Consultation and Engagement Hub

We created a masterplan for regenerating Inch Park following meetings, workshops and other events that we held from summer 2021 with organisations based in and around Inch Park including:

• Inch Community Association
• Inch Park Community Sports Clubs
• Gilmerton and Inch Community Council
• Liberton and District Community Council
• Bridgend Farmhouse

We also worked with local councillors and reported on the proposals to the Fair Work, Housing and Homelessness Committee on 23 June 2022.

We bid for funding for the proposals from the UK Government’s Levelling Up Fund in summer 2022. On 19 January 2023, the UK Government announced its decisions. Unfortunately we were unsuccessful.

We always intended to bid to other potential funders to regenerate Inch Park and House and at time of writing are considering the next steps.

We held a public consultation on the draft masterplan for Inch Park between 3 August 2022 and 31 October 2022. The documents for the consultation including the masterplan can be found here.

• 148 people or organisations gave views on Inch Park masterplanning via the Hub. A further 9 people gave views by email.
• Over 87% of all participants said that overall, their thoughts on the draft Inch Park Masterplan were very positive or positive. 
• Of the more than 112 commentaries received, many were detailed and most were expressed as positive suggestions, in line with the overall pattern of responses.
• A significant overall theme in comments was on the need for careful and thoughtful design in the next masterplanning phase to get the right balance and placing of different elements.

We will provide a more detailed update on the outcome of the consultation on this website early in the New Year. In the meantime we would like to thank everyone who responded to the consultation.

We are already considering the comments made with a view to taking account of them in the next phase of the project. If in time we are successful with funding bids, we will be able to move to a detailed design phase.  Depending on how things develop, it may be necessary to make a formal planning application at a later stage.

The City of Edinburgh Council’s (CEC) 2030 Climate Strategy was published in December 2021 after a live version of the strategy was agreed by city partners to enable priority actions to be progressed as part of the council’s commitment to tackling the climate emergency. The Council was required to publish a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of this strategy and to consult on both the strategy and the SEA.

All comments received from the Consultation Authorities and the response to these comments were published by City of Edinburgh Council’s Policy and Sustainability Committee on 17 November 2022.

There were no new, removed or significantly altered actions as a result of consultation responses to the Strategy therefore there was no requirement to revise the Environmental Report on this basis. More information about what was said and what actions are planned is available in sections 2.2 and 2.3 of the SEA Post Adoption Statement - a download link is included below.

Working with the local community and landscape architects the Council’s Thriving Greenspaces Project has funded the development of a 10-year concept Masterplan for Leith Links to progress ideas for the future use and facilities in the parks.

A final draft Masterplan was agreed by the Working Group in March 2022 and using the Consultation Hub, comment and discussion were sought on the plan from the wider Leith community and park users to ensure it represented what people would like to see delivered (funding and resource permitting) to improve Leith Links over the next decade.

We received 789 responses about the masterplan with nearly 70% of people stating that they lived in Leith.  Overall, 90% of respondents thought that the proposals detailed in the Masterplan were positive. Regarding the features presented in the masterplan:

• 86% agreed they would enhance sense of arrival 
• 87% agreed they would enhance sense of place 
• 91% agreed they would increase activity 
• 90% agreed that they would improve provision
• 88% agreed they would enhance Blue/Green infrastructure

We also received over 540 comments about the draft masterplan. Support for a skatepark/wheeled area/plaza (including pumptrack) was overwhelmingly positive with over 200 responses.  The other top-ranked themes that attracted comment included:

• Permanent provision of public toilets 
• Greenspace improvements (including floral meadows and climate change mitigations)
• Improved cycling access and facilities
• Activity Park (including provision of a Multi-Use Games Area)
• Improved pedestrian crossing / traffic calming / road closure 

The finalised concept Masterplan will be signed-off by the Working Group and presented to Culture & Communities Committee for approval. The plan will then form the basis of an improvement plan for Leith Links over the next decade.