Tory sounded alarm over Edinburgh’s Christmas market long ago – John McLellan

While Edinburgh’s SNP-Labour coalition today pretends that its Council Tax increase of nearly five per cent is really only three per cent and that the expenditure on three miles of tram line has no impact at all on the council’s budget, more evidence of an administration in denial is expected next week when a report about the Winter Festivals fiasco is presented.

The full report had still to be made available by the deadline for this column, but let’s just say no-one is expecting an apology, or a sincere one at any rate, and if it says much more than “we could have done a few things better, nothing more to see here, move along please”, we’ll be more than pleasantly surprised.

What still needs to be satisfactorily explained is how and why such a huge undertaking as the Edinburgh’s Christmas market platform could go ahead without planning permission when it had been known for well over a year that a problem was looming. The public also has a right to know how the authority intends to restore any reputation it may have had for fair dealing when schemes in which it has an interest seemingly have a much lower bar to cross than other applicants.

It is all very well being wise after the event, but in fact alarm bells were ringing over two years ago after the end of the 2017-18 event when a motion from my Conservative colleague Joanna Mowat containing specific concerns was unanimously passed by the full council in February 2018.

Following the first year of Underbelly’s new contract, Cllr Mowat called for a review, noting the site had changed and the event had expanded. She specified that it should examine how the attraction was installed and dismantled, what impact it was having on residents, the effect on permanent local businesses and whether they actually benefitted from increased footfall, and an assessment of city centre access.

Concerns not addressed

In other words, concerns next week’s report are expected to address were identified long enough ago for action to be taken, but officers approved a two-year extension to Underbelly’s contract without elected-member oversight, even though the concerns raised in the 2018 motion had not been addressed and no report tabled as requested.

Papers for the policy and sustainability committee show the report’s expected delivery was put back from this year to the spring 2021, three years after the motion was passed. That’s how it would have remained until the whole thing was blown wide open in the autumn and the Cockburn Association established that planning permission did not exist.

No doubt there will be some sort of excuse that the 2018 issues were addressed privately, that assurances were received and it was all above board, but the emails released to the Evening News after an appeal under Freedom of Information laws tell a different story.

Proper process

In November, the Council’s chief executive Andrew Kerr dismissed concerns about the retrospective granting of planning permission, saying it was normal practice, but it is inconceivable that a private operator wishing to set up something as extensive in a public park would be able to tighten a single bolt without the proper process being followed.

As has been observed elsewhere, no one comes out of this shambles with any credit but Cllr Mowat was not just ringing the alarm bell but sounding the claxon in 2018 and perhaps we councillors should have been asking more questions earlier.

But, to borrow from Donald Rumsfeld, you don’t know what you don’t know and no doubt the administration councillors will dutifully defend the Council’s actions as they always do. But once again, they’ve been rumbled.