Administration councillors criticised for hasty decision to proceed with land sale.

A council decision to sell off council owned flats, listed buildings and other land in the Old Town for more than £3million, has been described as “deeply disappointing,” with critics claiming that it leaves the council with little control over the future of the Caltongate development site.

A new developer, Isle of Man based Artisan, has recently bought the privately owned part of the Caltongate site in the heart of the Old Town. It has emerged that the firm plans to commence with a development that is said to be “significantly different” from plans approved by the council in 2007.

In order to do this, the firm offered to buy the parts of the Caltongate Masterplan area that were owned by the council.

However, the existing planning consent still applies to the site and heritage bodies and local residents have been quick to restate their opposition to a hasty sale of the publicly owned land and buildings amid fears that this could lead to the creation of a larger gap site.

This is because whoever owns the two C listed buildings, which includes the former Canongate school and the Sailors Ark, can demolish them under the terms of the existing Caltongate planning permission.

These buildings, which UNESCO have said should be protected as they contribute to the “outstanding universal value” of Edinburgh’s World Heritage Site, form part of the package of assets that the council agreed to sell without condition, to Artisan in a full council meeting today.

Addressing the meeting, local residents from the Save Our Old Town campaign said that they were concerned over a lack of community consultation on the potential development. They were also worried about the risk that the new owners could demolish the existing buildings and increase the size of the existing gap site without any requirement to then build anything to replace them.

Local residents went on to highlight work that local community groups such as Remade Edinburgh and the Old Town Development Trust have undertaken, often with funding from the council, to find alternative uses for the listed buildings in question.

In the debate, the city’s Economic Development Convenor, Councillor Tom Buchanan quoted statistics from the earlier Caltongate planning proposal on the new jobs and economic impact the development could bring to the city in order to justify the sale of council assets to Artisan.

His administration counterpart, Planning Convenor Jim Lowrie also claimed in the debate that UNESCO had no objection to the sale.

The Conservative, Labour and Green groups all backed local resident’s calls for a delay. Despite this, the multimillion pound sale was agreed with the backing of the administration parties.

Labour Councillor Lesley Hinds sat on the planning committee that originally approved the Caltongate masterplan during the previous, Labour led, administration.

Speaking after the meeting she said: “I sat on the planning committee at the time that went through the long process of looking at this proposal and we did agree it in the end, so I do certainly want work to happen in the gap site and for it to be developed. It’s about jobs and the economic development of the Old Town.”

“However, today we did hear very strong views from the local community who live there, who were concerned that there has been no consultation at all regarding this next part of the development.

“So we wanted a short period of consultation to allow the local community to find out more about the new plans.”

Commenting on the suggestion that Artisan may build something less ambitious than the original Catongate proposal Cllr Hinds said: “That’s the issue. If you look at the old school and other parts of the site – that’s owned by the public. So why the haste to sell off the assets to the new developer when we don’t really know that much about them?”

After the meeting, Cllr Buchanan conceded that Artisan do intend to bring new development proposals to the planning committee. He said: “I have seen the new plans and the new plans are significantly different from the plans approved by the planning committee. They’re better plans and I hope the developers make a point of publicising them as widely as possible.”

“They are only outline plans. The detailed plans will probably have to come back to the council.”

“I am reassured that they want to do a sympathetic development on that site and I’m happy to help them in that.”

Jenny Logan from the Save Our Old Town Campaign reacted angrily to the sale decision. She said: “I think the councillors forgot they were talking about a land sale. They thought they were talking about whether Caltongate goes ahead or not. And actually, the land sale in no way guarantees that Caltongate will go ahead.

“Councillor Buchanan was quoting Caltongate statistics to justify the land sale decision when he knows that’s not what is going to be built.

“The biggest risk of this is that these developers are no better than Mountgrange and that what they are doing is speculative development, focussed on increasing the land value.

“They’ve picked up this site for half of what Mountgrange picked it up for, they intend to come forwards with a more economically viable plan and then they will sell it on.”

“The upshot of all this is that any incoming administration will now have their hands tied, just like the last administration had their hands tied, and in the mean time local residents won’t be able to make any use of the existing buildings, unless the new developers deem it acceptable to them.”

The Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland (AHSS) also reacted with concern to the decision. The organisation has taken the unusual step of referring the decision to the Westminster government’s Departure of Culture, Media and Sport, who are the UK body responsible for liaising with UNESCO over the city’s World Heritage status.

A spokesman for the AHSS said: “Today’s decision by the full Council to sell public property to facilitate the potential implementation of the Caltongate masterplan is deeply disappointing.

“That Caltongate met with local and international opprobrium is a matter of record and councillors had an opportunity to rectify this.

“If, as reported, Cllr Lowrie claims that UNESCO supports Caltongate we would be keen to see evidence as the World Heritage Committee specifically urged “improvements for the Caltongate… development” in 2009.

“We have seen no evidence of these improvements and the danger is that today’s decision will result in a negative impact upon the Outstanding Universal Value of Edinburgh.

“We have already referred the matter to the Department of Culture, Media Sport in Westminster.”

Cllr Steve Burgess, Greens’ planning spokesperson, also voiced his criticism of the decision and warned of the long term consequences for the Old Town. He said: ‘It’s a massive missed opportunity. Despite having two years to consider what to do with the Caltongate site, we’re now told that the only option is to hand over council land and buildings to this developer but with no guarantees.

“I’m very concerned this is being rushed through far too quickly with little scrutiny when the Old Town will have to suffer the consequences for decades to come.”

The City of Edinburgh Council also came in for criticism this week after granting planning permission for another hotel development in the World Heritage Site on the Cowgate fire site.

IN DETAIL:

Edinburgh’s Caltongate bought by foreign investors

Campaigners to mount protest against controversial Caltongate scheme

The Achitectural Heritage Society of Scotland Opposes Caltongate

Controversial £35million Cowgate hotel development gets green light