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WEST EDINBURGH PLANNING FRAMEWORK REVIEW STAKEHOLDER MEETING

ANNEX: PRESENTATION ON WEST EDINBURGH PLANNING FRAMEWORK REVIEW TOM WILLIAMSON 14 MAY 2004 - STAKEHOLDER ADVISORY GROUP AND WIDER REFERENCE GROUP - VICTORIA QUAY

Good afternoon. For those of you who don't know me, I am Tom Williamson, Assistant Chief Planner in Planning Division here in the Executive. I managed the work on the original West Edinburgh Planning Framework and worked with Department for Transport in the preparation of the Air Transport White Paper. I am now managing this Review of the West Edinburgh Planning Framework which is the subject of my presentation this afternoon. After the presentation I will throw it open for questions and hopefully for discussion.

The original West Edinburgh Planning Framework was published in March 2003. In general terms it safeguarded land for the future expansion of Edinburgh Airport and for other new surface access transport infrastructure. Investment in transport is intended to alleviate congestion for existing development as well as serving airport needs. Economic development to 2020 is intended to focus on consolidating the core development areas in the structure plan including Edinburgh Park and Newbridge. Other land, currently Green Belt, has long term potential for economic development where Edinburgh is competing on the national and international market for corporate headquarters type buildings. The highest quality of design would be required for such development. The West Edinburgh Planning Framework also set out criteria which may justify eventual release of Green Belt land for economic development. These criteria would also constitute the threshold which any speculative proposals submitted by developers in the meantime would have to start from.

There are a number of influences on the Review of the West Edinburgh Planning Framework. The Air Transport White Paper, which was published in December 2003, is a key determinant. A number of those present today were privileged to attend a Conference at Dynamic Earth on Tuesday on the Edinburgh City Region in the 21st Century. Some very relevant things were said there. There are also 2 reports of which I am aware that are relevant. The Airports Council International published in January this year a report on the social and economic impact of airports in Europe, and the book "from Airport to Airport City" published last year is partly based on research done in 1998 for the European Regions Airports Conference 2000, and updated in 2002. I will look at each of these influences in turn.

The UK White Paper The Future of Air Transport was published on 16 December 2003. It envisaged growth of Edinburgh Airport from over 7M passengers per annum currently to over 20M by 2030. This growth can be handled by an expanded terminal building, additional aircraft stands and taxiways, together with more intensive use of the crosswind runway for taking off, up to about 2020. Thereafter, a second close parallel main runway is likely to be required. The terminal and stand expansion is likely to require relocation of the Royal Highland Centre by 2013. After the second main runway is commissioned, the crosswind runway will be closed to airborne traffic, and the southern part of it can be released for development. In addition removal of the height safeguarding associated with the crosswind runway will allow higher and more intensive development to take place at Edinburgh Park where some redevelopment could be expected in 20 years time. As the White Paper says, the parties will work together to find a new site for the Royal Highland Centre and facilitate the relocation.

The White Paper includes an indicative map of the area likely to be required for airport purposes when the airport has developed to fulfil the White Paper policies. The location of the new second main runway is broadly indicated, while areas for other operational uses such as terminals, aircraft stances, taxiways, maintenance facilities, are also provided for in a figurative representation. Also shown are areas to be given up by the Airport, namely the southern section of the crosswind runway not required for taxiing purposes. The second map shows the area of the Article 17 Direction made by Scottish Ministers on 17 December 2003. The Direction provides that where City of Edinburgh Council wish to approve any planning application in that area, they must notify it to the Scottish Ministers. Scottish Ministers will then either decide to clear it back to City of Edinburgh Council to decide as they see fit, or it could be called in for Ministers' own decision. The reason for this is to safeguard land that may be required for Airport purposes to fulfil the White Paper objectives, from other incompatible development.

Click on map to enlarge	Click on map to enlarge

At the Conference on Tuesday, Jim Wallace, Deputy First Minister, in his keynote speech spoke of the National Planning Framework highlighting West Edinburgh as an area where major change is already occurring and where the complexity of the issues necessitates co-ordinated action in the national interest. He referred to West Edinburgh as gateway to the Capital and the West Edinburgh Planning Framework as seeking to realise its potential for high quality economic development. He also referred to financial services as key to the reputation and future success of Edinburgh. Bill Furness, in his capacity on Tuesday as Chair of the Edinburgh and Lothian Local Economic Forum, referred to West Edinburgh and the area round the Airport as Scotland's Gateway with all that that implies about first impressions of a country and its attractiveness to business and tourism. And Professor Michael Parkinson, of the European Institute for Urban Affairs at Liverpool John Moores University, argued on the basis of studies he has done that cities are drivers of the national economy, and that airports drive growth for their city regions.

This report, from January this year, also argues that airports are fundamentally significant national economic motors. They bring wide benefits to regional business interests and to consumers and provide essential infrastructure to support regional social and economic growth. The catalytic effect of an airport enhances business efficiency and productivity by providing easy access to suppliers and customers. In a global market, airports give key accessibility advantages. Airports increasingly develop as multi-modal transport interchanges creating strategic advantage and potentially enabling them to grow into new development poles. The report also states that it is often the financial and business services sectors which make the greatest use of air transport and for whom accessibility to air services will have the strongest influence on location decisions. Our own Royal Bank of Scotland demonstrates the point in Edinburgh.

