| Broughton By-Election 10 October 2001 |
The by-election was caused by the resignation of sitting councillor Mark Lazarowicz following his election as MP for North Edinburgh & Leith earlier this year.
The by-election will take place on 11 October 2001.
The six candidates for the Broughton ward are:
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Candidates' statements on Pilrig issues (in reply to our questions and received so far) are below: in edited form - to allow comparison - and unedited, as submitted (click on candidate's name below).
If you have any information or comments on the above, please let us know.
PILRIG PARK AND PLAYGROUNDS
If elected, how would you deploy Council resources to improve
park and playground/s - and use of both - substantially? What
other resources would you be able to find? - click here for candidates' reply
SHRUB PLACE
Do you think the present proposals for the redevelopment of the
site are adequate? If elected, how would you deploy Council
resources to ensure the best possible solution is found? - click here for candidates' reply
ROSEBANK WORKS/BROWN BROTHERS
Do you think the proposed re-development is suitable for the
site? How would you ensure the proposed development adds maximum
value to Pilrig? - click here for candidates' reply
PILRIG STREET TRAFFIC
Do you support reduction and slowing of car traffic through
Pilrig Street? If elected, what measures would you support and
actively promote? - click here for
candidates' reply
URBAN DESIGN
Do you think bland design can ever be justified? If elected, how
would you ensure that future new buildings in Pilrig and its
periphery add value in urban design terms? - click here for candidates' reply
MOST PRESSING ISSUE FOR PILRIG
What do you think is the most pressing issue facing Pilrig and
how would you solve it if your are elected; how would you tackle
it, if you are not elected? - click here for candidates' reply
PUBLIC SERVICES
Do you subscribe -without qualification - to the following
principles? If not, why not?
· knee-jerk measures that react to short-term pressures are
counter-productive.
· public services should meet the needs of citizens, not the
convenience of service providers.
· we deserve efficient, high quality public services; there
should be no room for mediocrity.
· public services should use new technology to meet the needs of
citizens and not trail behind technological developments. - click here for candidates' reply
| Mark
S Ballard Scottish Green Party |
Anne C Dana Scottish National Party |
Trevor
J Davies Scottish Labour Party |
Ian A M Mowat Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party |
George
Reiss Scottish Liberal Democrat |
Julie Smith Scottish Socialist Party |
| no reply received to date | reply received |
reply received |
reply received |
reply received |
reply received |
| on PILRIG PARK AND PLAYGROUNDS | |||||
| Mark S Ballard | Anne C Dana | Trevor J Davies | Ian A M Mowat | George Reiss | Julie Smith |
| There is as you know a lot being done in this park for the millennium forest project and a new play area at the Western end of the park. There is a steering/working group on Pilrig Park which includes elected members, officials and community organisations. I would seek election to this group. I would work with local community groups to identify their priorities for the use of the park and also with neighbouring councillors in finding funding both from within and out with the council to carry out improvements and encourage use. | One
thing straight at the beginning – councillors
don’t have the individual power to ‘deploy
council resources’. The job of a councillor, as with
all politicians, is to build a majority for a particular
course of action in the appropriate area and to see that
it is carried out by others. To my mind it is very
important that that majority should range across members
of the local community as well as council officials and
other elected members. Now that resources are beginning to flow back into local authorities after being starved for a generation, thanks to the public spending commitments of the Labour and Labour-led administrations in Westminster and Holyrood, local councils can and should begin to pay attention again to areas, like parks and playgrounds, which necessarily had to take a back seat for too long. I would like to see outside expertise in the form of good design brought to bear on parks and playgrounds. Public services have for too long ignored the vital impact that good design can have on improving safety, cleanliness, usefulness and general enjoyability of our parks. |
I
would lobby the council to provide more litter bins and
poopascoop facilities I would urge a partnership between council and community, encouraging gardening talent from the community to improve attractiveness asking council to match funding which I would try & raise locally and particularly from developers The best playground I have ever seen is at Garnethill, Glasgow. Although its quite a run down area a superb environment has been created with child friendly woodchip play area floor, high quality slide, climbing frame, and why not a commando type rope slide, as at Biggar which I have enjoyed as an adult I would try and import all these ideas. |
Living
next door to the park I am often in there with my
children and feel strongly that it could be so much
better. The residents’ concept of a Robert Louis
Stevenson play area for older children is excellent; and
I would work with them to push this forward. The
residents should be consulted about changes as they are
best placed to know what is needed. I would ask the Environmental Wardens to target the park to reduce dog mess by cracking down on offenders …. Ditto the police in terms of vandalism to trees, benches and play facilities which has gone on far too long. It may well be the case that the Community Council or the Resident’s Group could get resources the Council is barred from. As a Community Councillor I am currently working with residents at Hopetoun Crescent to get improvements there and we hope to get money from developers as well as the City Council. |
