MHA welcomes tenants to new homes

Muirhouse Housing Association (MHA) has announced the completion of the first batch of flats within their latest development. The flats, on Macgill Drive at the end of Muirhouse Avenue, are part of their second development on the old BT Training Ground site.

MHA accepted handover of twelve cottage flats yesterday. The flats are all main door, within a traditional four in a block design, and are all one bedrooms. They are aimed at an older age group and the ground floor flats are fully accessible to wheelchair users.

The flats benefit from an efficient gas central heating system and reach the Silver Sustainable Standard of energy efficiency. The ground floor flats have a wet floor shower room, and the upper flats have an over bath shower.

All tenants will have access to a shared garden which in the next year will be developed to meet the tenant’s needs. This includes drying areas and amenity space. MHA will maintain the shared garden area and we hope it will be well used as a communal area.

Of the twelve flats, seven have been allocated to existing tenants of MHA who are either downsizing from family houses or require a ground floor flat due to medical reasons while the remaining five have been allocated to applicants from Edindex.

As a result of twelve new units being built, 19 households have been housed or re-housed to suit their current needs.

May and Alan Price (above) are among the families on the move. “We have lived at Muirhouse Close for eighteen years – since the houses were built,” May said. “Our family has grown up and moved on now and it made sense for us to move to a smaller home. I really like the new flat and I think this will be great for us; perfect, really.”

MHA Chairperson Roy Douglas (pictured above with Bank of Scotland’s Douglas Spowart) said: “We’re delighted to welcome our residents to their new homes today and we hope they will be very happy here. Everyone is impressed with the quality of these new flats and of course we will have more to come in the summer. These are exciting times for MHA!”

The second phase of the development also includes some mid-market flats which will be available in July. These two bedroom flats will be marketed by Muirhouse Homes, and are targeted at households in employment who do not require Housing Benefit/Local Housing Allowance. Advertising will start soon locally, and then will be expanded to cover the city.

If you are interested you can register your contact details with MHA and you will then be included in the marketing mailing list. Contact 336-5282 or email mh4@muirhouseha.org.uk

Operation Quarterlight: cracking down on car crime

Quarterlight update: six arrests last week

Operation Quarterlight is a Police Scotland initiative aimed at tackling motor vehicle crime in hotspot areas. Since the start of the initiative in January 2015, local officers involved in the operation have made 24 arrests and solved 68 crimes related to motor vehicle offences.

In the last week officers in Edinburgh have arrested five men and one woman for various offences related to motor vehicles crimes. Of those arrested a 22-year-old man has been remanded in custody on multiple charges.

Additionally in the last week there has been 15 stop searches in hotspot areas and 41 bail curfew checks completed on some of Edinburgh’s most prolific offenders.

Police have also charged a 41-year-old woman with the theft of a pedal cycle. This had previously been advertised as for sale on a website. The bike has now been recovered and returned to its owner.

PS Tom Mallinson, who runs the Quarterlight team, said: “We have solved almost seventy crimes since Quarterlight began and well over half of these relate to vehicle crime. We are quite clear with offenders – we will continue to investigate all crimes linked to vehicles across the city.

“Many of these individuals will be involved in assaults, hate crimes, vandalisms and serious driving offences while in the commission of motor vehicle offences and our team has prioritised access to forensic services, CCTV and national vehicle crime experts to combat the challenge of autocrime.”

Chief Superintendent Mark Williams, who oversees Operation Quarterlight locally, pressed home the point about car security and improving results. He said: “We have seen a week on week increase in detection rates, as well as a driving down of car crime as the message gets out.

“We have increased preventative night time patrols in hot spot areas and officers have conducted over a hundred searches resulting in numerous arrests.

“We still want car owners to be careful – secure their vehicles, park in well-lit and overlooked spots and ensure valuable items are removed or at least not on show in their vehicles.”

#StrongerNorth update: Young people and our community

#Stronger North: working with our young people

Work with primary aged children

As part of a new role created by Total Craigroyston Team, it was agreed that a youth worker would work in four of the local primary schools to deliver a programme called ‘Respect in the Community.’

The aim was to help primary aged children understand the importance of safety in the community, publicise all the activities that are available after school and help them make good choices about what they do with their time after school.

The youngsters make a map of their community in the first session, showing where many of the positive activities take place. They look at what makes a safe community for everyone and think about they can keep themselves safe as well as looking out for others.

At a later stage they have the opportunity to identify where they feel safe themselves or not. We’ve found that many of our primary children are very well aware of and have experienced some of the issues that make them feel unsafe.

