|
Minutes of Meeting 14/5/07
The Tenth Meeting of the 9th Council, Monday 2 April 2007, 7. 30pm, Ashfield, 61 Melville Street, Edinburgh 1. Present Gordon Wyllie (Chairman), Leonora McAndrew (Vice Chair), Margaret Henderson (Treasurer), Ian Robertson (Secretary), Norman Bonney, Peter Galetzka, John Gilmour, John Howard, Colin Johnston, Jane Kille, Rory O'Riordan, Dick Prescott, Hope Ribbeck, Isabel Thom. Representatives from Tie Ltd: Mike Connelly (Tie Ltd), Steve Gorry (Tie Ltd), Keith Rimmer (Tie Ltd), Andrew Malkin (McAlpine), Duncan Fraser (CEC), Wendy Park (CEC) and Ian Spence (CEC) 2. Apologies Apologies were received from John Barrett M.P, Sarah Boyack MSP and PC Claire Smith. 3. Minutes of meeting on Tuesday 12 March and matters arising The Minutes were adopted as a true record of the previous meeting. 4. TIE Ltd Presentation The Chairman thanked the sizable TIE delegation for attending the meeting explaining that many concerns exist regarding the negative impact that the project will have on the West End community during construction. As such, he said that members would welcome any information from TIE on their plans for the West End. Given the importance of the topic the Chairman asked the Community Council attendees to dedicate the main business of the evening to the Trams for Edinburgh agenda. He then invited the representatives to give their presentations. Mike Connelly from TIE took the floor explaining his intention to introduce the team and their specific roles. Mike clarified that he is responsible for managing stakeholder relations. He said that bringing along a comprehensive team to this first meeting would help to begin the ongoing communication process with the community council as important stakeholders. This would also offer an opportunity to have questions answered by a panel of experts as far as they could at this early stage. Next, Andrew Malkin introduced himself. He represents McAlpine, the principal contractor on phase one of the work that has now started in the Leith area. He is involved in traffic management and stakeholder awareness as the initial engineering work rolls out across the route. The McAlpine role is to move the utilities from being directly under the planned tram way and to reset these. Andrew explained that this exercise in itself would help utility companies to fix any problems that they have. Duncan Fraser's responsibilities cover the financial, legal, landscaping and planning elements of the project. Duncan was the Strategic Services Manager with the City of Edinburgh Council and has now been seconded onto the project as a council representative to the team. Steve Gorry, newly started with TIE is in charge of quality assurance and customer interface. For a number of years he was the general manager with Scottish Gas where he explained that he played a major role in developing customer services. Keith Rimmer from the City of Edinburgh Council is also seconded onto the project as a council representative on the team. Keith's previous role was as the head of Transport. On the tram project he is the Traffic Management Director where one of his duties will be to produce the necessary TRO's required. Another council employee, Ian Spence is an architect responsible for the ‘urban fit' of the project. He said that he has already started to liaise with the Cockburn Association and Historic Scotland and explained that a whole manner of issues need to be sensitively worked through especially with communities such as the West End. He further added that having council representatives on the project are there to look after the interests of the City and its citizens. These appointments are a requirement of the Act of Parliament relating to this and similar transport projects he explained. Finally Wendy Park of the City of Edinburgh Council introduced herself as the person responsible for proactive communications and media management regarding Trams. Following this introduction the Chairman and other members covering a range of issues about the project and its impact on the West End raised a number of questions. What follows, summarises the discussions: It was clarified that TIE is an arms length organisation set up to deliver the council's agenda. The two phases, line A and B are governed by an Act of Parliament with the Scottish Executive very much involved in all aspects of the planning and development stages. The full project, still in draft, awaits final ministerial approval. This said sixty million pounds has been released at this early stage to start the preparatory work being carried out by McAlpine who won the tender for this. The first construction work in the Leith area had actually started the day of the community council meeting. Assurances and support were promised by the team for both businesses and residents under a package called "Edinburgh's open for business". This package produced by TIE Ltd, Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce and the City of Edinburgh Council puts in place: - A 20% reduction in Business Rates on average but up to 80% in severe cases whilst livelihoods are being affected by disruptions.
A Small Business Top Up Financial Support Scheme
An "Open for business" Communication and Marketing package for the city centre during the construction phase.
