Council elections 2017 – John McLellan – Craigentinny/Duddingston

Conservative Party candidate John McLellan met with The Edinburgh Reporter to explain why he now wants to be a councillor.

McLellan is a former newspaper editor, having been in charge at the Edinburgh News at two separate times and he was also the editor of Scotland on Sunday and The Scotsman.

He then moved on to help the Scottish Conservatives with communications and is now a director of the Scottish Newspaper Society. Our video report is below.

He explained to The Edinburgh Reporter : “I think there is a big opportunity and a lot of challenges in the city just now in the way it moves forward and the way it develops. I’ve always had a keen interest in planning issues, a keen interest in economic development and have been covering it since I left full-time employment with the papers, as a journalist I thought this would be a good time to get involved myself.

“I thought sitting in a council chamber listening to the debates, well maybe I can make a contribution too.

“A stronger Tory group in numbers terms anyway we would be able to bring more balance to the kind of debates that the city is going to have to have. I think the rigours that we can bring to it will I think help drive a reform programme. I think the council needs to examine what it does and how it does it more closely than it perhaps has do for the last ten years. Certainly there is a lot to be done and I sense there is a great degree of cynicism about the services that the council provides.

“There’s a lot of good things that the council does but I think more and more people are worried about how much value for money they’re getting for their council tax and want to see real improvements. I think the Conservatives have a real chance to make a big contribution to the debates that have been had and which will definitely continue to be had especially with the likelihood of council tax going up.”

And on issues in the ward where he is standing as a candidate, McLellan picked the planning matters: “The big item in this Ward is Meadowbank Stadium. There is no question about that. And it’s not just a big item for this ward, it’s a big item for the whole city. The future of the city’s sports facilities, the future of sports facilities in this ward are bound up by the asset that is Meadowbank Stadium.

“I think the plan to sell off or to reuse large parts of the land but not to put it on the open market means the city is likely not to get as good value for its asset as it might otherwise do.”

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The Edinburgh Reporter chats to John McLellan Conservative Candidate from Phyllis Stephen on Vimeo.