A big part of the programme is helping children develop the skills to make good decisions especially where they might feel tempted by friends to take part in behaviour that causes distress to others. In small groups they think about developing a community campaign about combating anti-social behaviour and then present their ideas to their classmates.

The programme has gone down very well with P5, P6 and P7’s in Pirniehall and St David’s, has just started in Craigroyston Primary and will be starting very soon in Forthview.

Reward Scheme

We’ve developed a loyalty card so that youngsters who are positive participants in youth clubs and sports clubs can gather points and receive a reward. It will run until Easter to see if it will be successful. So far Ainslie Park Leisure Centre and Craigroyston Community High School has offered free swims for individuals and families and each of the youth organisations involved has agreed to run a special reward night for those involved.

Teenagers

As well as all the youth clubs and sports opportunities that are available in the community , we have developed some out of hours sessions for teenagers – offering them the opportunity to get involved in activities later at night in an effort to combat the idea that there is nothing to do. If these sessions go well then more can be offered. These activities are taking place in Spartans and Pilton Youth and Children’s Project.

Face North (above) is a special project, working with some of the young people who are involved in anti-social behaviour and so far we have been able to involve these young people in working at Towford, the bothy owned by My Adventure. To help get the Bothy ready for use by local groups and organisations they have helped with basic maintenance, cleared ground, laid paths, chopped down and replanted trees and completed some minor repairs. They have also painted the kitchen area in Pilton Youth and Children’s Project and will soon be doing some environmental work on the cycle path.

The Mentors in Violence Prevention Programme is being implemented in local High Schools as well as in the local community. This gives older young people the training and skills to work with younger ones and help them think through how they would handle a wide range of tricky incidents giving young people and the community the confidence to speak up against and challenge issues such as bullying or other types of anti-Social behaviour.

Sessions for parents will be run towards the end of February – look out for dates or contact Community Learning and Development worker Sarah Neal if you are interested in attending. Her number is 552 5700.

STV Appeal supports Fresh Start

North Edinburgh based community project Fresh Start has received £2,000 from the STV Appeal 2014.

Based on Ferry Road Drive, Fresh Start is an Edinburgh charity that helps people who have been homeless by providing starter packs of essential household items. For many people who have been homeless and have lost everything, the packs provide a real lifeline in the early days of a new tenancy. Last year the charity created 10,973 packs to help over 2000 new households, helping to make a huge difference to the quality of people’s lives in their new home. The grant from the STV Appeal will be used to help Fresh Start increase the number of packs it produces and delivers in 2015.

Keith Robertson, managing director at Fresh Start, said: “These packs help to relieve the financial burden and initial stress that many new tenants face, especially when providing for households with children.”

Sir Tom Hunter, trustee of the STV Appeal, said: “Yet again the people of Scotland have cast their vote – end child poverty. Through the STV Appeal we are attempting to deliver sustainable solutions to do just that. It is simply unacceptable in modern Scotland to still have young people debilitated by poverty, through this project and many more the people of Scotland are doing their level best to combat poverty.”

This year’s STV Appeal is now well underway with an exciting line-up of fundraising activities planned for 2015.

Spartans: be the twelfth man!

Local club The Spartans play Berwick Rangers this Saturday (7 February) at Ainslie Park in the fifth round of the Scottish Cup. If we win we will make history as the first non-league team to play in the quarter-finals of the Scottish Cup for 55 years!

This Cross-Border clash sees the Lowland League title holders take on their third SPFL opponents on the Road to Hampden. We have already beaten Clyde and Morton and in both games the bumper home support has made all the difference.

Can you be the twelfth man on 7 February? We are making a big plea for everyone in the North Edinburgh community to come along and back their local team as we aim to make history!

The TV cameras will be along, “Pulse of the Place” our local Samba band will provide the pre match entertainment and hundreds of local youngsters will be bringing a real family atmosphere. It promises to be a magical afternoon.

Our Ainslie Park arena holds 3500 people, with 500 seats in our covered stand. Kick-off is at 3pm so please come down early if you want a seat.

Admission is £12 for adults, £8 for concessions and Under 12 s are free (pay at gate) – continuing our commitment to offer affordable football for all. With a bumper crowd expected, we have entrances open on both Pilton Drive and Pilton Avenue.

You can keep up to date with the pre-match news, previews and interviews on our hat-trick of social media sources:

website: www.spartansfc.com,

twitter: @spartansfc and Facebook: Spartans FC

The Spartans Football Club

| Live together, Play together, Win together

Total Craigroyston update

We are continuing to work towards improving outcomes for children and families in the Craigroyston cluster area (writes Total Craigroyston manager Christine Mackay).

