesday 20 July 2010 16:19

When it comes to new developments in Scotland's capital, few bodies wear their heritage heart on their sleeve so earnestly as the Cockburn Association.

It is deeply conservative Edinburgh to a fault. Barely one brick can be placed upon another without vocal concern as to whether a new building or a pillar box is rendered in the correct vernacular. Now it has gone to war over plans for a 2.8 million development behind the Festival Theatre. It has dubbed as "mediocre" and "misguided" — fiery words in the Cockburn lexicon — proposals for student housing and offices to pay for new rehearsal and performance space the theatre badly needs to stay internationally competitive. The area behind the theatre is no Georgian architectural celebration, and the envisaged extension is hardly likely to put the city's cultural status in jeopardy.

But it is the manner of the Cockburn Association objection as much as the criticism itself which strikes a jarring note. It has written to Lord Provost George Grubb, asking him to intervene, rather than raising its complaints through the usual process of a planning system specifically designed to hear and consider objections such as this.

It gives the impression, unintended we are sure, that normal procedures can be waived for its benefit. It thus risks that most scornful Cockburn epithet of all: "inappropriate".