Well they say Rome wasn’t built in a day… Well, don’t tell anyone, but I think I know why… !

Its been three months since the decision was taken in Chamber that the City of Edinburgh Council would work in partnership with us, on the feasibility of the business case we submitted for their consideration.  Whilst we believe that our figures stacked up, there was no doubt that we had to test some of our assumptions and undertake some development of our ideas and plans.  However what really swung it that day in Chamber was that finally the Councillors realised the social case for a leisure pool – both for those living locally in Leith, but also for children and disabled people who were ill-served by other pools and who loved the flumes, chutes and the opportunity to spend some good fun quality family time together.  

“We own it to the community to give this a go” and “We could do something special here” were just two sentences spoken by Councillors that day as they debated whether to take the leap of faith.  We glad that they did, and have since set out to work with us in co-operation.  There is no doubt that this process is quite new for us and them, and throughout the three months we have been feeling our way through a process, which to be fair is a wee bit slower than our normal speed of operating, as campaigners.

That said we have made a massive amount of progress together.  We have established a working group of Councillors, Splashback and officials to take the work forward.  We are meeting fortnightly (at 8am to allow us to fit it in with our work and family commitments!) to discuss how we progress our vision of a community led venture, providing a hub of activity at the foot of Leith Walk.

We have:

• Devised a structure that allows us to work on the various workstreams we need to develop: legal and governance, fiance, fundraising, marketing, pool operations, ‘dry’ operations and site development. 
• Applied to become a SCIO (Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation), who will take on the feasibility phase and hopefully the running of the facility
• Engaged with a broad range of experts – from engineers, design companies, voluntary organisations, community sports companies – to discuss ideas and possibilities.
• Compiled a fundraising plan and are actively speaking to funders whose aims and values match ours. 
• Applied for a development grant to engage a dedicated Development Manager/s, who will assist us as we build capacity within the organisation
• Developed a brief and are tendering for design and engineering works, scoping out what is possible and associated costs
• Continued to meet weekly as a campaign group to discuss our progress.

We do so, with the continued awareness that the needs of toddlers, young families, the disabled and the economically disadvantaged are currently ill-supplied by pools in Edinburgh, since the closure of the much loved Waterworld.  And we continue to press for remedying this through the provision of adequate and affordable swimming facilities, suitable for ALL members of our community.

So apologies for the radio silence on the blog as of late…  Co-operation takes time! But, as we know Rome wasn’t built in a day.

But boy, did it look good once they got there!!

Please do keep in touch, via the blog and our more regularly updated Twitter feed… More coming soon…

Pilmeny Development Project volunteers work on a one to one basis with older people (65+) in North East Edinburgh.   They work to reduce loneliness and social isolation.

To see the whole document : Community Connecting North East Edinburgh information (1)

Information on the Leith Time Bank:

To see the whole document: Leith Time Bank Information

community Community Connecting North East Edinburgh is also looking for volunteers:

To see the whole document: A5 flyer volunteer recruit Mar 2013

Tennis Courts 

The recent grant funding application to Sports Scotland’s ‘Legacy 2014 Active Places Fund’ for Leith Links tennis courts has been successful with a grant of £38,000 awarded. This is in addition to funding from The Tennis Foundation Places to Play, the British Tennis Fund, the Lawn Tennis Association and the East of Scotland Tennis Association.  The total external funding contribution is £69,000, with the total spend estimated at £113,000.  Edinburgh Councils will provide £20,000 from Culture and Sports Pitches and Pavilions budget.  A tender is now being prepared for this work with the aim of starting works on site in July 2013.  Hopefully the courts will be ready for use in September.

The contract will deliver three Tennis Courts which will be blue with a light green surround. As an aid to tennis development some of the courts will also be marked for red mini tennis and orange tennis to encourage younger players and help coaching. As part of the Tennis work a Petanque court will be constructed delivering 2 piste playing surfaces.

Once completed the courts will be run by Edinburgh Leisure who will operate tennis programmes to provide coaching opportunities for local people.

While this work is ongoing a compound will be set up in the old tennis courts to facilitate the works. We have also agreed to share this compound with the contractors working on Constitution Street as part of the Leith Programme. They will start using the old tennis courts from the 26April until August with the contractors for the tennis courts on site until September provisionally.

Park Improvements

There are also some other park improvement works that have been completed recently:

• Planting of 13 new trees
• Replacement litter bins
• A digitised survey of benches (A new bench has also been ordered to replace the bench damaged during the Mela event).
• The pavement outside St Mary’s Primary School has been re-surfaced and the cycle-way has been extended.
• There has also been some localised pathway repairs and re-surfacing works

Planning permission has also been granted for the John Rattray statue to be built on Leith Links. The Bill to allow the statue to be built still has to go before Parliament before the statue can be installed. We will keep the Steering Group updated on progress.

The Children’s Orchard

Remember the weather in March?  Greener Leith held a couple of maintenance days at the Children’s Orchard.  Ben & Jenny from the Botanics gave a demonstration to local volunteers on fruit tree pruning.  Volunteers also did some great work to tidy up this area including re-staking of trees, mulching and tidying of the hedge.  Apparently the orchard supports a healthy community of voles!

Dear Councillor Hinds,

At the meeting of 25 March, Leith Central CC took notice of the T&E report (item 14) that was agreed on 19 March 2013 regarding implementation of the £5.5m Leith Walk reinstatement programme.

In particular, the implementation timeline for Leith Walk between the Foot of the Walk and Pilrig Street from September 2013 and continued vagueness for the section from Pilrig Street to Picardy Place (with no concrete date set) caused substantial consternation. 

This further delay comes on top of:

• Leith Walk suffering from tram/utilities disruptions and uncertainties since 2007: for some 4 years
• Leith Walk stakeholders were promised reinstatement in 2011: a wait of 2 years
• the design life of the reinstatement works is 7 years (after which new repair works – or even an extended tram route – will cause new disruptions)

It makes no sense to wait two years (and more) for a solution that last only seven years, neither financially nor economically. Delays are costly – but especially for Leith Walk users: if there are 40,000 users per day, and everyone is inconvenienced to the tune of 10p (a conservative estimate) through delays, damage from potholes, accidents, pollution, postponed or abandoned investment/development decisions, loss of business, etc, this translates into £1.5m pa. In other words: the 2 year prevarication over the implementation of the £5.5m programme has already cost £3m. 

This is unacceptable.

Our impression is that there is a lack of focus and, possibly, design and project management resource that has caused the delay. This is something that could be remedied fairly swiftly, now that further decision making has been delegated. Our impression that there is such a shortage has been reinforced by the absence of programme management information. One recent example: nightly Constitution Street parking restrictions and partial closure starting on Monday were notified on Monday morning. Hardly evidence of a programme! 

We would therefore ask for the following:

1. increased professional programme management and design resource to speed up programme implementation and quality monitoring
2. for a programme representative to attend all LCCC meetings until works have been completed
3. detailed feedback on the substantial consultation document submitted by LCCC in partnership with other local organisations in the presence of the Council’s designers to allow us to understand the decision making in sufficient detail and to regain trust
4. preparation of a detailed realistic project plan which serves as a baseline to compare any future delays against

Yours sincerely

Roland L Reid

Secretary,

Leith Central Community Council

cc: John Bury, Acting Head of Transport