Achievements in education

North Edinburgh News has covered the great reports that Craigroyston Community High School and the Community Learning provision in the area have achieved. As well as those, Craigroyston Early Years Centre has achieved the measure of excellent across all five areas that the Care Commission look at – for the second year in a row! This is a brilliant achievement!

Working with local landlords

We have been doing some work with private landlords. We are hoping to strengthen their role in the regeneration of the area by sharing information and to encourage them listen to residents views about the condition of area. So far, the landlords we have spoken to have been very keen to become involved.

Community Leadership College

One of the most exciting things we’ve been developing over recent months is the Community Leadership College. This is an idea that has been put together by Total Craigroyston, Muirhouse Linkup and Circle Scotland. The STV foundation has funded our idea, which will us to help build on the biggest asset the community has – it’s people.

Many local people have become involved in community activities and volunteering through Linkup, The North Edinburgh Time Bank and many other community projects. The Community Leadership College will give us the opportunity take that involvement to the next level by providing training, support and other types of activities so that more leaders are created within the community.

The development of the college will be directed by local residents themselves, initially through a series of ‘Conversation Cafes’ , so that we can gather their ideas and develop the programme.

We expect that the impact will be that local people have a bigger influence on the development of services, gain skills to take up jobs, develop their ideas about making improvements to the area and the skills to turn those ideas into reality.

A cheque was presented at the Community Shop on Thursday 29 January (pictured above).

Coming up

In the next few months we will be working with North Edinburgh Young People’s Form to involve the areas young people in assessing the quality of services that they use, using the Youth Talk approach first developed in South Edinburgh. Watch this space for information about how that is going!

Gentle exercise at Royston Wardieburn

New gentle exercise class for adults of all ages

qualified instructor

Every Friday 11am – 12noon, £2.00

NEW tai chi

Royston Wardieburn Community Centre
11 Pilton Drive North
Edinburgh EH5 1NF
0131 552 5700

#StrongerNorth: Action Update

Steady progress on tackling community concerns

How has the #StrongerNorth initiative been performing?The latest figures, compiled at the end of January, are very encouraging:

Housing

• 17 housing enforcement actions taken against residents in response to behaviour

Including 13 warnings, 1 Final Warning, 1 Notice to Quit, 1 Notice of Proceedings for Recovery of Possession, 1 ASBO under consideration.

Offending

· 7 Young people identified and targeted due to offending (Police, Council, Social work etc)

· 3 charged as adults, 2 in Children’s Hearing system and 2 in court system (last four all reducing offending)

· 4 young people subject to Movement Restriction Condition

· 4 young people placed in secure accommodation in last 12 months (2 twice)

· Calls to Police have really reduced between October and December 2014 (209 to 119 calls)

· Reduction in offences committed by the most problematic young people – including a significant drop by one prolific housebreaker.

Youth Work

• Positive engagement over a number of weeks with group working on bothy at Towford

• Conversation cafe with Positive Prison organised for 30 January.

Employment and Training

• Employment experience and training programme developed by Council, Urban Union and Edinburgh College. First group ready to benefit.

Pre-School and School

• Respect programme expanded to Craigroyston and Forthview Primary Schools

• Youth Engagement Programme at Crewe Road Fire station – participants selected from Craigroyston Community High School.

Physical Improvements

• Community clean ups in backgreen at West Pilton Gardens/Crossway and roadside verge along Granton Mill well-attended.

West Pilton/West Granton Community Council

• Community payback team cut back bushes in West Pilton Park where motorbikes were being hidden.

Communications

• Regular daily tweets and 1,343 followers

• Over 230 Facebook likes.

Community activity

• Community survey planned to track community views about local action

• Tenants and Residents in Muirhouse #StrongerNorth campaign – Community Shop window display

• Weekly lunch time drop in sessions at Muirhouse Community Shop and Pilton Community Association flat – six week programme started 19 January

• Community feedback event 4 February.

Total-ly delighted!

£84,000 will establish a Community Leadership College

The STV Appeal is the fund that just keeps on giving to projects in North Edinburgh – Total Craigroyston became the latest local beneficiary when it received almost £84,000 from the charity programme.

STV CEO and trustee of the STV Appeal Rob Woodward and Chris Wilson managing director, Retail and Private Banking, RBS, presented the cheque for £83, 980 to Total Craigroyston manager Christine Mackay yesterday.

The STV Appeal raised £2.6million in 2014 – £305,689 of this was raised by RBS branches.

Total Craigroyston is an initiative set up by the Edinburgh Partnership to improve outcomes for children and families in the neighbourhood around Craigroyston Community High School. The project is doing this by taking a three pronged approach –

strengthening services that are open to all like health, early years and schools;
strengthening support for families;
supporting local people to organise their own activities.

