Letter: Caltongate query

THE CALTONGATE scheme is set to be revived, with the new developer planning to implement most of the original controversial scheme (your report, 16 December).

Your article implies that it’s only the demolished New Street garage gap site that is to be redeveloped, the council having withdrawn its adjacent property over a year ago.

However, it now appears that a full council meeting on 22 December will be asked to approve a paper recommending the sale of the property to the developer to make up the whole of the area covered by the original Caltongate scheme. The developer’s intention is to take up the existing planning consent.

Given the prediction from the head of the IMF that the world economic outlook is “gloomy” and no country is immune, it seems hardly the best time to launch a large new investment proposal. There are huge questions about how this development, if unchanged, can make financial sense, given the economic changes since the approved plans were drawn up in 2007.

What assurances has the council that this development will ever be delivered? Does the city need another five-star hotel? Is there a market for a large amount of additional office space given the number of empty offices which can be seen in the city?

It would appear that the council is anxious to slip this decision through while the city’s environmental watchdogs have their attention focused on more festive matters. The council remembers the fierce and wide- ranging opposition to the original proposals which came from local residents, from the Edinburgh amenity and conservation organisations, and from the World Heritage committee of Unesco, which sent a delegation to find out at first-hand what was going wrong.

The Unesco mission endorsed many of the views of the local opposition and formally urged the city and Historic Scotland to make significant revisions to the overall Caltongate strategy in order to protect the two listed buildings and to prevent the construction of a modern building which would block the view from the top of Jeffrey Street across the Waverley valley to Calton Hill. Unesco further required the UK government to submit a progress report on the response to its recommendations by 2011.

Has Historic Scotland submitted this report? Has Unesco been informed of the latest developments? I believe Edinburgh citizens deserve an answer to these questions before another hasty decision is made by the council.

Jim Johnson

King’s Stables Road

Edinburgh