Just a reminder that the changes to household bin collections come into force from today.
Your green household bin, brown garden waste bin and grey food bin collections will now be on the same day of the week – you will have been notified of what day that is in a new calendar provided by the council.
Grey food bins will still be collected every week, but your green and brown bins will now be collected once a fortnight – the green bin one week and the brown bin the following week.
The red and blue recycling box schedules are not changing – you will continue to receive a separate calendar as usual.
If you use a communal bin, it will be collected as normal.
Some statistical information for all you cyber-geeks out there – the NEN blog will pass three important (for us, anyway!) milestones over the next day or so.
We’re getting very very close to 750 posts, 50,000 all-time views and 250 comments! We think that’s not too bad for a wee community newspaper and it’s nice to be able to shout about it!
The blog was born on 19 January 2011, with a post to introduce the NEN and to welcome readers. There was an understandable silence shortly after that as the NEN’s funding was discontinued, but now – slowly but surely – the figures are creeping up.
Our thanks to you for your contributions and your comments, to our old friends for sticking with us and our new followers who are now beginning to share their stories. Our thanks to you all for helping to keep the blog fresh, interesting, topical and, hopefully, fun to read.
And thanks to our readers, wherever you come from – but a special mention to our loyal friend in Moldova!
Stepping Stones (North Edinburgh) will be holding their AGM on Thursday 20 September at 12.30pm in Royston Wardieburn Community Centre, Pilton Drive North. All welcome.
Stepping Stones is one of North Edinburgh’s longest established and most succesful community-led organisations, and has worked with young parents (up to 25) and pregnant teenagers from across the Greater Pilton Area of Edinburgh since 1986.
Stepping Stones provides structured but flexible support to young parent families and pregnant teenagers, providing centres where parents can relax, enjoy themselves and their children. The varied group work programmes include leisure recreational and educational activities and is designed to offer a wide range of learning opportunities to the family.
Individual support is also available to complement the group work sessions. Individual support includes counselling, help with parenting, play therapy, relationship advice, career and training advice, housing and debt management, etc. A designated worker provides individual and group support to very young pregnant teenagers.
For further information about Stepping Stones (North Edinburgh) telephone 551 1632, email ststnorthed@hotmail.com or visit their website at www.steppingstonesnorthedinburgh.co.uk Then again, you could find out all the latest Stepping Stones news by attending the AGM!
Initiatives to make Edinburgh a better city for ‘active travel’ will be considered by councillors this week, with cycling set to recieve a considerable chunk of the council’s transport budget. Inspired by Olympic success, there’s been a sharp rise in bike ownership over the last month so the measures are likely to prove popular with the Edinburgh public.
An extra dedicated cycling officer will also be appointed to take forward the design and construction of schemes that are already in the pipeline.
A further £460,000 will be spent on routine maintenance of cycle routes and on marketing and promotion. This year the Council has also attracted £425,000 of matching funding for cycle projects from the Scottish Government via Sustrans.
Councillor Jim Orr, vice-convener of the Transport committee, said: “This programme is evidence of the capital coalition’s commitment to making it easier, safer and more attractive for people to cycle and walk in Edinburgh. It represents a record investment by the Council with 5% of our total transport budget going on cycling, and we believe this is more than any other Scottish authority in both total and per head spend. Encouraging active travel makes sense for environmental, health and traffic reasons, but Edinburgh is also a fantastic city to explore on foot or two wheels. Our investment will make the most of that.”
There will be further spending on promoting walking, with a new post focussed on improving design for pedestrians and upgrading popular routes.
The measures form part of the Council’s Active Travel action plan, which was drawn up in 2010 with NHS Lothian, walking charity Living Streets, Sustrans and the city’s leading cycling group Spokes, among others. The Council’s progress will be measured under Scottish and European schemes to promote cycling, as well as annual reports to the Transport committee.
Edinburgh’s own Sir Chris Hoy’s herculean Olympic exploits have doubtless encouraged many more citizens to get on their bikes. Yesterday council leader Andrew Burns was joined by Inverleith councillor Nigel Bagshaw and Forth’s Cammy Day among others on the freshnlo Pedal for Scotland Glasgow to Edinburgh charity cycle – his tenth in a row! It seems the capital’s gone cycle crazy!
8500 cyclists registered for yesterday’s Pedal for Scotland event which was started by cycling star Mark beaumont and Scottish Transport minister Keith Brown
Your library’s opening hours are changing! From 1 October 22 city council libraries will open 10am – 5pm on Saturdays, with major changes to Thursday opening citywide. Local library opening times will be:
