Campaigners today welcomed Edinburgh Council's decision to re-consider its plan to sell Meadowbank Stadium.
The Council had agreed to sell the Meadowbank site to property developers in order to fund facilities elsewhere. But faced with thousands of objections the Council today agreed to go back to the drawing board.
A working group will be set-up with a brief to 're-open and examine the principle of the sale of the Meadowbank site either in whole or part". Councillors also agreed that "no parameters are set within which the group must confine its deliberations."
Campaigners had been concerned at the wording of Council leader Ewan Aitken's original motion but expressed delight it was passed with important amendments.
"The motion as it stood clearly continued to pre-suppose the sale of the Meadowbank site," said campaign spokesperson Heather Peacock. "The amendments broaden the consultation group's remit sufficiently to address one of our main concerns over the motion."
"Unfortunately the working group does not include representation from the Save Meadowbank campaign group. Nor does it allow for full public participation in the consultation process.
"We are also concerned that the working group must prepare an interim report for presentation to the council by 28 June 2007. This seems an incredibly short timescale for such an important debate."
Today's decision was taken after a two month campaign. 600 attended a hastily-arranged protest meeting, the same number marched from Meadowbank to the City Chambers and almost 10,000 signed petitions. The campaign also revealed the original decision to sell Meadowbank was done without proper consultation and was based upon misinformation about funding.
Concluded Peacock: "Our campaign to save Meadowbank has been successful thus far. But the job is not complete and we will continue to work and lobby until public opinion becomes central to the debate."
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2 comments:
Great stuff! I think the blog and the viral stuff you've been getting through will have made a big difference. Time, of course, to up the anti if anything. Congrats!
Cheers Ewan and thanks for all the web 2.0 inspiration! We're taking a very short breather now and making plans on the most effective way to take the campaign forward. You're totally correct and we will continue to work and lobby as hard as we possibly can to achieve our aims and ensure public opinion becomes central to the debate.
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