This work was partly done prior to the European Airport Regions Conference in 2000 and subsequently developed. It rightly highlights the challenge that airport development poses for achieving the right balance between the economic, social and environmental aims that sustainability demands. The specific challenge facing airports is to harness the positive developmental features and minimise the harmful and wasteful impacts. There is no one model for how this can be done, but airports must be integrated into a coherent spatial development framework involving a complex number and variety of actors, institutional and otherwise, who have to be brought together in a constructive spirit. The most important lesson demonstrated in the report is the need to have a comprehensive regional framework for land use and transport planning which fully integrates airports and their development. This report also highlights the trend for airports to grow into development nodes, or airport cities, supported by surface access transport interchanges. What I have attempted to do in highlighting these various influences is to set a context that has resonance for our West Edinburgh Planning Framework Review.

So now I will turn to the Review itself. The work is organised through a Working Group of Edinburgh and West Lothian Councils with Scottish Enterprise Edinburgh and Lothian and the Scottish Executive. Edinburgh Airport Limited, the Royal Highland Centre and Transport Initiatives Edinburgh will be close working partners, and there will then be a stakeholder advisory group of those organisations with a strategic interest in the area including representation from the local community, and a wider reference group of local interests and land and property interests. As before bilateral meetings will be offered to any who wish it, and a number of useful meetings have been held and others are arranged.

The Royal Highland Centre, without prejudice to their position of not having agreed to any move, have agreed to set out the parameters of their existing and future business needs to assist in the site search. The Scottish Executive, SEEL, City of Edinburgh Council and West Lothian Council will form the working group with the Royal Highland Centre. The site search will be confined to Edinburgh and West Lothian to meet locational criteria set by the Royal Highland Centre. It will clearly be necessary to identify sites meeting the locational and development criteria and to assess the costs of relocation. The core work on the West Edinburgh Planning Framework Review will seek to investigate the extent to which creating development value in West Edinburgh may assist in financing relocation.

The White Paper requires each Airport to prepare a Master Plan within 12 months. The Master Plan at Edinburgh should define actual boundaries of land requirements, and the purpose for which the land is required that will supersede the indicative map in the White Paper. I believe that Edinburgh Airport Limited have made progress on their Master Plan and I would expect that the land use requirements would be a refinement of what has been shown indicatively in the White Paper rather than any radically different disposition. They have stated publicly that they will not need to acquire the former MoD housing at Lennymuir.

The Bill for Tram Line 2 is now before Parliament with indicative route lines and limits of deviation defined on maps. The Airport Rail link is also defined but is subject to more detailed feasibility work before reaching the level of definition that will allow a Bill to be placed before Parliament late this year or early 2005. The White Paper refers to the need for a link from the airport to the M8 and DfT have had preliminary work on routes done by their consultants. This work requires more detailed feasibility to the satisfaction of Scottish Executive road engineers, and the policy position remains that Scottish Executive would not want it to open before the rail and tram links. Edinburgh Airport Limited propose to lodge a planning application for a road link from the Hilton Hotel roundabout eastwards to connect into the north side of the Gogar Roundabout. This may conflict with the Tram Bill's proposals to site a tram depot on land north of the Gogar Roundabout, and City of Edinburgh Council are likely to treat the planning application as premature. Such a link was however shown indicatively in the published West Edinburgh Planning Framework. It would give some relief and comfort to the Airport that they could maintain relatively efficient access from the City once the Royal Bank HQ opens, with its access to the A8. I understand that Transport Initiatives Edinburgh are trying to focus as much of the transport infrastructure in a single corridor as feasible to minimise land take and avoid severance of potential development land.

The brief talks of a consultation draft by early 2005, and final publication later that year. There are a number of steps along the way which are not under our control which may affect the timing. The Airport Master Plan is one but I think that will fit that timetable. The Tram Bill is currently before Parliament, with the Rail Link Bill to follow around the end of the year. Until we have a degree of clarity on both of those, and importantly how they mesh together and with any additional road links, we cannot reasonably prepare a draft West Edinburgh Planning Framework Review. In any event it is likely that the process of procuring consultancy on land use and transport modelling in particular and then working through the process of defining tests on the model and interpreting results will take us longer than we at first thought. The timetable in the brief should therefore be taken as indicative and we will keep you regularly in touch with progress.

So where do we go from here? The immediate tasks for us are to procure consultancies in land use transport modelling and for the Royal Highland Centre site search. We will obviously continue to hold bilateral meetings and I am happy to entertain requests from any interested parties. The Airport Master Plan will take us forward a step in helping to define land requirements, and to identify which parts of the Royal Highland Centre landholding will not be required for the airport and are therefore available for redevelopment. The tram and rail proposals will continue to firm up and help define the land use dispositions that are potentially available for future development. And as I have said we will keep both the Stakeholder Advisory Group and the Wider Reference Group, both of whom are here today, in touch as we progress.

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