Hibs striker appears in court
Mounted Police section to close
High Speed Rail
Audit Committee and Trams
City Centre Neighbourhood Partnership Meeting
Hibs footballer, Garry O’Connor, left Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday lunchtime, having tendered a plea of not guilty to charges of possessing cocaine and resisting arrest.
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The Scotsman claims that there is a possibility of Edinburgh losing its mounted police section, in a cost cutting measure sure to attract much comment from local residents. The horses would be moved to Glasgow and would only be brought back for certain events, ending the familiar sight of mounted police in the city. The reported saving will be around £52,000. Maybe they will get bicycles instead? Lothian and Borders Police Board met on Monday this week and one of the reports produced explained that their Transforming the Service initiative had identified at least part of £3.3m of proposed savings which could be made in this financial year, on top of an agreed sum of £6.6m already cut from the 2011/12 budget.
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The Scottish Government is planning an alliance with North of England MPs to try to ensure that High Speed Rail makes it as far as Scotland, reports David Miller, Environment Correspondent for the BBC. The Reporter asked Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism, Fergus Ewing, only yesterday about what the government were doing on this issue to assist tourism growth in Edinburgh. You can listen to the whole interview here.
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The Council’s Audit committee meets this afternoon when one of the items on the agenda is an update on the tram project. According to the report to be placed before the meeting this afternoon from the £776m funding approved by the council last year, £521m has now been spent. It is stated that the project is now running within its agreed financial limits. The report goes on to explain that out of the contingency fund for emergencies or unforeseen circumstances £1m has been spent. There is a great amount of detail within the report as to what the £1m was spent on, including £159,900 which was used to extend the Edinburgh Park office to accommodate employees from the council and Transport Scotland,£9,436.93 was spent on reviewing the design for a new cycleway from the Mound to Princes Street, and £20,020.51 spent on work to change the design to widen the footway alongside the south side of Lindsay Road at the Hawthornvale Cycle Link.
There is also a complete timetabling and breakdown of all the regular meetings held to ensure that the governance arrangements of the project are tightly controlled within the report produced by the Chief Executive, Sue Bruce. One of these is a meeting involving all city centre councillors to ensure that they are advised of all aspects of the tram project which affect that area. So if you have any city centre issues, then they ought to be able to advise you from a position of knowledge as to what is happening.
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The City Centre Neighbourhood Partnership meets tonight at 7pm in the City Chambers, High Street.
