Who says the life of a councillor is just bins and dog mess?
Well, our Green group has been dealing with these issues and much more in the last month, including parking controls expansion, heat networks, military flypasts and community wealth building. The life of a Green councillor in Edinburgh is certainly never dull!
Branch members are more than welcome to come along to our group annual general meeting (AGM) on Monday 2nd June at 7.30pm in the City Chambers (or online), where we will be agreeing our portfolios and roles for the coming year and perhaps also making some changes to our group processes. Our AGM replaces the usual member-councillor forum this month. We look forward to seeing some of you there.
Chas and Susan
Green group Co-Conveners
Councillor highlights from the month
Asked to pick 1 highlight from the month, our councillors chose:
Alex Staniforth
Alex has been keeping on top of developments regarding the council’s purchasing of housing at Dreghorn in order to keep the residents up to date.
Alys Mumford
Alys has been dealing with a deluge of emails about a proposed Controlled Parking Zone for Portobello, and trying to make the case that this wouldn’t actually result in the end of the world (probably).
Ben Parker
Ben has been helping the local group BANZAI (Bruntsfield Area Net Zero Action Initiative) to get their new cargo bike library up and running – watch this space!
Chas Booth
Chas worked with community groups, clean heat campaigners and other political parties to ensure the council re-examines the potential to include not-for-profit and regional models in delivering heat networks. It is hoped these will have a much bigger impact on tackling fuel poverty in the city.
Claire Miller
Claire has been focusing on Community Wealth Building, with both a council CWB plan being approved at committee and looking at the draft CWB bill that is at stage one in parliament. It would be great to see lots of feedback to the council’s plan when it goes live for consultation – keep your eyes peeled for it appearing here.
Dan Heap
Dan has been working on ending flypasts of military jets at the Edinburgh Tattoo. Other parties blocked his proposal, but he has secured a pledge for residents to be able to sign up for notifications of when the flypasts will be and for the Tattoo to explore the jets flying higher to avoid disturbance and retraumatisation of people with experience of war.
Jule Bandel
Jule is unwell and taking time off from Council business
Kayleigh O’Neill
Kayleigh had a brief break from Council (and especially her beloved Transport Committee) to get married! She thanks everyone who kept things moving in her week off.
Steve Burgess
Steve has been continuing to lead on a new community growing garden at Prestonfield Green in his ward, and following confirmation of £50K council investment, Steve is meeting with the Edinburgh and Lothians Greenspace Trust in early June as work gets started.
Susan Rae
Susan has been helping on casework issues covering transport, social care, housing, licencing, anti-social behaviour and housing. As Susan’s tenure as Co-Convenor comes to a close she is also in the process of organising new work with Living Rent and Unite the Union black cab drivers
Committee updates
Committee updates and other things to look out for in the coming month
Policy and Sustainability
After a period of not progressing due to staff absences the Night Time Coordinator position will be coming back to P&S to approve the method of appointment.
Housing, Homelessness and Fair work
Ben was pleased to secure agreement at the latest committee meeting that any money spent on housing from the Visitor Levy would prioritise investment in social housing, and – as a fail-safe measure – that any mid-market tenancies funded through the levy would have rent increases limited to wage inflation of visitor economy workers.
Transport & Environment
The delayed consultation on North-South tram is expected to launch in the Summer so watch this space!
Health & Social Care
Having successfully protected valuable third sector organisations from cuts to their grants by creating a new Council funding route, now there is a big threat to third sector organisations who provide community-based mental health services. This will be discussed at the IJB meeting in June.