Last month, we reported the frustrating news about the decision of SNP and Conservative councillors to approve building 650 new homes on the Cammo fields.  The Lib Dems opposed the development.

We explained how our focus now would be on doing what we could to mitigate the impact.  Wet met with Cala and David Wilson homes today to discuss next steps.

• The developers expect to start work on site later this year with the first homes being occupied in late 2020.
• Access to the construction site will be via Maybury Road. There will be no access via Cammo Walk.
• The developers will be contributing almost £500,000 to public transport infrastructure such as new shelters and turning circle inside the site. They are prepared to subsidise a new bus service and we are pushing to get this in place as soon as possible.
• Work is now ongoing to include a new nursery within the north east of the site as well as meeting space for use by the wider community.
• Almost £70,000 will be provided for improved health care. At this stage, it is not clear whether this will involve an extension to the Parkgrove Medical Centre or go towards a wholly new practice at Maybury.

We have agreed to hold regular meetings and updates with information we can pass on to our constituents.

We are also continuing to press Council officials about capacity improvements at the Barnton junction. We will keep local people posted.

The speed limit on Maybury Road is to be reduced from 40mph to 30mph.

It comes after Conservative and SNP councillors approved the 650 home plan at Cammo, despite local Liberal Democrat opposition.

The Cammo housing plan will involve several new pedestrian crossing points on Maybury Road as well as new cycle-ways. In light of this, the reduction in the speed limit was deemed necessary for safety reasons.

The speed limit change will come into effect later this year.

Police Scotland has admitted that officers normally focused on areas like Queensferry, Kirkliston, Cramond, Davidson’s Mains and Muirhouse now risk being diverted to Edinburgh city centre because of cuts imposed by the SNP.

Liberal Democrats strongly opposed the decision of SNP and Labour councillors to cut the local police budget by 20%. It has resulted in a city wide loss of 10 officers.

Senior police have now admitted that community officers in other parts of the city are likely to be diverted to cover policing duties in the city centre.

One of the benefits of community policing is that officers get to know and understand the area. They develop relationships, especially with younger people. That could be put at risk if officers get sucked into dealing with problems in the very centre of Edinburgh.

It is clear these cuts are wrong and should be reversed.

Liberal Democrats have today teamed up with other opposition councillors to defeat the SNP/Labour administration and force a rethink on the unpopular garden tax.

Labour and SNP councillors running Edinburgh Council forced through the new annual charge for garden waste collection last year. It came despite huge opposition from local people. Liberal Democrat councillors strongly opposed the introduction of the charge and presented a fully costed budget to scrap the tax.

Latest figures have shown that the volume of garden waste being recycled has fallen significantly since the new charge came into force.

At today’s meeting of the Transport and Environment Committee, Liberal Democrats joined other opposition councillors to beat the SNP and Labour. The cross-party motion demanded that Council officials bring forward specific options that would allow the garden tax to be scrapped from next year.

We believe it is wrong to charge people to recycle. We opposed the garden tax last year and this year and will continue to work to find ways of ending this unpopular charge.

Back in March, we reported how Council transport officers had been instructed to look at the feasibility of introducing dedicated bus lanes along the length of Queensferry Road. This aimed to speed up bus times and make local services like the 41 and 43/x43 more reliable.

The report to the Transport Committee has now been published but concludes such lanes are “not feasible”.

The modelling showed new lanes would increase journey times for other vehicles by over 70%. It would likely result in a huge increase in rat running through Drum Brae; Whitehouse Road and Gamekeeper’s Road in Cramond; as well as Davidson’s Mains.

The increase in congestion would be so bad that it would also increase the time taken for buses to actually get to the bus lanes.

As a result, the report concludes that bus lanes should not be introduced along the whole of the road.

However it is clear that doing nothing is not an option. We need to try and speed up bus service times to make them a more attractive alternative to the car.

Some further, albeit more limited changes, are still planned. These include reintroducing the bus lane at the Dolphington on-slip near Queensferry and extending the existing bus lane at Hillhouse Road in Blackhall.

You can read the full report here.

