COUNCIL SAYS WORK HAS NOT BEGUN ON SANDY HILL
A Council official from the Enforcement Team today announced that recent removal of earth from the Sandy Hill development site does not represent a breach of planning control.
Writing to Leith Walk Councillor Lewis Ritchie, the official said that following a site visit yesterday, he accepted the contractor’s explanation that excavations were necessary to ‘provide a stable platform for plant and machinery’.
Such stabilisation is required before exploratory bore holes can be sunk at the upper and lower levels of the site:
Although the extent of the works are considerable, they are concomitant with the need to provide the council with a full method statement on how the development is to be built out. Indeed, the developer cannot progress with the development until this statement has been agreed in writing with the council.
Residents who live above or below the steeply sloping site (between the Claremonts and Broughton Road) remain deeply concerned. They expressed their worries to Councillors Donaldson, Mcneese-Mechan, Rae and Ritchie during a separate visit to the area on 1 August.
At that stage, they were alarmed that work on the housing project appeared to them to have begun before the contractor had satisfied various planning conditions imposed by the Government Reporter as part of his appeal decision in October 2016.
The current Council statement refutes this.
Those conditions refer to how the bank will be safely retained, tree roots protected, and adequate Transport/access arrangements designed.
Residents also pointed to the location’s sodden and looming verticality, the vast extent of the excavations, the presence of noisy and polluting machinery and vehicles, and spoke of their fears about the possible effects of pile-driving on adjacent properties.
Some are now seeking dilapidation surveys of their homes in advance of building work progressing in earnest.
Due process
Councillor Ritchie – Convener of the Development Management Subcommittee – expressed disappointment at the Reporter’s decision, but said the Council’s hands were now tied by the requirements of due process. Officials were advancing with this as fast as possible, although it was regrettable that delays in addressing neighbours’ concerns had resulted from certain key staff being away on holiday.
Locals may today take a little comfort from the fact that work on the development has not ‘begun’. They will take no comfort from the fact that work which hasn’t started is already so disturbing.
Most remain highly sceptical and will monitor further activity with great attention to detail.
[Photo top-right courtesy of Mike Wade.]