Now, working in partnership with charities Circle Scotland and the Link-up Muirhouse project, an idea has been developed to establish a Community Leadership College. This will help Total Craigroyston expand leadership capability amongst local residents.

Julie Crawford, Muirhouse Link Up development worker, said: “We are really excited about the opportunity that the STV Appeal has given us to turn our idea into reality. This project will help us work with local people to build on the excellent local leadership that exists at the moment and take it to the next level.”

Chris Wilson, managing director, Retail and Private Banking, RBS, said: “It’s fantastic to see first-hand the work of projects like Total Craigroyston and understand the real impact that the money from the STV Appeal will have on them. RBS is proud to support the STV Appeal and help change the lives of vulnerable children and young people in Scotland.”

The STV Appeal is committed to making a difference in the lives of children and young people living in poverty in Scotland. Across the country, 220,000 children live in poverty and figures from the Campaign to End Child Poverty show that in the city of Edinburgh it’s actually 21.1% of children – more than one in five.

Total Craigroyston is just one of the projects the STV Appeal is supporting in North Edinburgh – Pilton Youth & Childrens Project, Changeworks and Fresh Start have all received grants from the funder.

Since launch in 2011, the STV Appeal has raised over £8.2 million with 297 big and small grants distributed to projects across all 32 local authority areas in Scotland, providing much needed support to over 37,000 children. The money raised is distributed to provide practical help like food and warm clothes; create opportunities for training and employability; and enable social and emotional support for those who need it most.

Rob Woodward, STV CEO and trustee of the STV Appeal, said: “The money donated to the STV Appeal remains in Scotland and will help bring about a positive change to the lives of vulnerable children and young people on our doorstep. With the help of the extraordinary fundraising efforts taking place in communities across the country we have raised an incredible £2.6m in 2014 allowing us to make grants to 297 projects. We are extremely grateful to everyone who supported the Appeal.”

Community Regeneration: what is it all about?

Blue sky thinking: Granton Improvement Society calls for real community planning

The idea of “community regeneration” certainly is not new but at this time in Scotland, with new Scottish government legislation on Community Empowerment, the time is now better than ever before for communities to take more control of assets. We can shape our community involving all who live, work and play within it. Now that would be real community regeneration!

Politicians talk about regeneration but do they deliver? What does that mean for the residents of North Edinburgh? We have a badly needed housing development in Muirhouse but without complementary services. The rest of the locality is left to decay with budget cuts making it harder for politicians (the council) to regenerate the larger area.

The people of the area know what is needed to regenerate their environment and it is not just housing. The Granton on Sea project can be the corner stone of such development. A project that provides benefits across a wide spectrum of issues that have been unresolved over the past 20 years – even though the area was designated as a major regeneration area within the City of Edinburgh.

A community regeneration project requires the assets of the community to be in total, outright ownership of that community: this is not in place.

Why then, when Scottish government policy is to transfer assets to communities have EDI, chaired by Councillor Frank Ross who is also convenor of the Economic Development committee, denied the project Granton on Sea the opportunity to begin one of Scotland’s largest and most ambitious regeneration plans?

The EDI Finance Director and Waterfront manager both recommended that Granton Improvement Society be given a two year period where it would fully develop the project with the Lottery’s Growing Community Assets unit. After eighteen months it would begin to provide employment, training, tourism opportunities, visitors and more economic benefits to North Edinburgh.

How will the project bring benefit?

The acquisition of the land by the Granton Improvement Society will see the development of 54 luxury houses stopped and replaced with an International Garden Festival and create artisan studios in green space on the adjoining plot of land.

The proposal will provide upwards of 100 permanent full time and part-time jobs, training and education in horticulture and other professions and trades. It will be an opportunity for local people to start up business in affordable workspaces. The unique visitor attraction of the International Garden Festival where each year it is different will ensure returning visitors to the project. That influx of tourists both national and international will see their spending retained in the local economy.

The real main benefit that the Granton on Sea project will bring is a local charity The Granton Improvement Society, whose main objective is the regeneration of the North Edinburgh area. It will manage the income from the artisan village and the Garden Festival for the benefit of other projects throughout the North Edinburgh area.

What do we need from you, the community?

This community has waited for regeneration benefits for decades with the community being told that the benefits are coming, this has clearly not happened. We are not giving up! We are asking you to join the Granton Improvement Society and create a place for people to live work and play!

Application forms for the Granton Improvement Society can be downloaded at

https://grantonimprovementsociety.wordpress.com/

and are available from the secretary, email

info@grantonimprovementsociety.org