Edinburgh Council leaders seem to think they’re just like Harry Potter – John McLellan

The trouble with people carried away by a messianic self-certainty is the tendency to make grandiose declarations in the belief, like Harry Potter waving his wand, they will magically be fulfilled.

Expelliarmus! And Lothian buses will skirt around the city centre with no effect whatsoever on the network’s efficiency. Confundo! The tram extension will not cost a penny more than £207m. Riddikulus! We will build 20,000 affordable homes in 10 years even though we don’t have enough land.

And 14 months ago, Muffliato! By the end of 2019 no families will be housed in bed & breakfast accommodation.

No doubt my political opponents will howl with outrage at any attempt to mock their efforts to tackle such serious issues as transport gridlock, the housing shortage and homelessness, but no-one has ever doubted the City’s SNP-Labour administration was anything other than earnest about solving Edinburgh’s problems.

What is in question is its ability to understand the scale of the challenges or to accept the difference between laudable ambition and practical delivery.

Instead they appear to think that simply by being forceful their dreams magically become reality. Click the heels of the ruby slippers and there really will be no place like home.

Ending B&B temporary accommodation

Take the problem of families being housed in temporary bed & breakfast accommodation. As long ago as November 2017, a new Homelessness Task Force under Cllr Kate Campbell stated its intention to end the use of B&B accommodation for families.

This was accepted by the old Housing & Economy committee the following January and by June 2018, with Cllr Campbell now in full control, a plan had been approved, by which time 75 families were still affected.

In December that year, Council leader Adam McVey declared: “We hope we will be in a position in the next 12 months to… say we have ended the use of B&Bs for families.

“Our aim is to end the use of B&Bs in the city as temporary accommodation. I don’t think any of us are going to rest while there’s one family in the city that has to be placed there. I’m quite confident we will deliver that in this year.”

Shortly after, the homelessness task force was officially wound up, its job apparently done.

The Council then had to adopt a “Rapid Rehousing Plan” and, perhaps strangely for such a high priority, when a report was produced in March last year it didn’t specifically mention families in B&Bs.

Seething with anger

A promising audit report to the committee, now renamed Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work after Cllr Campbell was relieved of responsibility for economy, recognised the council had allocated an extra 40 properties for temporary accommodation and sourced 115 units from private and registered social landlords.

It pointed to success in reducing breaches of the unsuitable accommodation rules from 1666 in one quarter of 2018 to 43 in three months of 2018-19. Reduced, but not eradicated, but at least progress was being made.

There was no reference to the pledge in last month’s committee meeting but the issue burst back into adverse headlines last week from an unlikely source, the SNP itself, in the shape of housing minister Kevin Stewart who said he was “very disappointed” that B&Bs were still being used in Edinburgh for households with children, ten in all.

This followed a meeting with Cllr Campbell and Council chief executive Andrew Kerr, so when an SNP minister publicly criticises an SNP-led administration for a clear failure to honour a pledge, it’s a fair assumption that “very disappointed” actually means seething anger.

Like the house-building, the trams and the city centre project, no-one doubts the SNP-Labour coalition’s commitment, it’s the wild over-confidence which no-one understands. Hubris, over-promising and under-delivering is every manager’s nightmare, but this administration’s hallmark.

To amend the old cliché, the pot-holed road to hell is patched over with good intentions.

John McLellan is Conservative councillor for Craigentinny/Duddingston