How Edinburgh council is in denial over its ‘Commitments’ – John McLellan

What a wheeze those political geniuses who lead our City Council came up with: a coalition agreement with 52 Commitments, one for every week of the year. Like an all-year-round advent calendar, innit?

Drunk with power in 2017, they listed all the brilliant things they were going to do and padded it out with mostly vague and intangible goals to hit the magic 52, but with scant regard to practicalities or the glaringly obvious problem that their ambitions would be subject to forces beyond their control which were impossible to predict.

Apparently some senior officers warned they were making a rod for their own backs and advised against making specific commitments, but on they ploughed.

The promises were made and it is against them that they must be judged. So half-way through this council, how have they got on? It would be incorrect to say nothing has been done – working parties and reviews duly came and went, reports produced – but on the substantial undertakings which voters would really notice the half-term report card does not make a pretty read.

Commitment 1: Build at least 10,000 social and affordable homes over the next five years. In October, officers reported the programme faced “significant challenges” and was due to fall 3,000 short.

13. Ensure that all developers, large or small, conform to Edinburgh’s policies. Not if you are in cahoots with the Council, like the Dunard Concert Hall and the Underbelly Christmas Market, in which case what might be described as a “flexible” approach to policy can be applied.

22. Deliver the tram extension to Newhaven by 2022. Even before work began it was back to 2023.

24. Reduce the incidence of dog fouling on Edinburgh’s streets and public parks. No evidence of any action.

35. Improve access to library services. The latest budget plan proposes to end Saturday opening.

39. Put exercise at the heart of our health strategy by increasing access to sport and leisure facilities. Edinburgh Leisure funding is set to be cut by £0.5m.

43. Protect major recreational areas such as … Princes Street Gardens. They gave you the huge Christmas market, threw up hoardings along Princes Street and created a bonfire of memorial benches.

50. Continue a policy of no compulsory redundancies. Unless you work for Marketing Edinburgh.

51: Improve community safety by protecting local policing. The community policing payment to Police Scotland is set to be withdrawn.

52: Devolve local decisions to four Locality Committees. Scrapped last year as unworkable and bureaucratic.

But the daddy of them all is Commitment 49, to limit Council Tax increases to three per cent a year to 2021. They must have thought the Scottish Government looked upon local government favourably because without control of either business rates or the block grant that, on top of all their other overblown promises, could not possibly be guaranteed.

And so this week it was duly announced that Commitment 49 was toast and the Council tax should go up by 4.79 per cent in each of the next three years, apparently a decision based on “feedback on priorities gathered both as part of the dedicated staff and citizen focus groups and related initiatives”. Really? So the people of Edinburgh asked for a £250m tram completion project and agreed to pay more Council tax into the bargain?

No doubt there will be some sophistry that a 4.79 per cent increase is really only a 3 per cent increase after inflation, but that’s not what the supposedly solemn covenant with the people said in 2017. No ifs or buts, three per cent max.

Labour’s reaction is to keep their heads down and pretend no-one will notice they keep this SNP jalopy rolling along, the SNP’s is simply to parrot that it’s all Westminster’s fault. In administration, but in denial, out of touch and out of control.

John McLellan is a Conservative councillor for Craigentinny/Duddingston