Edinburgh Council explores congestion charge for cars entering capital
The city will begin having conversations with Glasgow, which is also interested in introducing a congestion charge, and with other local authorities in the Lothians.
In February 2005, a referendum was held on introducing a congestion charge in Edinburgh, which was roundly defeated.
But some councillors feel that the time is now appropriate to start exploring such a scheme again.
Green councillor Chas Booth, speaking at the council's Transport and Environment Committee, said: 'There is an opportunity today to start a conversation about road user charging. Let's start that conversation.'
At present, London is the only city in the UK to have introduced a congestion charge. Introduced in 2003, the scheme charges motorists £15 to enter the core of the city.
Under the scheme proposed in 2005, drivers in Edinburgh would have been charged £2 (£3.50 today) to enter the capital.
However, it was roundly defeated, with the postal ballot seeing 74% of voters rejecting the proposal.
Under an amendment to the City Mobility Plan, which was passed at the Transport and Environment Committee on Thursday, the council will begin exploring the plans with other councils.
The city will seek to work with Glasgow, Sestrans and several local authorities around Edinburgh to develop a common framework for how congestion charging could work in Scottish cities.
Any scheme may face an uphill struggle, as the legislation for enabling a road pricing scheme does not fully exist.
London's scheme was introduced using powers specifically granted to the city by Westminster in 1999.
However, the Scottish Government will soon discuss legislative changes that could make congestion charging possible.
Cllr Booth said that the money could go towards funding local infrastructure projects, dozens of which were paused on Thursday due to a lack of available cash.
Cllr Booth told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: 'I'm delighted Edinburgh has agreed to start conversations about congestion charging with other councils.
'It's absolutely clear that Edinburgh will not meet its commitments to address the climate emergency unless we take bold action to encourage people to choose more sustainable alternatives to the private car.
'While the council doesn't yet have the full powers to introduce congestion charging, and any Edinburgh scheme is likely to be many years away, it is nonetheless right that we start talking about what a scheme might look like.
'[We will explore] whether we have any common ground with Glasgow which is also considering a scheme, and with surrounding councils about how we can ensure an equitable distribution of any income from the scheme to support sustainable commuting into Edinburgh.'
The council's new City Mobility Plan sets out Edinburgh's infrastructure priorities for the next ten years.
More than 70 active travel, public transport and regeneration projects will be taken ahead under the project.
Among them are the long-promised transformation of George Street, an active travel link between the Meadows and the Union Canal and public transport and active travel works in the Granton Waterfront.
More than 50 other projects were paused, the vast majority of which were already on hold before the report or had not yet been started.
Labour councillor Stephen Jenkinson, who convenes the Transport and Environment Committee, said: I'm really pleased that we've agreed this bold programme for our city.
'Prioritisation allows us to work smarter with the resources we have available – making sure we have a clear and achievable path to achieving our objectives.
'This programme follows the successes of major infrastructure projects such as Trams to Newhaven and active travel projects including the City Centre West to East Link (CCWEL), Roseburn to Union Canal and Leith Connections.
'This is an extensive piece of work which allows the City Mobility Plan to be agile, and able to adapt in the future as necessary.
'However, one key element in this conversation is the fact that we remain dependent on external funding for many projects, particularly from the Scottish Government and by extension Transport Scotland.
'Complex projects which take years to plan and complete but which are subject to annual external funding decisions make this situation inherently difficult.
'We need commitment and stability from the Scottish Government if we're to deliver the changes which our city needs and deserves.
'We'll now take forward these projects which will keep Edinburgh moving and make our city a safer, more sustainable and accessible place for all.'
