Agenda item

Motion by Councillor Aston - HES Strategic Plan for Holyrood Park

“Committee:

1)         Welcomes the publication of Historic Environment Scotland’s Outline Strategic Plan for Holyrood Park, which explicitly sets out to align with key Council strategies such as the City Mobility Plan, City Plan 2030, and the draft net zero 2030 Climate Strategy.

2)         Welcomes as particularly relevant to the work of this Committee the provisional objectives to:

‘Make active travel the dominant travel mode through and to the Park’

            And to achieve that:

‘Steps will be implemented to very substantially reduce, or remove all, vehicular through traffic from the Park to significantly reduce conflict between users and vehicles and improve the quality of user experience in the Park.’

            And to deliver:

‘a comprehensive network of paths and active travel routes across the Park for all users and visitors’

            And to ensure that:

‘Access for All will be facilitated across the Park through appropriate measures based on a robust Access Audit that unlocks barriers to access and helps develop a truly inclusive Park.’

3)         And notes that, as this document is currently an outline strategic plan which is subject to a 12-week consultation which runs until 19^th December 2023, little detail has as yet been provided on what steps will be implemented and in what timeframe to achieve these valuable outcomes.

4)         Further notes that while the outline strategic plan states that the City of Edinburgh Council is among the organisations with which HES enjoys a close relationship in relation to the management of Holyrood Park on behalf of the people of Edinburgh and of Scotland, there are no formalised arrangements for the involvement of key stakeholders in the management of the site and that the Council has a crucial role to play in changes such as this because it is the local transport authority and is responsible for all roads around and connecting to the Park.

5)         Recognises and praises the work of the Car Free Holyrood campaign in persuading HES over time to come to a position where substantially reducing or removing vehicular through traffic from the Park is one of their key provisional objectives

6)         Agrees that council officers will seek to formalise the stakeholder relationship with HES in relation to the Park’s management and will write to HES to feed into the ongoing consultation, with the draft consultation response being reported in the November committee’s Business Bulletin before being submitted, and will promote the HES consultation to Edinburgh residents via the Council’s social media channels.”