This week’s planning applications in Edinburgh

Planning applications lodged with the council’s planning department this week are detailed in the list below.

Applications of note or interest this week include:

• A proposal of application notice for Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) with other mixed use at Salamander Street which is a site owned by Dalton Demolition. A previous application for 46 student units (230 beds) 30 build to rent units and 16 affordable units on this site was refused in February. The reasons given for refusal included the need to deliver more houses, since less than half of the site would be used for new homes, air quality concerns and also flood risk.
• At the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh they wish to put in a modular steel access ramp and ticket booth with new paths and soft landscaping.
• There is an application relating to the Royal Lyceum Theatre where Galliford Try Digital Infrastructure want to remove and replace antennas and dishes on the building.
• There is a proposal of application for a site at 3 Lady Lawson Street where the owner intends demolishing and rebuilding as a hotel and office development. This is an innocuous looking application but it would involve demolition of the large building at Argyle House – which does lie on Lady Lawson Street but is also bounded by West Port on one side and Castle Terrace on the other. Codebase has its HQ there on the Castle Terrace side, and many other small businesses have their offices in the building.
• Read more about it here.
• Malcolm Fraser architect has written a paper saying that the building – brutalist though it may be – should not be demolished.
• His arguments are threefold:
• “1. Economic: the strongest part, in many independent economists’ views, of Edinburgh and Scotland’s economy is the unheralded and self-generated tech and crafts infrastructure – teccy start-ups, crafts daubers, fiddlers and dreamers – occupying cheap space and doing the real innovation, and generating the innovative jobs, that Government aye begs for. Argyle House has nurtured two unicorn companies – ie now capitalised at over a billion dollars. Do we really think it’s progress to put them out onto the street for more hotels and executive flats?
• “2. Heritage and Placemaking: Argyle House is a distinguished modernist building, in a city that continues to erase its recent heritage. In its sturdy, grey monumentality it is characteristically Edinburgh; and in placemaking it does a nice thing in stepping back from the tight junction at the head of West Port, a move that Patrick Geddes, doyen of Town Planning and Edinburgh Hero, would have surely approved, given his adage of “letting some light in”. Plus I recall a Hibernian Football Supporters Forum where Edinburgh taxi drivers praised it to the skies – local folk with good taste.
• “3. Carbon, Waste and Climate Doublespeak: it is madness, given the seriousness of the Climate Emergency and the ocean of waste that we condemn to landfill, to knock down a sturdy, solid and useful building, condemning huge amounts of embodied carbon. As an architect I find it particularly distressing to see the plans being advanced by a former President of my professional institute, who has proclaimed himself a “Climate Champion”.”
• There will be two public events when the proposal will be shown to the public. 
• 2 December 2pm to 7pm at The Lookout Edinburgh Futures Institute 1 Lauriston Place EH3 9EF and the other on 28 January 2pm to 7pm at the same location. The developer’s agent says that information leaflets will be distributed around the area about a week in advance of each event. The dedicated email for comment is [email protected] 

Any property owner seeking to build, improve or alter their home or commercial premises must have the correct consents. This begins with a planning application and usually progresses all the way to a completion certificate.

Some applications for large developments such as purpose built student accommodation have been referred to the government Reporter after refusal by the council. Alterations to some buildings may also need listed building consent which is dealt with simultaneously.

There is a class of alterations which are considered “permitted developments” and will not need any planning permission. There is more guidance here.

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