MEMBERS AREA
CASEWORK
Forth & Borders
o far, 2013 has brought an interesting mix of cases and the
usual mixed success with the responses we’ve submitted. One
thing that should be remarked upon is the clear drop in our
Edinburgh caseload: so far in the first half of 2013, we’ve looked at
around 340 cases which compares to about 470 for the same
period in 2012 although this is not a scientific comparison. The
caseload is largely self-selected, and we do a manual sift of the
weekly lists supplied by the council by avoiding, for example, minor
alterations to unseen rear elevations of unlisted buildings in
conservation areas as we would struggle to argue any impact on the
wider area in such cases. Nevertheless, I applied the same judgement
as to which cases to include in our list as last year, leading to the
conclusion that 2013 is indeed quieter for planning applications
connected to the built environment. It would be interesting to know
how our experience relates to official statistics from the local
authority, and indeed elsewhere.
Two cases stand out for comment here; both entirely different in
purpose, scale and approach. Nevertheless, they both raise
concerns. The first is a small application relating to an unlisted villa in
the Merchiston & Greenhill Conservation Area. The applicant
owned a side wing of the villa, entered via a pedestrian gate in the
original stone boundary wall and wished to enlarge an existing
gateway to form a vehicular access and driveway to the premises.
What was particularly interesting was the raised apex lintel a ѽ