A COMMUNITY group has warned councils will have the power to ride roughshod over residents' rights if the go-ahead is given for a new school in Edinburgh.
Portobello Park Action Group [PPAG], which is fighting to save a disputed piece of green space, plan to convince MSPs to back their cause at a meeting today.
The campaigners say plans by City of Edinburgh Council to build its long-overdue Portobello High School on the parkland would set a precedent for all councils to build on "common good" land, even if local residents oppose it.
They have called for the school to be built on an alternative site.
The row over the school has gone one for years and previously resulted in a ruling at the Court of Session in Edinburgh in favour of the park's supporters.
But in January, MSPs unanimously supported a Bill paving the way for the school's construction.
Former Edinburgh councillor and PPAG represenative Stephen Hawkins said: "If the Portobello Park Bill goes through, not only will it enable the City of Edinburgh Council to override its citizens' right to common good land in Portobello, it could set a principle for other councils across Scotland to ride roughshod over their residents' common good land too.
"PPAG fully supports the urgent need for a new Portobello High School on one of the several available sites but believes that the council has misrepresented the facts, thereby pushing it through council processes and dishonestly boosting public opinion in favour of building the school on Portobello Park.
"There are reasonable alternative sites, but the council seems disinterested [sic] in them. We have also been promised that if the new building is put up in Portobello Park, the existing school site will be turned into green space."
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