Decision delayed on 1,350-home Edinburgh ‘Garden District’

Put forward by developer Murray Estates, the proposal was for the first phase of a 675-acre Garden District development on a 54-hectare site next to Royal Bank of Scotland’s Edinburgh headquarters at Gogar Station Road.

The Redheughs Village development would eventually deliver up to 6,000 new homes over a 20-year cycle in a new urban district proposal which would include a school, shopping centre, sports facilities and green space.

A quarter of the initial development – 375 properties – will be affordable housing, with the remainder split between private homes and apartments.

However, the project was recommended for refusal in a City of Edinburgh Council report after planners concluded that the proposals would be “significantly contrary to the development plan” and would prejudice work on a replacement plan which is currently under examination.

The plans were due to be considered by the council’s development management sub-committee on Monday, but were withdrawn from the agenda after the applicant made a complaint about the contents of the report.

The report said: “The site is not needed to contribute to the five year effective housing land supply. The transport impacts of the development are not adequately resolved, meaning that the occupants of the development may be car dependent and there would be adverse impacts on the existing transport infrastructure in the area, for example, because of more congestion.

“The development would be prejudicial to the examination report of on the Edinburgh Local Development Plan and is, as a result, premature.”

Murray Estates had submitted a complaint to the council’s monitoring officer claiming that there were “factual errors and inaccuracies” in the report and some parts of it “read like a work of fiction”.

A City of Edinburgh Council spokeswoman said that the complaint to the monitoring officer was later withdrawn but “this was too late as the report had already been removed from the agenda” and the application was not considered by the committee.