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The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
'Fair rent' campaign launched by Scots university students
And they are calling on the Scottish Government to tighten student housing regulations. Justine Pédussel is the Vice President for Communities at Stirling University Student Union, an elected and salaried full-time position. She explains how student activists banded together to start the campaign, which is part of the National Union of Students (NUS), telling The Herald: 'A group of different sabbatical officers across Scotland who were really passionate about housing came together to deal with the crisis collectively. We identified some of the key problems and how to then fix those.' Student housing is currently not included in rent control protections. (Image: Supplied) Ms Pédussel says that lack of robust regulation is one of the key issues facing student renters. 'When the 2016 Tenancy Act was passed at Holyrood, student tenancies were explicitly excluded within the definition and scope of the bill,' she notes, referring to paragraph 5 of Schedule 1 of the Act, which exempts student housing from normal tenancy rules. 'And so we thought, if we can change that, then a lot of the things that are happening to students regarding their deposits and how long they can stay and the conditions that they live in would all change, because there would suddenly be many more rules and regulations that student accommodation providers would have to follow.' Asked to pinpoint some key issues facing student renters, Ms Pédussel digs out an extensive list of statistics. For example, the price of bespoke student accommodation has increased by over 34% in recent years, she informs me. Furthermore, 93% of student renters reported issues with housing, 42% had mould or mildew, 41% had issues with heating or cooling, and the flats of 22% were infested with mice and rats. Glasgow Caledonian University Student Association President Oluwatomisin Osinubi, or 'Tom Tom,' has also been involved with the campaign. She adds: 'A common theme for students across Scotland is the fact that students don't really have a place in terms of renting rights. The government doesn't have the right view; they just assume that students are people that live with their families or have the money to pay for purpose built student accommodation. But that's not true for everyone. Indeed, NUS figures suggest international or estranged students are at greater risk of becoming homeless. Students gathered at the Scottish Parliament. (Image: Supplied) Ms Osinubi says: 'The rental options available to students are just ridiculously difficult. You're either paying extreme prices for student accommodation, or you're having to sign contracts that are also very difficult. If you're going to private rent from landlords, they ask you for guarantors and they treat students poorly, generally. The term 'hidden homelessness' comes up, which refers to a situation where someone might not exhibit the conventional signs of being homeless. Ms Osinubi explains, noting: "If you are sofa surfing, if you're having to sleep on anybody's couch or stay with a friend because your landlord has evicted you, then you are homeless. 'One particularly big problem that we are always seeing is landlords who take advantage of students. You know, a new student comes to Glasgow who doesn't know anything about Glasgow, and they pay money to a strange person who just disappears with the money.' Ms Pédussel agrees. She says the current rules, which often force students to provide a UK-based guarantor, are driving people into homelessness. 'The guarantor system is a bit of a vicious cycle because in order to rent privately, you have to have a UK-based guarantor or pay up to six months up front,' she says. 'If you can't afford to do that because you don't have a UK based guarantor, for example, if you are a low-income student or an international student, then essentially you have no choice but to apply to student accommodation.' 'If you can't access that because it's really expensive, that's how we end up with a lot of homeless students. In order to avoid that situation, students will stay in really horrible housing without heating or infested with mice and rats.' According to Ms Osinubi, some students have been forced to stay in abusive relationships or unsafe living situations to keep a roof over their heads. She says: 'We've had cases where students were living with family members that were abusive, or with people that 'took them in,'' she repeats this phrase for emphasis, 'and then did stuff like locking them out of the house or giving them times when to come into the flat.' 'Housing is a human right', reads a sign outside McEwan Hall in Edinburgh. (Image: Supplied) Ms Pedussel says the campaign has received a mixed reaction from political parties as the NUS lobbies ahead of crucial votes on the Scottish Government's Housing Bill in the autumn. 'We're trying to give students a voice and highlight a lot of these issues,' she says. 