Dear Mr Rennie,
I am writing to you to complain in the most vigorous way regarding what appears to be a fait accompli regarding the planning application for 28 Howe Street.
While I note that you wrote to Edinburgh's head of planning regarding the application, I would like to request that you now follow through and make further representations on behalf of the 332 local residents who signed the petition and the 40 who took the trouble to write to the planning department.
It appears that Edinburgh's Planning Department makes its decisions without taking the views of local residents into consideration but is more than willing to apply double standards depending on who is making the application.
A decision to grant planning consent to this operator in this location will:
- Create road safety issues with delivery vehicles and shoppers trying to park on what is already a very busy street.
- Create noise pollution and congestion at all hours of the day and night with deliveries arriving in trucks.
- Allow deliveries to the rear to block access to Jamaica Mews, causing a nuisance to residents in the sheltered housing
- Despite assurances to the contrary, the signage will be detrimental to the aesthetics of the UNESCO Edinburgh World Heritage Site.
In addition, and outwith the planning department’s remit, there is already an over-provision of supermarkets in the area with two Margiotta’s, two Scotmid’s, Waitrose and another Sainsbury’s all within ten minutes' walk.
This is part of a wider problem that is eviscerating Edinburgh's small traders and businesses, who cannot compete with the insidious rise of these ‘local’ convenience stores.
If the Council’s objective is to represent local people and businesses and promote a diversity of local shops, then surely they must take the views of locals into account. The Council would be well advised to take heed of the lesson learned by small-town America whose local businesses were destroyed by Walmart (ASDA to you and me).
I await your response with anticipation.
Yours sincerely
Nigel Kennedy
(appetite direct ltd, 42 Howe Street)