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

If you live in the Leith Area and participatory budgeting is your thing, (and it should be!) then please come along to the next £eith Decides Event.  There are some 40 local community groups who have proposed projects to be funded and they are keen to get YOUR vote.  Click here to see a list of all the local groups who are looking for funding.

£eith Decides will take place at Out of the Blue, Dalmeny Street on Saturday 2 March 2013.   Registration opens at 12.30 pm and the Project Stalls can be visited for information from 1.00 pm to 3.00 pm. 

If you have difficulty in attending the event, you may submit your scores at McDonald Road or Leith Libraries where you will find a Poster Exhibition of the choice of this year’s Projects.  If you cannot attend one of the libraries, you may request a scoring sheet and registration form to be sent to you.  Phone 0131 529 6194 or e-mail loraine.duckworth@edinburgh.gov.uk.

Scoring sheets must be submitted with the registration information which verifies your eligibility.  The scoring sheet and a registration form will be separated before scores are counted.  All postal scoring sheets must be submitted no later than 5.00 pm on 26 February 2013.

Contact Loraine Duckworth, Partnership Information Officer on 529 6194 or e-mail loraine.duckworth@edinburgh.gov.uk for further information.

Image by Nik Watt: Western Harbour