'Some of the political parties have been really interested in engaging with us and listening to what we have to say and have recognized that there's a lot of issues that students are facing. And then there are others who have refused to meet with us and are consistently against the idea that students need to be protected. 'The narrative seems to be very focused on how protecting students will be bad for landlords.' Read more: How Nigel Farage could turn the North East turquoise in 2026 Ambulance waiting times for critically ill patients on rise in all 32 councils 'I will never forgive Nicola Sturgeon', former Justice Secretary says Remembering the pirate DJ who inspired students to pursue radio The Scottish Government's Housing Bill was lodged in March 2024, and has slowly made its way through the parliamentary legislation system. One of the bill's amendments, which would include rent control and leaving notice protections for students residing in university halls and purpose built accommodation, has been praised as a key win for campaigners. In May, cross party MSPs added the amendment to the draft bill over the objections of then-Housing Minister Paul McLennan. Scottish Greens MSP Ross Greer said at the time: 'Far too many students pay sky high rents for halls and other purpose-built accommodation. They deserve the same rights as other renters, and I am glad that MSPs have backed plans to crack down on the accommodation operators ripping off students.' A final vote is expected later this year.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘An enormous scar': the battle over solar farms and pylons as Reform UK takes aim at net zero
In early summer the wide open fields of Lincolnshire seem to expand beneath even larger clear blue skies. Travel north through the breadbasket of Britain towards the North Sea, from Grantham to Grimsby, and farming gives way to factories, refineries and the Humber docks. Each sector tells a story of Britain's industrial decline: the demise of heavy industry on the banks of the Humber, the closure of coal power plants, fishing fleets decimated by the cod wars of the 1970s and 80s. Lincolnshire is at the heart of the government's plan for the greatest economic step-change since the Industrial Revolution: a green re-industrialisation to help galvanise the country's net zero agenda, create jobs and revitalise deprived areas. Under this vision Britain's ports will become the industrial heartlands for the burgeoning offshore wind sector, and refineries and factories will pioneer the carbon capture technology considered essential to reach the world's climate goals. On shore, acres of gleaming solar panels will blanket farmland and the old sites of demolished coal power plants, with miles of pylons and cables crossing the county to connect the North Sea's windfarms to the power grid. This vision is on a collision course with the rise of Reform UK, as well as the tough economic climate, as the Guardian explores in a series. In few places is this battle more evident than Lincolnshire, a growing base for the hard-right party. Its founder, Nigel Farage, has called the government's net zero ambitions a 'lunacy' that destroys jobs, drives up energy bills and is responsible for the deindustrialising of Britain. He has predicted that the schism over net zero will be the 'next Brexit'. Meanwhile, the region's remaining heavy industry is increasingly imperilled: the government had to intervene in April to prevent the abrupt closure of the Scunthorpe steelworks' blast furnaces; the Lindsey oil refinery near Immingham is in deep financial trouble; and a neighbouring biodiesel plant owned by Greenergy, part of the commodities company Trafigura, is to close. The consequences of that revolt against net zero are not only economic; they are profoundly political too. In the market town of Boston in Lincolnshire, its former mayor is considering his future in local politics. Anton Dani was one of a handful of Conservative councillors who survived the march of rightwing populism across the county in recent years. The former Ukip councillor last month resigned from the Tory party and is considering another move – defecting to Reform. 'What they do best is talk to people face to face,' he says. . 'It's an idea lost on the big political parties.' Lincolnshire is one of 10 local councils now controlled by Reform. It is also home to the party's deputy, Richard Tice, the member of parliament for Boston and Skegness. The former Conservative minister Andrea Jenkyns was elected mayor for Greater Lincolnshire after switching to Reform in November. The party's rise to power was built on the success of the Brexit referendum campaign, Dani says, when the deepening concerns over immigration found a voice in the national conversation. Lincolnshire was among the UK's most Eurosceptic counties, with Boston recording the highest level of support for Brexit in the country, with 75.6% of votes cast in favour of leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum. Today the same dissatisfaction with the established status quo is taking aim at the government's long-held climate orthodoxy, bringing the concerns about Britain's green agenda into mainstream politics for the first time