City Plan 2030 – Housing Seminar

We want to include the views of people involved in housing in Edinburgh as we prepare City Plan 2030, so as part of our consultation we held a housing seminar last Friday and invited a range of people representing groups with a stake in building and providing housing.

We invited Councillors, colleagues and representatives from Homes for Scotland, Shelter Scotland and ESPC to present on a number of topics.

The event was kicked off by Councillor Neil Gardiner, Convener of the Planning Committee and Kate Campbell, Convener of the Housing and Economy Committee:

Speakers then talked about how to deliver the housing the city needs:

…and about the challenges and opportunities for housing:

After this a discussion was held amongst the groups of guests. All groups were asked “What makes a good place?”

Themes which came up:

• People and communities are key.
• Early engagement in the planning process.
• The importance of connectivity and infrastructure such as transport and schools.
• Direct approach to bringing forward housing sites.
• The right mix of tenures and housing types needs to be found to tackle high prices.
• More certainty through long-term planning.

We enjoyed hosting this event and think the guests did too. We also found it very useful and look forward to having more of these discussions as work on City Plan 2030 proceeds.

We hope to post guest blogs in the future on the subject about what makes a good place to live. Watch this space!