Mike added that any business being affected should contact TIE for an application for financial support. The team promised to manage construction carefully and agreed to undertake marketing, communication and consultation campaigns to ensure that all businesses are kept abreast of developments and progress. Assurances were further given that there will be a focus on small businesses and that TIE has looked to other cities to measure the degree of impact. Mike commented that the message that he had picked up from a visit to Dublin was that the pain was worth the long-term gain to the city. The other message he related was that the Dublin team wished that more people had talked to them. He suggested that this was something that he welcomed here in Edinburgh. He also added that the Edinburgh project is putting in more effort that other projects to get things right and to minimise the pain of disruptions as much as possible. A number of frontager meetings are being planned with affected parties along the route. Final designs do not exist yet because these will only be created once stakeholder views are incorporated. 15,000 invitations will be sent out to frontagers (those that are directly on the tram route) to attend 60 planned frontager meetings. Wider community meetings will also be arranged and Mike said that he imagines that by the end of the process they may consult around 100,000 people once local communities and businesses, not directly on the route, also have their say. Questions were raised about the negative impacts of noise, dust and vibration as engineering work progresses. Andrew Malkin said that there would be a tight regime around this explaining that if it's dry weather and excessively dusty, they will spray water to alleviate the problem. Noise levels he assured would be monitored and kept within acceptable levels. Discussion arose around what constituted acceptable noise levels which the Chairman and Rory O'Riordan challenged. Rory asserted that roadwork noise is always disruptive and annoying and will most certainly cause extreme disruption whilst work is underway. To minimise annoyance Andrew assured the gathering that the times of work would be restricted to between 7am - 5pm and slightly later during the summer perhaps up to 8 or 9pm. A commitment was given that no work would take place over the life of the project between midnight and 7am in the morning. The only possible exception to this would be emergency repairs such as a major utility problem. Phil Douglas from the City Council's Environment section was the name offered as the person that will be personally responsible for monitoring noise levels. Andrew added that some businesses have actually asked for around the clock working to get things finished quicker but he said that the balance between business and residents needs, must be maintained. One other exception arose during questions regarding the junction connecting Lothian Road and Princes Street where work is planned to start at 6am in the mornings over a weekend period to minimise the disruption that this will cause to this extremely busy junction. It was further reported that stakeholders meetings will be held at least eight weeks before the commencement of works within planned areas. Four weeks prior to commencement, stakeholder packs will be issued and face-to-face meetings will be carried out with all affected parties to mitigate, as far as possible, any problems. Tommy Rees has been employed to carry out this face-to-face role in Leith. Community satisfaction during this process will be measured using surveys. Current plans are in the public domain and accessible to all interested parties. The work that McAlpine are undertaking is contained in a complex project plan that incorporates all the various utilities such as gas, water, electricity telecommunications etc as well as big events in the city such as the International Festival and Hogmanay. Weekly meetings are also being held between third party groups to ensure that any problems are dealt with promptly. The aim explained Andrew, is to sustain all services throughout the works but where services need to be suspended, all affected parties will be contacted and alternative arrangements agreed. When asked specifically about the impact on the West End it was envisaged that disruptions to Shandwick place in particular would be in the region of 12 - 14 weeks. The whole scheme is divided into 26 areas with Haymarket to Lothian Road being only one. The final details will only be available when the contractors are appointed and designs are created. At this point it was again stated that local communities would have an input into the designs. When asked about budgets the team gave further assurances that as a project, this would not be another ‘Scottish parliament' or ‘London Olympics' scenario. Mike explained that the business case is sufficiently robust to keep all costs within budget and that all political parties have backed the project with representatives from Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties sitting on the board. At the end of the inputs John Gilmour commented on the slick presentations but asked the group members to be honest and upfront with the community when work commences. He felt that the impression being given was that everything will be fine when in actual fact this will be a major disruption for the community with a great deal of negative impacts as a result. It was also clear that the detail of information regarding traffic re-routing and the actual impact was still very much lacking at this point. The Chairman concluded with the same sentiments and welcomed as much information as possible to be sent to the Secretary as the project progresses. Mike assured the Chairman that he would indeed keep the Secretary informed of any updates or meetings affecting the West End community. The Chairman thanked the TIE group for their attendance and bade them goodnight. 5. Correspondence The Secretary read out the correspondence but prior to this the Chairman updated everyone on the new Neighbourhood Partnership Scheme. 