The
Scottish Socialist Party wants to see the billions of
pounds taken from local authorities in the past 20 years,
under both Tory and Labour administrations, returned in
full . This is important to state because it impacts on all your questions. I do not accept for a moment that the current financial restrictions placed on local councils are just. The money needed for the projects you mention in Broughton could easily be found if the political will existed. We need money spent in local communities, lots of it, I believe that the funds are plentiful in Edinburgh, Scotland and indeed Britain for such improvements. It is therefore a question of how are we going to get it. Second point is related. I would scrap the Council tax . It is unfair and bears no relation to income. I would replace it with a local income tax where the rich pay substantially more and the poorest are exempt. This would provide extra funds for local areas. |
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| on SHRUB PLACE | Top | ||||
| Mark S Ballard | Anne C Dana | Trevor J Davies | Ian A M Mowat | George Reiss | Julie Smith |
| I
have not seen the plans for this development. My concern
would be that there were too many housing units placed on
this site, and also the height that the buildings would
reach. This is a concern for all the sites within the
Broughton ward which is rapidly getting over built. The
council should ensure at all times that there is an
adequate infrastructure in place. e.g. How are the
schools going to cope with the influx of children? What
is their estimate of this increase? There must be a
sufficient amount of parking incorporated into the
scheme. As this is a private development, I don't understand what you mean by Council resources. This is a large and important site for redevelopment and it is important that the development fits in with the existing community. |
See the answer above about "deploying Council resources". If we are both talking about the same site, the Shrub Place proposals have been sent back to the developer by the Council because they are inadequate | It’s a difficult site but I am concerned present proposal is too high. I would urge more consultation with residents. | No,
they’re very inadequate, which is a shame as the
would-be developers seem to have virtually ignored the
residents’ views despite the long consultation
process. The Wimpey
plans are bad for the colonies, miss an opportunity to do
something good on Leith Walk, and are based on putting in
to many houses. Lothian Buses need to bring down the
price of the land to a more realistic level. |
As
far as you specific questions are concerned, about Pilrig
Park, Shrub Place, Rosebank and Pilrig Street it seems to
me that these, like virtually everywhere else in
Broughton , are either under pressure from private
housing development or are already construction sites. Two issues therefore arise for me here. First, if there is to be housing built in the Broughton area then I would like to see public housing on these sites, not private. Second, our environment is suffering badly. Redevelopment has eaten away at the character of the area. Opportunities for young people to live in this area, where they were brought up, are increasingly difficult. |
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| on ROSEBANK WORKS/BROWN BROTHERS | Top | ||||
| Mark S Ballard | Anne C Dana | Trevor J Davies | Ian A M Mowat | George Reiss | Julie Smith |
| No, this is an example of overdevelopment. As the plans have been passed it is now going to be difficult to get the developers to contribute to the local community - this should have been discussed by the councillor when the plans were first submitted. However, I would seek a meeting with the developers to discuss our concerns and see what contribution to the local community could be made. | I
want to bring the answer to this and the previous
question into one. Like most people I have no professional training in architecture, planning or planning law. And I hope you will agree that answers to your questions should not be given out of ignorance. Unused sites like these two need re-development. My job if I am elected is going to be to broker a development solution that satisfies the needs of the council professionals in these matters, the developer, the local community and the city as a whole both now and in the future. And all that within the constraints of planning law. This is not easy and, although somewhat obvious, it stands against the current method of planning which, like so many things in our society, is built on an adversarial framework, with each side fighting its corner. The result of that, almost necessarily, satisfies no one. A different process could produce different results. The principles on which I will try and approach local planning matters are simple. Developments must be sustainable, they must respect the history of the surrounding sites and contribute to their future, they must be of a scale and order which suits human beings, they must be safe, and they must be good to look at and live with. Those principles, will, however, be difficult to achieve, and I will want to co-operate closely with the local community in working towards them. |
[no reply to this question] | I
opposed this application, and helped coordinate
resistance to it. Something similar in scale to the
Blandfield site across the railway would have been very
acceptable, but this application is too high, too large
and should never have gone through. I suspect there is little we can do as the application has gone through – but would of course be open to suggestions. |
see above | |
| on PILRIG STREET TRAFFIC | Top | ||||
| Mark S Ballard | Anne C Dana | Trevor J Davies | Ian A M Mowat | George Reiss | Julie Smith |
