Home News Council by-elections 2026 – Southside/Newington – Artie Khovanov

Council by-elections 2026 – Southside/Newington – Artie Khovanov

August 17, 2026 7:48 am

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The Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate for Southside/Newington fits the current political mould. He is a Cambridge graduate (like Andy Burnham) and English (like Andy Burnham) but there the similarity ends.

Artie Khovanov is a PhD candidate in Edinburgh who spent four years at Cambridge achieving a degree and a Masters.

While he is a first time political candidate he says he has a lot of knowledge of council procedure, and has worked on party policies which he believes will stand him in good stead.

He is honest and direct about why he wants to be a councillor. He said: “Well, I just want to make the council services work for people, basically. I think there’s a lot of things around the city where the council says this and the council says that, but sometimes I think we get away from the idea that the council’s really there to make the services work for people.

“So that’s really what is driving me to represent my area to basically make things better.”

He gives roads as one example. He said: “The roads and pavements around here can be pretty awful and it can take ages to fill potholes. I cycle, I commute by bike between home and the central campus where I work. Sometimes it’s dangerous, a lot of the time it’s uncomfortable.

“The Lib Dems managed to secure record funding two years in a row on road repairs. But we need to do more in that direction. So that’s the sort of thing I’m really focused on when I’m thinking about what is the difference I will make as a councillor.”

We put it to Artie that the LibDem group on the council is 14 strong and he might be the 15th member of the political group. But, time and again, the group has not stepped up to try and take over the administration of the council. We asked what difference he might make from the sidelines.

He replied: “Well, actually no party group has a majority on the council – and we wouldn’t even be the biggest group there. Although obviously we’re very excited about what the next elections in May might hold for us when there’ll be more of a mandate across the city. We’re looking to make some really big gains there and I’m really excited to see what happens. But the reality is that no one group on the council can tell the council what to do.

“Another Lib Dem is another councillor that is focused on delivering for residents, delivering on people’s priorities, listening to people, rather than just talking down to them or talking in sort of abstractions, which sound nice but don’t actually deliver for people.”

He also says that the current council group works really well in cross-party situations.

He said: “The group works with different parties at different times to deliver on residents’ priorities according to our values. Sometimes we’ll vote with one party, sometimes we’ll vote with another party. And that’s how it should work.

“We have STV (single transferrable vote, we have a proportional voting system. You’re not going to have these sort of ridiculous scenarios you get in England where you get 100% of the seats on about 40% of the vote on councils.

“So the reality is we can’t just take control. Every party is on the sideline, so to speak. And we’ve just got to build those connections and work with other councillors and be pragmatic to get the most that we can. And that’s what the Lib Dem Council Group has been really excellent at doing. And that’s what I as a councillor will also deliver.”

Asked about his experience of council working he said that although this is his first time standing for public office and that he is “very excited” about that, he does have a background in working on “political matters”.

He explained he got involved in “getting things delivered for students, holding the university to account and holding the students’ union to account” while a newish student.

He said: “For instance, there was an incident when I was an undergrad where the students’ union was leaking really sensitive data, like the list of LGBT students, the list of disabled students in a society, to the president of that society – a massive data breach.

“And shamefully, the student union attempted to cover it up. And I was heavily involved in the campaign to hold the student union to account. First and foremost, you know, stop the problem from happening. And secondly, make make sure it wouldn’t happen again. And no, we we did end up getting an independent investigation.”

He confirmed this matter became serious enough for the information commissioner’s office to look into it.

He continued: “When I think about, you know, casework, which is a big part of what councillors do, you’ve got a system, but unfortunately the system doesn’t work for everyone all the time. And there’s got to be someone there to go, ‘hang on, this isn’t right’. Let’s do something about this. There’s all these regulations and procedures that are supposed to be in place.

“What was a random student supposed to do there who’d had their data leaked? What would they even know to do?

“That is where I guess people like me, (and there were lots of other really great people working on that), stepped in and actually tried to fix the problem.

