It’s been another busy month for Edinburgh’s Green councillors, with the group holding its annual general meeting and agreeing who will be the spokesperson, or portfolio holder, on the key subjects for the next year.
The Member-Councillor Forum was suspended this month to allow the AGM to take place, but it will resume on 11th May (once the Holyrood election is over).
As well as council business, Green councillors have been out door-knocking and campaigning to get more Green MSPs elected to Holyrood, and we look forward to constructive working relationships with the newly-elected Green group in the Scottish Parliament very soon.
This is also Chas’ last report as one of the group co-convenors, since he is standing down at the end of his two-year term in the role. Edinburgh Greens have a two-year term limit for our co-convenors because we believe the principle that power should not be concentrated is an important one.
Councillor highlights from the month
Asked to pick one highlight from the month, our councillors chose:
Alex Staniforth
Alex met with Living Rent in Lochend to discuss issues with maintenance and improvement in mixed tenancy buildings (buildings where the council owns some flats but not all) and to see progress on the improvements so far.
Alys Mumford
Alys has been on the recruitment panel for the Chair of the ‘Pride in Place’ board – this is an exciting scheme that will see the local community in Niddrie, Bingham, Magdalene and the Christians decide how to spend £20 million over the next ten years. It was a really interesting process, even if it did involve two days in a small room with the Conservative Councillor and Labour MP….
Ben Parker
From the beginning of this council term, a key ward issue for Ben has been the Greenbank-Meadows Quiet Route. Following a standards commission hearing against two (other) councillors, the future of the route was (once again) thrown into the air at this month’s Transport and Environment Committee. You can read more about what happened – and the Green response – on Ben’s blog.
Chas Booth
As well as working to facilitate the group’s AGM, Chas has also been supporting a number of constituents with longstanding and complicated casework, all related to housing issues.
Claire Miller
During the Easter recess Claire joined local organisations at The Crannie for a drop-in support day for residents struggling with the cost of living and was able to help a number of people with a wide range of different problems and concerns.
Dan Heap
In his role as Baillie, Dan conducted several citizenship ceremonies to welcome local residents who have recently become UK citizens. Dan uses his speech for these events to highlight the contribution of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, and has received excellent feedback from the new citizens and their families that they have been made to feel welcome and that he marked the occasion appropriately. Dan has also been working with the West Edinburgh Warriors basketball group, based at Tynecastle School, to start a new local sports partnership with the council.
Jule Bandel
Jule has been taking time off due to ill health
Kayleigh O’Neill
At Transport Committee, Kayleigh brought an amendment to explore the use of pedestrian priority mechanisms, including ‘green person authority’ and other pedestrian priority approaches, following a recent report by the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust on including disabled people in transport planning. Astonishingly, this was opposed by other parties so we will continue pushing this.
Steve Burgess
Under the Education portfolio, Steve has had meetings with teachers passionate about learning for sustainability, with a view to brining a policy initiative about how to boost the effectiveness of schools’ teacher sustainability champions, to the Education, Children and Families Committee in June.
Susan Rae
Susan is proud to report that Leith Chooses has won the City of Edinburgh Inspiring Volunteers Award – particularly exciting for Greens given that our cohort of volunteers there is huge.
Green-aligned Independent Councillor Ross McKenzie highlights from the month
Asked to pick one highlight from the month, Ross chose:
Ross has been working with Stenhouse, Saughton Mains & Whitson Community Council on a Local Traffic Improvement Project proposal and was delighted to learn this month that the proposal has received funding of up to £100k to improve accessibility for walking and wheeling at the junction of Stevenson Drive and and Calder Road. Ross will continue to work with the Road Safety team to seek further improvements at this location, which has been highlighted as a safety concern by residents over a number of years.
Green councillors in the news
While the Holyrood election has taken over the political media coverage this month, Green councillors have been in the news for:
- Calling for more powers to discourage car use (Edinburgh Evening News)
- Ensuring the Braid Road Quiet Route decision is retaken (Edinburgh Reporter)
- Edinburgh’s Transport Strategy (Edinburgh Evening News)
- Helping communities resist hotel developments (Edinburgh Reporter)
- Our position on any new tram route (Edinburgh Evening News)
Committee updates
While council was in recess over Easter there were fewer committee meetings, but there are still a couple of committee updates:
Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work
At the next committee meeting, Ben will be bringing forward a motion to look at how the council invests in planned, preventative maintenance within its housing stock. After some research and discussions with campaigners and housing professionals, Ben has discovered that the council has no budget or plans for preventative maintenance within the housing stock – something which needs to change(!).
Finance and Resources
Residents of the Tollcross area will be pleased to learn that funding to repair the clock was approved at committee.