| The traffic should certainly be slowed along Pilrig Street and there are insufficient pedestrian crossings (children crossing into the park etc.). If elected I would actively promote these two measures. It is a bus route and an arterial route so there is always going to be a fairly strong movement of traffic, but if there were less parked cars on Pilrig Street, the traffic would not be so backed up. The views of the local residents would have to be canvassed before proceeding. | The
main reason why there is increased traffic on Pilrig
Street and every other street in the City is that
Edinburgh, thanks in many ways to the policies of the
Council over many years, is a very prosperous city. I
think we all want to keep it that way. Living in the real
world (as all politicians should, but not all do) we are
therefore forced to recognise that if this prosperity is
maintained the numbers of cars will increase. I am happy
for more people to own cars. They add greatly to our
standards of living. Traffic generally is likely to
increase. Your question, therefore, in some ways goes
against the grain. This question can therefore not be answered by thinking just of Pilrig Street. It needs a city-wide response that will acknowledge that more people will own cars. But will discourage them from using those cars for journeys within the city centre (in which I class Pilrig). This will be done only by massive (and I mean massive) investment in public transport and by legal and economic restrictions on the use of cars in the city centre. The New Transport Initiative from the Labour administration on the Council is about to go out to public consultation and does just this. The documents are available from the Council and I hope your association will take part fully in the consultation. |
I THINK THERE IS A GRAVE DANGER WATERFRONT DEVELOPMENT WILL LEAD TO TRAFFIC INCREASE. There are not enough bus routes, in fact this is a problem all over broughton ward. I would like to see more small single decker s going through residential areas rather than round them, and a big yes to through ticketing if you need to change. Carnets should be purchasable at local shops to avoid inconvenience of trying to find 80p. All this would increase bus use and cut down on congestion. A pedestrian crossing at Dryden Place would help slow traffic, as would a well advertised speed camera. | Yes!
Barratts must put in their proposed pedestrian crossings
on time – and not be allowed to delay as they have
elsewhere. When I lived in McDonald Road I worked hard to get good traffic calming into the plans – not the Annnandale Street kind which I see as something of a botched job. Across the City I would promote Public Transport, Cycling and Walking as an alternative to cars. I also find it hard to believe that the Powderhall Railway could not be profitably redeveloped as part of a wider rail scheme. Although I am aware this has been turned down previously I would look into it again and review the research that was done with the hope of reviving it. |
I
have been pressing for significantly improved
traffic-calming measures for many years, only to be
fobbed off by Council claims that their was no funds
available. Children's safety ought to be given a higher priority than it has been under the local Labour administration. |
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| on URBAN DESIGN | Top | ||||
| Mark S Ballard | Anne C Dana | Trevor J Davies | Ian A M Mowat | George Reiss | Julie Smith |
| The traffic should certainly be slowed along Pilrig Street and there are insufficient pedestrian crossings (children crossing into the park etc.). If elected I would actively promote these two measures. It is a bus route and an arterial route so there is always going to be a fairly strong movement of traffic, but if there were less parked cars on Pilrig Street, the traffic would not be so backed up. The views of the local residents would have to be canvassed before proceeding. | No.
But as I have said, the way our planning process works
seems often to lead to it. And I want to try and shift
the way planning decisions are made so that "public
design" can be more a part of the process. To do that I want to try and see if I can revive the idea of a "master plan" for the Pilrig/McDonald corridor from Leith Walk to Broughton Road and beyond. I know some of the areas is already being built on. But we can try and do better with the remainder. Any such plan would need to be constructed in association with the local community. |
Bland
design can never be justified! I would lead high profile
campaigns v dismal development and invite architects such
as Ben Tindall to come up with designs that would add
value. I am very keen that developers should have to
include shops & even cafes in their plans and provide
seedcorn finance for them. I think the most pressing issue for Pilrig is to achieve balanced urban development, with amenities to match the new homes so a real community is created. I think the key is to make it a condition of development that corner shops & cafes be included where potentially viable, that local concerns be invited to tender to run them , and that the developers pay seedcorn finance. Also there should be more gardens, suitable for childrens play rather than "token" strips of green. |
Very
Hard! My experience of reviewing many applications tells
me that big developers tend to like bland safe
developments that are guaranteed to sell. City Planning Policy should do more to promote excellence and not just be about trying to weed out dross. In Hopetoun we tried to promote better energy efficiency standards and the developers simply turned round and said that they were meeting UK standards and that was as far as they would go. What one can do is to insist that new developments provide new amenities. For this the community needs to be proactive with a consensus as to what is needed. This is what has been lost from the Hopetoun developments. In the early years under Cllr Macgregor we had a proactive team and we got amenities; Cllr Lazarowicz let it become merely reactive and the energy and drive has been lost and the team has almost disappeared. |
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| on MOST PRESSING ISSUE FOR PILRIG | Top | ||||
