Residents on Perth Street and Henderson Row are objecting to a major new development by Edinburgh Academy (Ref. 18/0563/FUL; 18/0568/LBC).
The Academy means to extend its premises along the eastern boundary to the rear of the library and the Clerk Maxwell Science Centre.
This would provide ‘linked additional teaching and learning space and a multi-purpose hall’. For fuller details, see the six-part and very-slow-to-download Design & Access Statement via the highlighted link shown above.
Award-winning LDN Architects speak of creating ‘a modern building that will integrate well into its context, complement the continued development of the campus and provide the school with the multi-functional facility that [it] desires’.
Neighbours, however, far from bursting into spontaneous choruses of Floreat Academia, are appalled. Their reasons for objection include:
- inappropriate scale, density, positioning and materials of development undermining the spatial character and appearance of the Conservation Area
- noise from a large-occupancy, naturally ventilated, multi-purpose hall
- replacement of a Category-B listed wall and installation of a 6m x 2m intake louvre facing their homes
- floor to ceiling windows within 18m of homes causing unreasonable loss of privacy
- negative impact on residential amenity, and inappropriate detailing and materials of, a 2m steel chemistry-laboratory extract flume
- loss of trees (see photo below taken from Henderson Row)
- reduction of daylight in neighbourhood properties
- negative effect on residential amenity.
The New Town & Broughton Community Council shares some of these concerns, in particular regarding the size of the proposed development’s ‘footprint’. Residents have therefore been invited to attend the NTBCC’s next meeting at 7.30pm on 12 March (Broughton St Mary’s Parish Church).
Residents will hold their own public meeting at 10am on 17 March at Stockbridge Parish Church (Saxe Coburg Street).
Anyone wishing to support or object to the Edinburgh Academy plan may do so here. The deadline is 23 March 2018.
