A Muddle Not A Fiddle

Recently, we were pleased to see the Leith Links Ask project, that we delivered (with funding and help from the Leith Neighbourhood Partnership) highlighted by Greenspace Scotland as their "project of the month," because of the way we did stuff like this.

However, we made it clear at the outset that we only wanted to be involved in the project if there was a genuine commitment from the council to follow through on the results. Leithers are getting a bit bored of consultations on Leith Links. The first thing we did after we published the final report was try to use it to argue that Forth Ports should pay something to improve Leith Links, as they redevelop the docks. Despite the questions raised in the planning committee by Cllr Munn and Cllr Thomas in support of this notion, it looks as though developers will end up paying very little towards the upgrading of Leith Links.

So, despite our disappointment at this outcome, we were invited to present the results to the last Neighbourhood Partnership meeting. There it was agreed that council officials for this part of town would come back to the Partnerships next meeting with proposals on how to take things forwards.

So, we emailed them to ask whether we could meet up to discuss how we could work with the council to take things forwards. No response. We emailed them again. Still no response. Not to be disheartened, and to help us put together a realistic proposal we then put in a Freedom of Information Request on WhatDoTheyKnow.com to try to get an idea how much Capital investment could be available for Leith Links improvements.

Sadly, the Council are now in breach of Freedom of Information laws, because they have not responded within the statutory 20 days timescale to our FOI request. To borrow a phrase from Henry McLeish, we're sure it's a 'muddle not a fiddle.' We aren't trying to be akward. We know the North Office is a bit short of staff. However, there's a whole lot of paid 'community involvement' staff there who aren't responding for some reason. 

We want to work constructively with the council to raise funds to improve Leith Links. For example, we'd love it if the council would work with the local community to try to get 'Green Flag' status for Leith Links, but they seem more keen to go for Green Flag status elsewhere. We'd also like to apply for funding from places like this, to come up with costed plans for improving some of the buildings on the links. If there are council officials reading this, who'd like to work with us, please do contact us as we'd be delighted to meet.