6. Chairman's report on the Edinburgh Neighbourhood Partnership Scheme "On 8 March the City Council agreed to divide up the city into a number of neighbourhood partnership areas and establish for each area an Advisory Committee chaired by one of the local City Councillors. This councillor is to be appointed at the May meeting of the City Council after the local elections. Each of the community councils within the neighbourhood partnership areas will be entitled to attend and the City Councillor's Code of Conduct will apply to all representatives. Various community groups will be entitled to take part, including representatives of the voluntary sector, the police and the National Health Service. Each neighbourhood partnership will have a services manager appointed by the City Council, he/she will report to the partnership but all financial matters have to be approved by the City Council. The new neighbourhood partnerships will cross many boundaries - most of the West End Community Council's area falls within the city centre but the far western area falls within the Drumbrae/Gyle and Corstorphine/Murrayfield zone and the far north falls within the Inverleith zone. The community council is therefore spread between three areas. Our natural focus will be on the City Centre Neighbourhood Partnership where five community councils are involved - the whole of the Old Town, part of Tollcross, part of the New Town/Broughton and a very small part of Stockbridge/Inverleith. It has not yet been worked out exactly how this will affect everyone. Community councils are entitled to no more votes that there are elected members of the City Council and although it is said that the neighbourhood partnerships are to reach decisions by consensus rather than divisional voting, it is possible that this will be an issue. From the discussion that took place at the meeting last week in the City Chambers, it seems that the community council Chairmen affected will be expected to attend meetings of the community partnership. I understand that it will be up to each partnership to set its own meeting times etc but the estimate is that one meeting will take place approximately every eight weeks and that it will be permissible to send alternates. I would suggest that in our case we appoint the office bearers as alternatives to the Chairman and also constitute as authorised representatives the conveners of our particular interest areas. I will be happy to give anyone any further information that they wish, so far as this lies within my power and knowledge. Gordon Wyllie from a meeting held on 2 April 2007 7. Treasurer's report The Treasurer gave a brief update (on record) and suggested that a full report would be given at the next meeting. 8. Police report No Police report was given. 9. Reports from Convenors: - Housing: Leonora McAndrew reported that she has still not received a reply from the council despite repeated attempts to challenge the proposal for the property at 25 Palmerston Place. A letter was being prepared for Councillor Wigglesworth.
- Licensing: For information only Margaret Henderson noted the only licence application in the area was for the Sauna in Torphichen Street to replace the previous one that they had forgotten to renew on time.
· Communications and Publicity: The Secretary invited members to approach local organisations and businesses to display WECC posters. Norman Bonney said that he would ask St George's Church, John Howard took some for Palmerston Place Church and for St Mary's, John Gilmour took one for Drumsheugh Baths, Isobel Thom said she would approach Glenogle Swimming Pool and the Planning Section whilst Hope Ribbeck said she would ask the Post Office. John Gilmour gave a brief update on "The Local Channel" website and showed copies of the WECC front page. Environment: Rory O'Riordan invited everyone to fill in the "Tackling Climate Change" questionnaire from Mark Lazarowiez MP and return it to the address on the form. He also encouraged members to read the Climate Change Bill. Planning: Isobel Thom reported on the proposed conversion of the town house at 25 - 27 Palmerston Place that the WECC are opposed to. Jane Kille highlighted that this is a listed building and she mentioned the ornate staircase that may be affected by alterations. It was suggested that the Cockburn Association should be contacted and that updates would be discussed further at the next meeting.
Transport: Trams had dominated the evening's proceedings but the Chairman asked if anything further needed to be recorded. Isobel Thom suggested a need to establish what influence we have on the routing of transport through the West End. The Chairman added that as many options as possible should be on the agenda for discussions. The Secretary was asked to contact our new councillors once the elections have taken place to get them actively involved in discussions. Peter Galetzka then prompted for a meeting with Sarah Boyack if she is successfully re-elected. Rory O'Riordan stated that we need as much information in advance as possible regarding developments and he also reported that he had placed an article on the Trams in the local Murrayfield Newsletter. 10. AOCB Norman Bonney invited community council members to attend the following events being organised by the Edinburgh Association of Community Councils: · Local Government Fair, Saturday 28 April, 11 - 3pm, St George's Church West. · Developing a Policy on Climate Change, Thursday 10 May, 7 - 9pm, European Room, The City Chambers. · Follow-up meeting to debate the findings, Wednesday 30 May, 7 - 9pm, European Room, The City Chambers. · Edinburgh Partnership in Conference: Climate Change Policy, Wednesday 12 June, 12 pm Easter Road Stadium. (please contact Norman if you wish to attend norman.bonney@blueyonder.co.uk · EACC AGM, Saturday 30 June, 10am - 12 noon, The City Chambers. Rory O'Riordan called for vote of thanks to the Chairman for the excellent manner in which he had conducted the meeting. 11. Next Meeting: The next meeting will be held on Monday 14 May 2007 at 7.30pm at 61 Melville Street, EH3 7HL. Planned future dates for the WECC Monday evening meetings held at 61 Melville Street at 7.30pm are for the 4 June AGM, 2 July, 6 August, 3 September, 1 October, 12 November, 3 December 2007.
|