We are pleased to say the planning application to build an astonishing 1,200 new homes on the Craigiehall fields (to the west of Barnton) have been withdrawn by the developer.

The plans were twice the size of the recent controversial Cammo development. Unlike Cammo, this application had been recommended for refusal by Council planning officers.

As councillors, we have been limited in what we could say on the plan until now. This was because the proposal would have come to the full Council for a final decision.

However, with the plans now withdrawn, we can be open and say we would have strongly opposed the application. It would have been wholly inappropriate to build such a massive new development on greenbelt land. It would have added even further to the traffic chaos we see on the A90 and Barnton junction.

It is bad enough that SNP and Conservative councillors have forced through the Cammo plan. This proposal at Craigiehall would have been even worse.

We are delighted it has now been withdrawn.

Pedal for Scotland has published its guide for residents in Kirkliston ahead of this year’s event on Sunday 9 September. It covers all the road closures and diversions which will exist on the day.

You can download and read the guide here.

Edinburgh Council officials have now published revised proposals for the new Queensferry High Street. These differ from earlier plans by retaining the two-way flow on the streets. The draft plan from last year proposed moving to a one-way system.

The initial consultation last year showed mixed views amongst residents on moving to a one way system. However, the major factor driving the new decision has been based on funding and the requirement to commit the £2 million available by the end of March.

The necessary legal changes required for a one way system would almost certainly *not* be delivered in that timescale. To avoid the risk of losing the funding, the Steering Group agreed to progress with an amended scheme.

The new proposals

– retain two way traffic but leave open the option of moving to a one way system in the future.
– install a three way signalised junction at the foot of the Loan to improve road safety and deliver the proposed pedestrian crossing.
– restrict large vehicles from passing through the High Street, but allowing limited HGV business servicing times (timings to be agreed in consultation with local businesses).
– retain car parking in the same positions and quantities as are currently on street.

A new public information event will be organised over the summer. Actual construction work will start early in 2020 and should be completed that year.

We are deeply alarmed by a new suggestion that a much needed new school in Kirkliston could be linked to potentially thousands of new homes being built near the village on the greenbelt.

We have spoken with Senior Education Officers and made it absolutely clear that Kirkliston must not be held to ransom over a new school. We believe Kirkliston needs and deserves better school facilities – nursery, primary and secondary . This *should not* be conditional on even more housing.

One of our first acts after being elected was to fight for a new high school in the village rather than busing children to other places, battling with rush hour traffic. Now we have a chance of a new/shared campus primary school too, helping to alleviate the growing pressure at the existing Kirkliston Primary.

However, we are angry at the suggestion that a new school may be conditional on the building of even more new homes. We think this is unacceptable and is already being seen as attempt by the Council to get further housing development in the village ‘through the back door’.

We will fight any attempt to hold people in Kirkliston to ransom in this way. Parents and children in the village already deserve new and properly funded schools. It cannot be dependent on even more housing on the greenbelt, especially when we are still working to address the traffic and other issues arising from existing new developments.

We will not support this and will continue to stand up for our community’s right to proper local school provision.

Council transport officials have published three sets of plans to extend yellow line parking restrictions in parts of Queensferry.

(1) The first extends double yellow lines on Bo’ness Road at the junctions with Walker Drive and Inchgarvie Park. This is to stop parking on the main road which was considered dangerous.

(2) The second involves a slight extension of the double yellow lines on Rosshill Terrace at the junction with Forth Terrace. This comes after a major push by the Dalmeny Station Residents’ Association.

(3) The third helps to complete the Dalmeny Park development by putting in the new yellow lines on Borrowman Square (including the bus terminal) and the south side of Scotstoun Avenue nearest to the new housing.

Comments on these changes can be submitted via trafficorders@edinburgh.gov.uk by 5 April 2019 quoting TRO-18-71 for the changes (1) and (2). and TRO-18-69A for the change (3).

You can see more on changes (1) and (2) here.
http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/…/tro-18-71_waiting_restrictions

You can see more about change (3) here.
http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/…/tro-18-69a_waiting_restrictio…