INDEPENDENT REPORT IDENTIFIES 'SIGNIFICANT' ADVERSE EFFECTS
Last year, the New Town & Broughton Community Council along with relevant residents associations commissioned an independent Heritage Impact Assessment looking at the likely effects on the Edinburgh World Heritage Site of Council plans for bin-hubs.
That report, which also looks at the Council's proposed mitigative measures, has now been finished. It is available at the foot of this page.
NTBCC’s chair Carol Nimmo says it ‘highlights the significance of Council management of waste and recycling to the World Heritage Site and the risk to the Outstanding Universal Value from inadequate attention to heritage’.
It demonstrates, she continues, that ‘the City of Edinburgh Council needs to take its responsibilities to heritage seriously and put a moratorium on plans for Communal Bin-hubs in key streets in the World Heritage Site.’
Spurtle received a copy of the 66-page report yesterday, and has not finished digesting it. However, key points are bulleted below.
It is important to note that Heritage Impact Assessment methodology classifies the effects of a development on heritage assets as either adverse or beneficial, and then into categories based on its magnitude: in this case major, moderate, minor, negligible, and no effect.
Key points
- Bin-hubs, even with proposed Council mitigation measures, would have a moderate adverse effect on the special character and appearance of the New Town and Old Town conservation areas. Ten Key Views would be negatively affected.
- In the West End conservation area, bin-hubs (even with Council mitigation measures) would have a minor negative effect on its special character and appearance.
- Bin-hubs would have a moderate adverse effect on the outstanding universal value of the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh WHS, negatively impacting this ‘remarkably consistent and coherent entity’, particularly in the New Town.
- Proposed Council mitigation measures are ineffective and superficial, especially with regard to the bin-hubs’ massing.
- The report contradicts the decision taken by CEC that an Environmental Impact Assessment was not required in order to install communal bin-hubs, as according to ICOMOS guidance, wherever a significant effect is anticipated, an impact assessment should be carried out.
- ‘Overall, this report comes to the conclusion that since negative effects on heritage assets which are significant in EIA terms are anticipated, there should be a presumption against the installation of communal bin-hubs within the Old Town Conservation Area, New Town Conservation Area, and Old and New Towns of Edinburgh World Heritage Site.’
The Heritage Impact Assessment, undertaken by experts Simpson & Brown, will now provide evidence for city councillors deciding what to do next once the Council’s own report on alternatives to bin-hubs in the EWHS, and its trial of Green Gull Proof Sacks, are complete.
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spurtle@hotmail.co.uk and @theSpurtle
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