Kiosk regrets

It is interesting to note recent comment on the state of many of our high streets (your report, 14 December) . Some ten years ago I floated the idea of supplying Edinburgh with strategically placed kiosks to be let to local and national retailers.

At that stage, my colleagues and I spoke with a number of national and local retailers – without exception they offered us tremendous support. One also visited the city and expressed interest in various sites we had identified.

Not only did we work on the designs, but we also produced a number of reports, had numerous discussions with Edinburgh council officers and investigated funding opportunities.

However, although the council was generally supportive, it soon become obvious that we would need to work across a number of departments and the obstacles and hoops that we would need to negotiate would soon render the realisation of our ideas impractical.

It’s sad. really. The city would have benefited from another source of income, local retailers would have been able to trade from small city centre kiosks without paying city centre rents, Edinburgh would be more Europeanised and more vibrancy would have been introduced to our city centre.

John Cormack

Cumberland Street

Edinburgh