Dear Editor
You might be aware of the fire that took place on Tuesday (14 August) in the back stairwell of the middle block of houses in Royston; a stairwell I may add that is populated by families with small children – we can all just be grateful that it happened during the day and was spotted and contained.
Although I am not aware of how the fire started it would have required materials for it to get going.
Last year I complained to the Edinburgh North office of how a culture of tipping and the accumulation of materials was taking over the back gardens of Royston and it would not be a leap to surmise that the stairwells might be affected by this culture of people getting rid of an excess of materials from their houses into the bottom of stairwells.
Given the demographic of people in the Royston area there will be people who can not afford for items to be uplifted by the council or hire vans to take them away or have no cultural awareness of the etiquette of living in a communal stair in a city.
It would be interesting for someone in the council to do the arithmetic on how much it takes to do a free uplift compared to how much it is going to cost to fix a back stairwell that has been fire damaged? Or how much it takes to fix the problem of a culture of fly tipping taking over?
Maybe some sort of inspection of the state of the stairwells is required throughout that area to asses the potential to prevent any future incidents like this happening again.
I make this suggestion as it would appear by the nature of the questions asked by the police officer who knocked on my door and the neighbours’ doors that the police are looking for someone who was seen running from the scene at the back of the gardens shortly after the fire was started.
Secondly there is now a culture of people smoking at their back stairwell doors in the last few years and if they are not extinguishing cigarettes properly there is the potential for more fires as well if people are storing or tipping materials.
Padraig O’Neill
Pilton Drive North