Highlights of the meeting with Jim Grieve

Marilyne MacLaren had set up a meeting for us with Jim Grieve, which we had yesterday. Twelve of us and Marilyne went down there and met with him in the Mandela Room in City Chambers for a little over an hour. I must say he did very well and came across like a nice guy; I’m not sure I would like to have been in his position, one against thirteen.

It turned out pretty well, I think. Everyone got a chance to speak and explain something about the problems we’ve all been having. It sounded very much as though Jim already knew how difficult things are for us and he was prepared to help us out. I’ll give you the highlights and I’ll put detailed minutes on the blog.

Long Term

1. The council will look at redrawing the boundaries of the zones. This is seen as the most sustainable solution.


2. Shared use (I’ve wrongly been calling it dual use) will very likely be introduced in many places and this is very likely to happen in our areas.


3. There will be a review of all yellow lines and parking bays in the old zones to see if more spaces can be made available.


4. There are no plans to help the traders. We’ll need to look at this again.

Short Term

1. If we give a list of streets that are badly affected, Jim will issue letters to permit holders in those streets allowing them, until the long term solutions are in place, to park in S1.


2. There may be a possibility of allowing permit holders to park in pay & display until 10 or 10:30 am and after 4pm. We will need to work on this issue.

I realise as I went through my notes from the meeting that I’m still a bit unclear about some of the timings of things. I will follow up with Jim to find out and post on the blog.

To get short term point 1 we need to gather some data, I think. On a couple of nights next week we need to walk the streets of zones 7 and 8 (Marchmont and Sciennes only) and count the number of spaces of different types. We have that once already for zone 8, but a few more samples would mean that we can be sure our statistics are correct. We need that data for zone 7. Then, we can submit the list to Jim.

So, I am looking for a few volunteers prepared to brave the weather at about 9 or 10 at night on Monday and Tuesday next week. If enough people volunteer it will be a very quick and easy job.

Please, shoot me an email if you can help.


There were also a couple of pints had at the end of the evening :-)