Retail rage as capital warned of fresh tram chaos

Published on Thursday 12 May 2011 16:31

RETAILERS in Edinburgh city centre are threatening a revolt over controversial plans to close Princes Street to traffic for 10 months to allow repairs of botched tram works - as it emerged 80 per cent of the project budget has been spent.

Business leaders are calling a crisis summit after being told the street will be out of bounds to public transport from the beginning of July until the end of April next year.

They have made a series of demands to under-fire city council leaders, including compensation for firms expected to suffer during work to replace cracked tarmac installed on either side of tram rails with concrete.

Extra marketing for the city centre is also being demanded, as well as a pledge to try to scale back the programme of work and reduce its impact on the summer festivals and the Christmas shopping season.

Businesses also want a guarantee that the trams will actually go as far as Princes Street initially, despite council leaders admitting that is not a certainty.

However, it emerged last night that 440 million of the 500m awarded to the project by the Scottish Government has now gone - 30m more than previously admitted - even though just 28 per cent of infrastructure work is complete.

The council has committed a further 45m, although it is already expected to have to borrow heavily to even reach that figure after failing to raise the expected contributions from property developers.

Insiders on the project insist the cost of finishing a route between Edinburgh Airport and the Haymarket area will be about 600m and the council has no prospect of securing any more money from the government.

The German construction consortium will foot the bill for repairing the tram infrastructure. But the new council report, to be discussed by councillors on Monday, does not divulge how much the council is expected to fork out to help retailers cope with the impact of the forthcoming tramworks, or what the economic impact of the work on the city will be.

Retailers said the council had dropped "a massive bombshell" on the city centre at a briefing they were called to on Wednesday afternoon, when they had expected to be given an update on the long-running dispute between the council's tram company and the construction consortium.

Liz McAreavey, chief executive of business group Essential Edinburgh, who is organising the crisis meeting, said it would "consider joint action" over the prospect of prolonged disruption on Princes Street.

She added: "We understand that this work needs to be done for safety reasons, but we also need to have clarity on whether there is going to be any benefit at the end of it. We just don't have that at the moment."Graham Birse, deputy chief executive of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, said: "There is complete dismay that the consortium is going to have to go back on to Princes Street to do this remedial work.

"I think there is a very strong case for businesses to be compensated in some way now and we'll be looking to do what we can to see if there can be any kind of rebate for those that are affected."

Michael Apter, chairman of the West End Association, said: "I don't think anyone was expecting the council to give us this news."

Deputy council leader Steve Cardownie said: "My understanding is that this work simply has to be done because the condition of the road has deteriorated so much.

"However, the big unknown is how much it is going to cost the council to deliver a tram scheme into the city centre. We're not going to know that until just a few days before this work is due to start."