Author: templar

The headline figure for East Lothian as a whole is very high, according to a 2013 Community Planning profile published here. The East Lothian Residents Survey (2011) shows 99% of people surveyed saying that East Lothian was a “fairly good” or “very good” place to live, really quite high or hardly surprising, depending on where you live – or so you would think.

The results were generally very uniform – even when people were asked about their own neighbourhoods, the same pattern emerges. The averages conceal an interesting anomaly. Mostly it matters not where you live – residents of Fa’side, Haddington, North Berwick, Seton and Musselburgh wards all agree that their neighbourhood is a “very good” place to live not just “fairly good”. The range is 2:1 to 4:1 relative to those who say it is just fairly good. Continue reading How good is your neighbourhood as a place to live?

It is perhaps not surprising that the Scottish Government’s response to Malcolm Fraser’s Town Centre recommendations is short on on easy answers, as the problems it tackles are quite complex – some say irresolvable, but it is commendably brief.

The predictable rhetoric is all there in the Minister’s opening remarks:-  “all directorates have been actively engaged, identifying the relevant policies, programmes and strategies which support and put in place the conditions for the recommendations to be delivered locally and to assist local action.” I should hope so too. But I hope that we don’t have a boring bureaucratic response in the shape of The Regeneration Unit, simply co-ordinating activity by spreadsheet and action plan. The language of partnership, empowerment and participation have pervaded public policy under successive governments, so it is easy to get jaded. I am not alone in thinking that all this ‘joined up thinking’ is more like ‘stitched up thinking’ and subverting the democratic process with a new managerialism.

Continue reading Action : Reaction – another town centre action plan?