| Mark S Ballard | Anne C Dana | Trevor J Davies | Ian A M Mowat | George Reiss | Julie Smith |
| Traffic and overdevelopment - see previous answers. | I resist all attempts to select "one most important issue". The world isn’t like that and to be tempted down this path is merely a substitute for more rigorous thought. There are lots of issues in Pilrig and they all relate to one another – safety, traffic, planning, cleanliness, education, recreation. If you list them and think for a moment you can see how they all inter-relate. So if you really want a few words it they might be – "joined up government for Pilrig". Easy to say, difficult to do. But one important caveat – joined-up means joined-up in a very fundamental and active way with the local community too. | I SUSCRIBE TO YOUR WELL-SET OUT Principles WITH ONE CAVEAT, new technology should only be used when it really will meet needs of citizens, not for its own sake, and low tech solutions often are good value. | New
Developments are the biggest issue. They affect
people’s lives for years to come and once they are
built there is so little you can do. Beforehand you can
get big changes by working with local groups to get a
plan as I’ve outlined above. If I’m not elected? I expect to carry on campaigning through the Community Council as I have for the last seven years. |
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| on PUBLIC SERVICES | Top | ||||
| Mark S Ballard | Anne C Dana | Trevor J Davies | Ian A M Mowat | George Reiss | Julie Smith |
| I agree with all the questions you list under this heading. The only slight proviso is with the last one. New technology? Yes, in the main but the implementation can often be very expensive and sometimes faddish. So each new technologically development would have to be looked at on it's own merits and costing. | Of course. See above. | [no reply to this question] | Yes. I think these are things that the Lib Dems are widely seen as standing for. Inevitably one can think of sitiuations where things will not work out as well you’d like in a perfect world – but at least you can aim high. In the long run good quality pays for itself. | I
believe that effectively managed public services are
preferable to private provision. I am therefore opposed
to the rampant privatisation of services by Edinburgh
City Council. The provision of the highest quality local services should be something we take for granted. Mediocrity comes with cost cutting and poor compromises on principles carried out by locally elected Councillors. |
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| Candidates's bios | Top | ||||
| Mark S Ballard | Anne C Dana | Trevor J Davies | Ian A M Mowat | George Reiss | Julie Smith |
| Anne
Dana (58) self-employed running an architecture/interior
practice. Along with others she started the Scotch Malt
Whisky Society (Giles Street, Leith) and was managing
director for seven years. While there worked on the
renovation of the Vaults the oldest commercial property
in Edinburgh. Two adult daughters. Has lived in the constituency most of her life. Stood as a candidate in the Scottish Parliament election and several local authority elections. Is an elected member on the SNP national executive. |
Trevor
Davies has lived locally for the last twenty years, so he
knows this part of the City well. He’s recently
decided that a bicycle is a good way to get around, so
you might see him emerging from the cycle-way by
Tesco’s on his way to work He is a partner in one of Scotland’s well established and successful television production companies. His name came up at the end of popular programmes like the BBC’s "Hamish Macbeth" and Channel 4’s "Bombay Blue". Trevor was a city councillor some years ago and started off the City Centre pedestrianisation schemes and the programmes to help people in poorer areas of the city, schemes which continue to this day. Since then he’s helped out in various groups like the Citizens’ Advice Bureau in Dundas Street and the Community Business in Wester Hailes. |
Ian
Mowat is your Scottish Conservative & Unionist
candidate for the Broughton Ward By-Election on Thursday
October 11th. Ian is a 35 year old court solicitor, who lives in nearby Dublin Street .A native of Edinburgh, he read History at Cambridge and taught English before embarking on a legal career. He has been involved in local politics since joining Edinburgh North & Leith Conservatives in 1996 and contested the Granton ward in 1999. He stood for Westminster against Robin Cook in the recent general election. Ian is married with one cat and lists his interests as history, railways and dining well in the company of friends. |
George
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I
live in Leith with my partner and three grown up sons. I am presently a student at Moray House doing a post graduate course in Community Education. I hope to work within the Community Education service when I complete the course next year. Between 1996 and 2000 I studied for and gained a joint honours degree in Politics and Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh. I was an active member of the Edinburgh 'Play Safe Campaign', a group which sought to provide safe, secure play areas for children throughout Edinburgh. We successfully persuaded the City Council to fund playgrounds and park redevelopment where safe surfaces, safe equipment, fencing and various other improvements were provided in the Leith area. Lack of space here prevents me from listing all the campaigns I have been involved in in the past, but at the moment I am involved in the work of the Lothian Anti Poverty Alliance and my local tenants group in Hamilton and Canon Wynd. I joined the Scottish Socialist Party in November last year and am currently the Chair of the Edinburgh North and Leith constituency branch. I joined because I believe that the SSP is the only party that really supports local people in their attempts to improve their community and their environment. |
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| Pilrig Residents Association Copyright 2001 Pilrig Residents Association |