Who at ELC is seriously suggesting development that ignores our heritage and our Master Plan

It beggars belief does it not?

Our thanks to Lucy Samson at East Lothian Courier for highlighting the bizarre goings on within ELC.



Did we not spend 2 years consulting and debating and arriving at our £150,000 Master Plan for the site of the former Cockenzie Power Station?

Did the community not assert its wishes that Greenhills, the 1722 Waggonway and the 1745 Battlefield should be encompassed in any future development for the balance of the site?

Did not even the Scottish Government's Reporter on the Offshore/ coming Inshore SubStation express surprise that ELC was not campaigning for our mutually/ expensively agreed Master Plan?

.. so how on earth is a wee leaflet suggesting all 200 acres is available for development seeing the light of any day?

Let's be clear; we do understand the attractiveness to ELC of a replication of the model being pursued by Hargreaves at Blindwells. One prime developer, Hargreaves led by Iain Slater, takes responsibility for showing all the creative initiative and moving all along with the Council interjecting as planning issues emerge. Hargreaves finds the house builders taking that entrepreneurial challenge off ELC. Nice model indeed.

But we all know our former Power Station site is a more complex 200 acres than the opencast coal mine was at Blindwells. There are serious heritage elements that cannot be ignored and green spaces/ green lung priorities for the local community. There's a bold proposal for a cruise terminal at Cockenzie to take account of too.

A simple request then, please, to ELC. Publicly endorse and promulgate our mutually agreed Master Plan and invite enterprises to join with us in developing those areas that are appropriate. Keep faith with the communities you consulted at length for £150,000.

If as ELC's spokesperson opined for Lucy Samson when asked: "There is no absolutely no suggestion that historic areas such as the battlefield site and Greenhills are being marketed for development" ...why include them in a wee leaflet not for broadscale circulation that says they are!