Letter: Now fill the flats

It is extremely good news that the City of Edinburgh Council appears to have changed its mind over the future of the former Canongate Venture building (your report, 11 August).

It is even better news that Councillor Jim Lowrie, convener of the city's planning committee, appears to have come to the somewhat belated conclusion that the destructive Caltongate proposals are dead.

However, the real test of the council's intentions will be whether it now places tenants back in the Canongate flats from which they were evicted to allow the building to be demolished as part of Mountgrange's development. The demolition of these flats would have been a betrayal of every policy the council espoused about the Old Town since the mid-1970s.

There is a desperate need for affordable housing in the city centre and for a measure of stability to be returned to the Canongate area.

Both needs can be met by councillors agreeing to re-let these properties, and everyone who loves Edinburgh should keep the pressure on them until they do.

ROBERT CAIRNS

Ratcliffe Terrace

Edinburgh