after years of cross-party support. Reform UK has said it will scrap the UK's net zero legislation – and renewable energy subsidies along with it. A carbon-heavy pivot would accompany that: a Reform government would invest directly in North Sea oil and gas production, which it claims would secure the UK's energy supplies and the workforce supported by the industry. The party's hardline stance has won support from people who fear that their livelihoods are at risk in part because of the UK's shift away from fossil fuels. It also resonates with those who support cutting emissions through an expansion of renewable energy but disagree with the way the government has chosen to achieve this. In Lincolnshire a groundswell of resistance to the government's solar power agenda is stoking the party's popularity, according to Marianne Overton, an independent county councillor. 'This is the Lincolnshire countryside,' Overton says, driving north from Grantham, the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher, towards the site of the planned Springwell solar farm. The proposed site sprawls across 4,200 hectares, the size of 2,800 football pitches, between Lincoln and Sleaford. David Suiter, an independent local councillor who has joined Overton in campaigning against the project, says: 'If you look at a map, it will leave an enormous scar on North Kesteven. The scale is quite alarming.' The government has already given the green light to six big solar farms across the country since last summer, including the Cottam Solar Farm. The largest solar farm ever approved in the UK stretches across 1,270 hectares, straddling Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire on the site of the old Cottam coal power station, which shut in 2019, months after Theresa May's government enshrined in law a commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, making Britain the first major economy to do so. There are far more solar farms awaiting approval in Lincolnshire than in any other county in the country, many dwarfing the Cottam project. Within months of Labour's election victory Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, pledged to 'take on the blockers, the delayers, the obstructionists' who have opposed the rollout of wind turbines, solar farms and pylons across the UK as a matter of 'national security' and 'economic justice'. 'It was wicked, in my opinion,' says Overton of Miliband's pledge. The tough political stance has alienated many in Lincolnshire who fear that the government's 'builders and blockers' rhetoric will be mean Lincolnshire is forced to bear the brunt of the government's plan to triple the UK's solar power capacity. Lincolnshire is expected to host more solar farms and battery centres than the rest of the country owing to the high number of defunct coal plants in the area that allow solar developers to reuse the old grid connections. The county already hosts a network of overhead power lines and substations after decades as a major coal power generator. But the march of pylons is expected to continue as part of the UK's £58bn grid repowering plan, bringing power generated by the windfarms in the North Sea and Scotland ashore via the Lincolnshire coast. Last year plans were put forward to bring power 250 miles south, from a Scottish windfarm, along a cable laid on the sea bed, before terminating at two grid connection points in central and southern Lincolnshire. That proposal followed plans for an overland pylon route from Grimsby to Walpole, and five large electricity substations. The pressures facing British farms mean that for some landowners solar power could prove to be their most lucrative crop in decades. But for tenant farmers, a decision to swap crops for solar panels means losing their livelihoods. 'Why are we losing some of the best agricultural land in the world to put up solar panels imported from Chinese companies which use coal power to run their factories?' Overton said. 'If the government is so concerned about emissions why aren't all new buildings forced to be as close to energy self-sufficient as possible? If solar is the right solution, wouldn't they start by requiring all commercial buildings to be covered in solar and be as efficient as feasible?' Ultimately, ministers will need to do all these things and more to meet the 2050 deadline and tackle the climate crisis. Generating more renewable energy is also central to the government's industrial strategy, aimed at lowering the overall cost of energy for manufacturers and businesses. But Overton wants pragmatism in how the renewables rollout is implemented. 