OBJECTORS to plans to build a new high school on a popular park have told MSPs that the council's behaviour has been "unethical" and "outrageous".
They also claimed that allowing the development in Portobello Park in Edinburgh could set a dangerous precedent for elsewhere in Scotland.
Portobello High School, with 1400 pupils, is one of the biggest secondaries in Scotland. It is severely dilapidated and in need of being rebuilt, but the objectors say this could be done on its existing location or a brownfield site elsewhere without sacrificing 90% of a popular local green space.
The council insists this would be far more expensive, disruptive and time-consuming and say they have promised to create more green space in the area to balance the loss of most of Portobello Park. In addition, officials say new all-weather playing pitches would be available for community use.
A special Holyrood committee set up to consider a Private Bill allowing Edinburgh Council to build on Portobello Park took evidence for more than four hours yesterday.
Objector Jennifer Peters claimed the council had deliberately cut back on maintenance at the park. "It is unethical to under-maintain this park and then claim that it is under-used," she said. But council official Billy MacIntyre insisted no activities undertaken in the area would be impossible.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article