The City of Edinburgh Council said around 80,000 Edinburgh residents are struggling to make ends meet, with one in five children in the city living in poverty. Council Leader Jane Meagher said she attended the End Poverty Edinburgh Annual Conference and praised contributors to the Poverty Commission’s latest End Poverty annual progress report, work the Improvement Service has highlighted as best practice. The council said it is raising awareness of child maintenance payments and other benefits and developing a three-year action plan on fair work, and said Meagher has written to the First Minister seeking funding adequacy, flexibility and security.
The council said Meagher joined the First Minister and Cruden Homes representatives to mark the start of construction on the next phase of Granton Waterfront, part of a £1.3 billion regeneration including 847 new homes, almost half of them affordable, a primary school, leisure facilities and Scotland’s largest coastal park.
On Bonfire Night, the council said last year’s events passed without serious incident, crediting Firework Control Zones and Police Dispersal Zones, and urged residents to attend organised displays and be considerate of neighbours and pets.
The council said it is the UK’s first local authority to introduce a city-wide visitor levy, with first payments from accommodation providers due in November. It said it has launched a £3.8 million fund for cultural and heritage buildings and is expanding street cleansing patrols.
The council said Meagher signed UNISON’s Violence at Work Charter, committing to risk assessments and safer working arrangements following a rise in violent incidents against staff.
The council said it has been shortlisted in two COSLA Excellence Awards categories, for the visitor levy and the Whole Family Wellbeing Parent Panel, and that its Cables Wynd House and Linksview retrofit has been shortlisted for an Architects’ Journal award. It also said Lothian Buses and Edinburgh Trams were named UK Operators of the Year, and Edinburgh topped the UK’s best city to visit category in the Conde Nast Traveller Readers’ Choice Awards, with the city described as “good-humoured, open-minded, and pulsing with creative energy”.