Guided busway not such a CERT now

A company has launched a legal action in a bid to fight a compulsory purchase order served by Edinburgh City Council to obtain a 20-acre plot of land it owns which is crucial to the scheme.

It was revealed today that lawyers acting on behalf of developers New Ingliston Ltd have initiated a judicial review against the authority.

They are claiming that as the land near Edinburgh Airport was to be obtained specifically for the CERT scheme - which has since been controversially scrapped - the council no longer has any legal right to buy the land.

But city transport leader Andrew Burns today insisted that because the transport plan for the western corridor still includes sections of guided busway, the compulsory purchase order remains valid.

The site is one of the last pieces needed for the West Edinburgh Busways Scheme - which could eventually see the "guided busway" converted to a light rail link to the airport. The Scottish Executive last month approved the council’s plans to purchase all the land needed for the scheme west of Gogar, including the disputed site at Ingliston.

But New Ingliston’s managing director, Roddie Paterson, today said he was confident the Court of Session would overturn the compulsory purchase order.

He said: "The council has clearly said it was abandoning CERT. You have to wonder why it wants to acquire land for something that’s been abandoned."

"We believe it’s outwith the council’s legal powers but I hope we can find a sensible resolution to this. We simply want to see a public transport system needed for the current set of circumstances, not one designed ten years ago."

Proceedings at Edinburgh’s Court of Session were launched late last month and judges will have to rule whether the council has acted reasonably or not.

A report aiming to clarify the local authority’s position - that guided busways have never been officially dropped from the city’s transport strategy - will be presented to councillors on Thursday.

Cllr Burns today hit out at the developer and acknowledged that the legal bid could delay plans to extend the guided busway to the airport.

He added: "Stopping the land acquisition on the western corridor will benefit nobody apart from the landowner. If we end up in a lengthy legal review, the loser will be the travelling public."

Senior council sources are convinced the firm is attempting to use the legal manoeuvre to hold the local authority to ransom.

High-profile plans unveiled by New Ingliston two years ago to create a business park on green belt land next to the airport failed to receive planning permission.

At the time, the firm was accused of trying to "buy" planning consent in exchange for land needed for CERT.

It is understood that sections of CERT were kept in the West Edinburgh Busways scheme to prevent negotiations from having to be reopened with other landowners whose land was bought prior to the doomed initiative collapsing.

Cllr Burns said: "It’s taken almost three years to get where we are. This could be a timescale nightmare."

He stressed that the WEBS scheme was aimed at alleviating traffic problems on the western edge of the Capital only until light rail could be put in place.

It is estimated that a light rail project in the western corridor could take up to eight years, compared to as little as two years for WEBS to be put in place.

Cllr Burns said: "Our long-term aspiration for the western corridor is a light rail system, but we obviously have a problem in terms of congestion and traffic growth. We have an absolute requirement to do something now.

"We’re trying to rescue something out of CERT to get a short-term solution to the western corridor."

Opposition politicians today claimed that the threat of further delays exposed "incompetence" on the council’s part.

Tory transport spokesman at the council, Allan Jackson, said today: "This whole thing has been a shambles from day one."

Colin Howden, campaign manager with sustainable transport lobby TRANSform Scotland, added: "This just seems typical of Edinburgh public transport schemes that never seem to get off the ground."