“I’ve been doing a lot of that sort of work, representing students, standing up for students. I’ve also been in the Lib Dems for a few years now. So although I haven’t had sort of direct experience of being a councillor, which is after all what I’m trying to achieve by standing in this election, I obviously have a very good idea of how things work. I’ve been doing a lot of policy work within the party and that you very quickly find out the difference between saying things on social media in theory and how things actually work on contact with reality.

“And I think that’s really, really important not to lose sight of. I think sometimes, especially from some other parties, you can say something that sounds really nice, but the question is does it actually work when you when you implement it?

And again, that’s what all of the amazing Lib Dem colleagues I have across Edinburgh that I’ve met over the past couple of years are really, really committed to actually delivering for people, rather than just saying nice things or passing nice sounding policies.”

Artie grew up in England in a in a few different places, but mostly in Kenilworth,in the Midlands. He then went up to Cambridge for for four years, following which he took up the opportunity to do a PhD in AI research in Edinburgh.

He said: “Now I’ve really fallen in love with the city. I’ve been here nearly two years now, and it’s really beautiful. And living on the south side, I mean, the sort of vibes are really great on Nicholson Street with all the with all the little shops and also the university campus there. I really love it. I live just in the in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat and I can see it every day.

Housing Emergency

We posed him the question about what he would plan to do about the housing emergency, which is within the council’s remit.

Artie considered his response, saying: “I think every part of the city has its bit to play in tackling the housing crisis. The main thing is you need more houses for people to live in. It’s that simple, supply and demand.

“Looking specifically at Southside Newington Ward, I think we’ve got to get creative because obviously most of the areas already built up and a lot of the areas that aren’t built up are very precious green spaces.

“I don’t think anyone’s suggesting concreting over the Meadows, but there’s two things that come to mind in Southside Newton specifically. The first thing is, you know, Scottish Widows up in St Leonard’s, the hexagons. So originally there was planning permission to replace most of that site with dense housing for people, with affordable housing.

“Some of the iconic black hexagons were to be retained at the front as business premises. And you know, this was a brilliant idea, mixed use development, lots of extra units, sounds great.

“Now I’m hearing that’s all been scrapped and it’s going to be an apart hotel. So what’s happened there? I think it’s just completely unacceptable that opportunities like that – to deliver on getting more housing in an area of the city which is under a lot of housing pressure already, and where it’s difficult to to just build more because there’s houses everywhere already – how has that been allowed to happen? How have we gone with the same permission from a mixed use residential to apart hotels? That is the sort of thing that I think should not be happening.

“Secondly what I’d be interested in, as I said, I think we do need to get creative. So congregations are falling, and a lot of the churches are combining, and that means the old premises keep being sold off. I think it would be really interesting to look into how we can get maybe temporary accommodation there, rather than knocking the whole building down, and losing the historic sort of nature of the of the building. You could keep the façade, you could replace some of the inside with accommodation, possibly temporary accommodation, possibly permanent accommodation.

“You could have community centres, and you could maybe even retain some sort of chapel inside, some holy site inside to sort of retain the heritage and the culture of the building. On its own, one church conversion won’t solve the housing crisis, but in an area like Southside Newington, which is already so built up, every little step we take like that will really help to alleviate it – if everywhere across the city did things like this.”

Council funding

He continued: “I’ve already talked about getting more fundin and I think it is really a resourcing issue, getting more funding into road and pavement repairs, and I’ve talked about tackling housing. The other thing I think I’d like to do is make sure our active travel routes are fit for purpose. So we have some pretty decent segregated cycle lanes across across Southside Newington.

“I’ve been doing work for years, campaigning for safer streets essentially for pedestrians, for cyclists, for everyone really. and for drivers too. We’ve got some really dangerous junctions – the one at East Mayfield and Dalkeith Road, it’s just unacceptable.

“People are going to get really hurt there. Something absolutely needs to be done about that. But for some reason it’s low priority. I can’t understand why.

“We need to make sure our active travel routes are fit for purpose.

“A lot of the segregated cycle lanes in the ward have not been resurfaced for a long time and often their surfacing is worse than the surfacing on the main road, which is ridiculous because the wear and tear comes from cars, not bikes. It’s just no one’s bothered to go in and do it, so making sure that’s all working would also be a priority.”

All the candidates in the Southside/Newington Ward are as follows: