Dear Friend of Inch Park,
 
Inch Community Association would like to thank you very much for signing our recent petition to save the Inch Park Nursery in Edinburgh from the threat of being built over for housing.
 
Well over 4000 people have signed our petition so far!! We’ve had support from across Scotland and beyond; often from Inchers who grew up here and have since moved away. Remarkably, within Edinburgh we received eight times more responses to our petition than the City Council received through their own official consultation process carried out in April across the whole of the City.
 
What’s happened since you signed our petition?
We are extremely appreciative of your support and you’ll be glad to hear it’s had a real impact. In particular, we’ve been able to show Edinburgh City councillors the strength of feeling that exists within the community against building houses for up to 2000 people smack in the middle of one of Edinburgh’s most beloved parks.
 
We’ve also been able to share with them some of the hundreds of personal comments which some people submitted with their petition, many of which set out the case against the development with great power and eloquence. Not surprisingly many councillors have already been persuaded by these arguments and have come out publicly against the development.
 
Stopping the plan in its tracks
One of the main objectives of our campaign has been to try and get the proposal to build over Inch Park Nursery removed from the Council’s forthcoming local development plan (‘City Plan 2030’), a plan which is currently under review by the Council’s Planning Committee. This would be the most effective way of stopping the development, by killing it off before it even manages to leave the planning stage.
 
With this objective in mind, we applied to the Committee for permission to put the case against development to them directly and they agreed to hear our presentation at a meeting which took place earlier this month. Unfortunately, because of technical reasons, the Committee had to postpone its discussion of City Plan 2030 (including the Inch Park development) until a later meeting in February.
 
The next steps
When the Planning Committee meets in late February we will try again to persuade them to remove the imminent threat to Inch Park presented by the City Plan 2030 proposal. If successful then, Inch Park will be safe for the meantime at least. Otherwise we will be looking forward to a longer campaign of trying to persuade the whole Council to stop this terrible proposal which would likely stretch well into the Spring. 
 
How you can help
In either case in order for it to succeed the campaign will depend on it being able to demonstrate that it has the continued support of the community. So please stay in touch with us by sending your name and a contact email to the address below and we’ll send you news of all major developments. 
 
InchParkinDanger@inchhouse.co.uk
 
A little bit of history
If you want to hear a little more about the formation of The Inch housing estate and its parkland you can view a short video on City of Edinburgh Archive’s Facebook (see link below). The talk was created as part of the ReDrawing Edinburgh Project.
 
https://www.facebook.com/866641726707773/videos/373677537024669/
 
With best wishes,
 
Kevin Gibbons
Campaign Co-ordinator
Inch Community Association
 
Data Protection undertaking: Inch Community Association undertakes that the record of your name and contact email address will be kept and administered securely and not shared with any third party. Furthermore, that it will be used only for the purpose of reasonable communication with yourself for the duration of this campaign. Upon the campaign being concluded it will be automatically deleted or will be deleted prior to that if you at any time so request. By sharing your name and contact email address with us you agree to accept the above stated conditions for their use and storage.