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Strong winds with gusts of up to 57mph overnight have been blowing across S.E. Scotland.
A yellow weather warning is currently in place until 3pm today.
A quick spin around Broughton soon showed evidence of Storm Hector’s arrival, with most of our litter blown into Leith and replaced by twigs and leaves from the New Town.
Branches had snapped in Claremont Crescent and landed neatly between traffic cones over the road.
Northumberland Street Properties has applied for planning permission to build 11 two and three-bedroom flats (with 10 parking spaces, infrastructure and landscaping) at 5 Warriston Road (Ref. 18/02451/FUL).
A retrospective application for change of use of a one-bedroom 4th-floor flat in Antigua Street to commercial short-term holiday lets has been refused (Ref. 18/01394/FUL).
The property, accessed by a communal stair shared with 7 other properties, was proposed to be let out for over 6 months a year and directly managed by the owners.
However, based partly on a recent Directorate for Planning and Environmental Appeals determination of a case in Eyre Place, Council officials reasoned that the proposal was:
Meet Reay.
Or rather, meet Reay again. We last featured him back in May 2014 when he temporarily wandered off in search of his brother.
Now he’s gone AWOL again, this time in protest at major works in progress at his home on the east side of Dublin Street.
Reay’s usual haunts are Barony Street and the Dublin Street mews. You can easily recognise him as he’s a big, middle-aged Bengal with a torn ear from various undisclosed territorial encounters.
MAGNIFICENT AND ON THE MARCH
This afternoon’s Processions event was a joyful, multi-coloured, multi-aged celebration of UK women’s suffrage 100 years on.
It was a raucous, rhythmic and good-humoured commemoration of women’s past successful struggles, their current achievements, and ongoing social and political challenges.
It all began in the Meadows with sensible arrangements on an epic scale.
Residents on Broughton Place Lane are tearing their hair out at Council inaction over blocked access to their homes.
The quiet cul-de-sac is narrow at the best of times, but narrower still at the Lyon & Turnbull end overlooking St Mary’s RC Primary School.
Unfortunately, this is precisely where thoughtless visitors keep parking their cars, often making it impossible for residents to get their own vehicles in or out.
At other times it’s a fiendishly difficult tight squeeze, resulting in bumps, scrapes and bits getting knocked off in the process.
Cornerstone Property Development, the people behind recent proposals for 7–8 Baxter's Place, now seek permission to change the use of the former Royal Bank of Scotland at 2–3a Blenheim Place (Ref. 18/02357/FUL).
This morning, councillors voted unanimously in favour of taking the application for party flats on Baxter’s Place to a hearing.
The Development Management Subcommittee were responding to a call by Cllr Claire Miller, who wanted a more detailed consideration of the case we reported HERE yesterday.
OFFICIAL BACKING FOR PARTY FLATS
Back in 2016 we reported Council consent for conversion to domestic use of the former Edinburgh City Football Club at 7–8 Baxter’s Place (Ref. 15/01238/FUL; Issue 250).
Spurtle visited Comely Bank Cemetery for the first time this morning. It was opened in 1843, and we had hoped to discover a wealth of funerary architecture matching that in the jungles of Warriston. No such luck.
Wherever the Victorian monuments are, they evaded us. But there were many interesting 20th-century compensations, including this curiosity with a Broughton connection.
It is the grave of John Adam Porter (and family), born 1894, who died in 1952 aged 58.