'I don't think anyone here is against net zero when it makes sense. A local housing estate had rooftop solar installed recently which was extremely popular – it earns money for the council and still lowers bills. Wouldn't it make sense to do this everywhere before industrialising the countryside?' The resistance to net zero in areas such as Lincolnshire may be explained in part by the belief in many local communities that the government's green agenda will not create as many jobs or as much economic benefit as Britain's deindustrialisation has taken. In total, green jobs employed an estimated 639,400 in 2022, the Office for National Statistics shows. The majority of these jobs were in the waste industry, and about 2% were in renewable energy, according to the official data. Although green jobs are growing fast, an annual survey of the sector by the auditor PwC found that the boom is not spread equally across Britain's regions. In Scotland, green jobs make up 5.6% of the new jobs on offer, but in the East Midlands the figure is behind the national average of 3.3% at just 3.1%. Growth in green jobs has also been most evident in London. The number advertised in the capital has climbed by almost a third since 2023, while in the East Midlands green jobs offered have risen by just over 6%. By 2030 between 135,000 to 725,000 net new green jobs could be created, with the majority of these in installing energy-efficiency measures such as insulation and low-carbon heating, it found. The leader of North East Lincolnshire council, Philip Jackson, says that while Britain's booming offshore wind industry will soon create enough 'good, high-paid jobs' in Grimsby to push up the average salary across Lincolnshire, 'a lot of people in the area don't yet realise that all this stuff is going on'. 'The offshore wind operations and maintenance facilities are confined to the ports, and the windfarms they serve are miles offshore,' he says. The green jobs that are visible to the public – those building solar farms and grid connections – are often taken up by people coming into the area rather than local people, he adds. 'We need our residents to be able to take up the opportunities which are available in clean energy. The use of the word 'green' doesn't help because people assume that it's not for them. But actually we need skills that could be used across all sectors.' For David Talbot, the boss of local skills and apprentice group Catch, part of the problem is in defining a 'green job'. 'This is a transient workforce – they go where the work is – and sometimes that will be a refinery and then it might be carbon capture,' he says. 'The lines between traditional industrial jobs and green jobs are a lot more blurred than you'd think.' Earlier this year the government earmarked Lincolnshire alongside Aberdeenshire, Cheshire and Pembrokeshire for new, government-backed training programmes to help local people take advantage of the jobs created in clean energy. 'We are always very clear: we don't need 'green skills' to get to net zero, we need traditional skills,' says Talbot. 'Don't get me wrong, green skills are needed at the higher levels of industry where people are designing carbon capture, for example. 'But there is a huge skills gap lower down which needs to be filled. And at the end of the day, there's no such thing as a 'green' welder. People might not realise that they're part of the net zero journey, but they're absolutely critical to reaching our climate targets. Traditional trades are needed at scale to meet these targets.' In Boston, Dani remains unconvinced. 'I wouldn't say [the government is] lying, but they're misleading the country on net zero. We've been given slogans for hope, and spent billions, but it hasn't made things better for people. Really, the decline of Britain's industries isn't about immigration or net zero. It's about the arrogance of the major parties.' Unless Labour can convince voters of the merits of cutting emissions and net zero – and that well-paid jobs will follow – Reform intends to convince the people of Lincolnshire of another way.
The Herald Scotland
3 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
You're evil if you're not a socialist after reading legendary trilogy
By the third volume it was being accused of Stalinism, though the author never became an official Communist 'as they won't let me in'. He never lived to see the full horrors of Stalinism nor the morphing of socialism into a movement obsessed with lavatories. In his day, wrongs to be righted were clearer, more elemental. The ruling peeps, the economic elite, were transparently bad. All the brainy bods were on the Left, marrying morality to intellect, seeking to tip the balance towards equality, to equilibrium, and not – as now – past it to perpetual disharmony. Today, with a ruling elite more left-wing than the workers, no one knows what socialism means beyond something to do with minority rights and yonder environment. Among the proletariat in the schemes it's about as popular as Viz magazine's Leo Tolstoy action figures. As economic theory, i.e. more then mere cultural complaint, it prevails only among boomers, like the present writer, too embarrassed to revisit the certainties of their youth and still insistent, when drunk, that it could work if it weren't for human nature, bad people, lazy people, greedy people. Ye ken: real life. But here we're talking fiction, as set out in three beautifully lyrical volumes. We're talking about a pivotal work of 20th century Scottish literature, one whose first volume has not unnaturally been dropped as a set text in the school curriculum. Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described it as 'one of the first books that had me utterly captivated by the lyricism of language and the power of place'. Its heroine, Chris Guthrie 'spoke to, and helped me make sense of, the girl I was'. That was back in the day when she knew what a girl was. On 13 February 1901, a boy was born into a farming family at Hillhead of Seggat, Auchterless, Aberdeenshire. From the age of seven, that boy, James Leslie Mitchell – Grassic Gibbon's real name – was raised in Arbuthnott, in the former county of Kincardineshire. Educated at the parish school and at Mackie Academy in Stonehaven, he departed the latter precipitately after arguing with a teacher. h Novel approach Outside school, he upset the Mearns folk with opinions deemed inappropriate to their way of life. He'd stick his head in a book than into the soil. In 1917, aged 16, he ran away to Aberdeen, became a cub reporter on a local paper, and tried to make the city a soviet in solidarity with the Russian Revolution. Moving to Glasgow, he got a job on Farmers Weekly, where presumably he kept his doubts about agricultural work hidden, while the city's slums and Red Clydeside movement only intensified his zeal. This got him sacked – for fiddling expenses to make donations to the British Socialist Party. Attempted suicide followed, so his family took him back in, hoping rural life might steady him. It did not. In 1919, more for food and lodgings than patriotic duty, he joined the Royal Army Service Corps, serving in Iran, India and Egypt before enlisting as a clerk in the Royal Air Force in 1923, leading to more time in the Middle East. In 1925, Mitchell returned to Arbuthnott to marry local girl Rebecca (Ray or Rhea) Middleton. The couple moved to cheap lodgings in London, where the going was tough until they moved to Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, several million miles from the Mearns. Here, James began writing full time, producing 4,000-odd words a day, including journalism and travel literature. His first book, Hanno: or the Future of Exploration, was published in 1928. Drawing heavily on diffusionism – aye – it investigated the origin of cultural traits, contending that the North-East was full of Picts. READ MORE Rab McNeil: Get your Boots on, we're going shopping for unicorn hair gel Rab McNeil: No wonder the whole Scottish nation loves Nicola (no, not that one) Scottish Icons: William McGonagall - The poet who right bad verses wrote still floats some folk's vessel or boat Scottish Icons: There is a lot of tripe talked about haggis – so here's the truth Going ape In 1932, he used the pseudonym Lewis Grassic Gibbon, from his maternal grandmother's name Lilias Grassick Gibbon, for the first time, when Sunset Song was published. It was the first, and best, in A Scots Quair, which made Gibbon's name. Written in earthy dialect, Sunset Song begins the story of Chris Guthrie, described by Paul Foot in never popular magazine Socialist Review as 'more remarkable than any female character in Jane Austen, George Eliot or even the Brontes'. Her common sense, good nature and level head steer her through life's enervating tragedies, with a narrative matching her progress to the Mearns farming year. The First World War ruins everything, a way of life, the actual lives of young men, even the soil-securing trees (cut down for the war effort). On top of that, the economy had already been moving from rural agriculture to urban manufacturing, from past to future. Not that the old way of life was perfect, in a community riddled with lust, feuds and gossip. Grassic Gibbon was, to put it mildly, ambivalent about agricultural and rural life. Chris shares that ambivalence, drawn towards education and away from the drudgery and narrow horizons of a farming community. She has first to escape the clutches of her father, an ill-tempered, bullying, pious, hypocritical fellow. Men, eh? She marries one, Ewan Tavendale, but the War sees him off too: shot as a deserter. Sunset Song has a political message, but one shot through with humour: ' … Ellison said he was a Bolshevik, one of those awful creatures, coarse tinks, that made such a spleiter in Russia. They'd shot their King-creature, the Tsar they called him, and they bedded all over the place, folk said, a man would go home and find his wife commandeered any bit night and Lenin and Trotsky lying with her.' Grey outlook A Scots Quair moves from village to town to city. Often seen as Sunset Song's poorer companions, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite contrast the Christian socialism of Robert Colquhoun (Chris's second husband) with the hardline Communism of her son. Chris, a grounded quine, focuses more on the eternal verities, where only the land endures, however much subject to change. 'Change … whose right hand was Death and whose left hand Life might be stayed by none of the dreams of men …' Life's trancience ever haunts her: "Their play was done and they were gone …' Life was cruelly transient for Lewis Grassic Gibbon. On 7 February 1935, he died in Welwyn Garden City after an operation for a perforated gastric ulcer. He was 33-years-old. His ashes were buried in the Mearns.
