Copy of response made by Portobello Community Council to the SESPlan MIR (main issues report).

Summary

On reviewing the SESPlan MIR Portobello Community Council took the position to gather local resident’s views on a single issue within the report. It was hoped that this would also help to promote residents to then consider and respond to the MIR themselves.

Question 2 on spatial strategy was selected, as it felt this was both important and of particular relevance locally. Our consultation ran from 29 July to 28 September.

Q2: A Strategy for Edinburgh and South East Scotland

Based on our consultation responses we agree with the preferred option 3 – growth corridors.

Our consultation asked respondents to rank each of the three options on a five point scale (strongly disagree through to strongly agree)
We received 53 responses. To summarise support for option 1 (concentrated growth) was 15%, option 2 (distributed growth) 17% and option 3 (growth corridors) 60%. Numbers against were 79%, 58% and 21% respectively. (Full results in attached documents)

General comments

Low response

Portobello Community Council runs many consultations and the return rate on this one was very low – perhaps a fifth to an eighth of what we could normally expect. This is despite: a small subset of the MIR being consulted on (simpler); online promotion being paid for; and the consultation being run for a significant time period.

More than 10,000 people were reached by our awareness campaign. More than 1,000 engaged with the campaign materials but only 53 responded. Of those, 32 responded after we emailed a random sample of 500 from our mailing list asking them for their views. This could be down to apathy, or perhaps it is too complicated for people to form a clear opinion?

It is probably reasonable to conclude that this community does not have a major issue with the preferred strategy of growth corridors.

Simpler consultation

The easy read report is a good addition, making the MIR more accessible. However to respond you are thrown into the complicated portal and the main MIR report. It should be much simpler to respond, using as wide a range of ways as possible.

It’s good to see the range of events put on, and info boards in public locations, to promote the MIR. It would be good to take this further – ask people their comments using simple bite-sized questions where they are. For example focus on Q2 one day, asking people in a supermarket.

Appendix: Consultation responses

(included in attached documents)