Councillors on the Development Management Sub-Cmte today voted, with some reluctance, to approve a retrospective planning application for the Spiegeltent and associated structures in St Andrew Square Garden (25/03046/FUL).
This was a decision recommended by officials. There had earlier been 12 public representations: 8 in support and 4 objecting (including ones from the New Town & Broughton Community Council and Cockburn Association).
Councillors’ discussion focused on potential adverse impacts on nearby trees. All those who spoke expressed dissatisfaction with Spiegeltent International (SI) for not submitting its application until 11 June with a build-date of 30 June. This gave officers very little time to consider the matter. Elected members could not assess the case until today owing to the Council’s July recess. The Spiegeltent and businesses within its enclosure are already up and running.
SI’s initial application contained very little detail about trees. Officers insisted on more information. On later receiving a revised tree report (on 1 July), changes were made to the site layout (in particular, the bar). However, the Council’s Tree Officer still raised concerns about potential soil/root compaction and damage to trunks and branches.
It emerged during questions that officers were unaware of whether the operator’s promised weekly assessments and reports on tree welfare had taken place since trading started. In any case, such conversations would be between the operator and the owner (here represented by Essential Edinburgh). Council officers had not monitored the situation since operations began.
Dissatisfaction
Councillor McNeese-Mechan claimed some observers would see the application’s timing as a cynical ploy to circumvent due process. She pointed to a senior Unique Assembly representative’s recent public complaint about burdensome Council procedures; it was perhaps symptomatic of a more general reluctance among Festival producers to comply with rules.
Councillor Parker said the application had ‘ridden roughshod’ over Edinburgh’s policies and standards for tree protection, in particular Env 20 of the Local Development Plan.
Councillors Mowat and Osler argued that retrospective applications like this were frustrating but legal. Refusing the application could not help at this stage since the Spiegeltent would be gone by the time Enforcement could get involved.
It made more sense, they said, to apply conditions to an approval: (1) Monitoring and reports to be made twice a week; (2) All measures promised in Spiegeltent International’s revised Tree Report to be followed; (3) No generators to be positioned close to trees.
Councillors Parker and McNeese-Mechan urged colleagues to refuse the application and send a clear message to SI, Unique Assembly and other future Festival producers.
Councillor Mowat and Osler’s motion was carried by 6 votes to 4.
All agreed with Councillor Mowat’s earlier assertion that the DMSC should now produce a robust set of expectations which producers must adhere to in order to protect this and other vulnerable sites in future.
Too little, too late. Again
Spurtle regards the DMSC’s response as pragmatic. However, without sufficient Council monitoring of the site and without SI’s whole-hearted cooperation with the conditions, it will be meaningless.
Woolly expectations will butter no parsnips with Festival producers anxious to cut costs, corners and red tape.
Spurtle has little confidence in Planning officers’ inexpert assessment of ‘minor’ and ‘reversible’ damage to trees. We have more faith in the informed reservations of the Council’s Tree Officer and independent arboriculturalists. Such experts have told us in the past that repeated damage over comparatively short periods here could result in permanent tree damage and irreversible losses.
The likelihood of temporary development here in August, and the need to treat St Andrew Square Garden's trees with particular care, are nothing new. They should not have surprised Spiegeltent International, Council officers, elected members or anyone else.
Spurtle has been banging on about this, and Essential Edinburgh’s stewardship of the site, since November 2016. Read one of our early articles on the subject here.
Ultimately, the only people who can properly protect St Andrew Square Garden are the private proprietors from whom it is leased by the Council.
Perhaps those institutions and individuals responsible will again move to limit the scale of commercial operations here, as in 2017 when a previous summer Spiegeltent presence was curtailed (Issue 270) and 2019 when the ice rink was finally exiled to pastures new (Issue 286).
For a reminder of how a tranquil St Andrew Square Garden was meant to be, read here.
Got a view? Tell us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk
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