The battle to save Marionville Fire Station is far from over
Plus: Tram pay-off probe; go-ahead for dockside homes woman; and your cultural highlights for the week ahead
Welcome to your midweek edition of The Inquirer.
Well, wasn’t it fun while it lasted? Making friends off the pitch, grinding out results on the pitch that were nearly, but not quite, good enough. Wasn’t it always so for Scotland at the World Cup?
According to number-crunchers at the BBC, we still have a 49.2% chance of progressing to the knock-out stages for the first time ever, depending how results unfold elsewhere. Effectively the toss of a coin…
Are you ready for another few days of hope and tortuous maths?
For today’s long read Cliff Heberden has been examining the future of the city’s under-threat Marionville Fire Station. Some reports suggest it has been saved from closure. The truth is far less straightforward.
More on that below, but first your regular midweek news roundup and your cultural highlights for the week ahead.
Your Edinburgh Briefing
HALF MILLION POUNDS TRAM MAN: Council leader Jane Meagher has asked Edinburgh Trams to investigate the “excessive” pay-off of more than £327,000 given to former managing director Lea Harrison. Including the pay-off, his salary and other benefits, Harrison - who left his job earlier this year and now runs Blackpool Transport Services - received more than £520,000 in the last financial year.
FIRE WOMAN ‘CRITICAL’: A woman is fighting for her life after her clothes accidently caught fire outside flats on St Leonards Street in the Southside. Shopkeepers and two fire crews rushed to help after receiving calls shortly after midday on Monday.
DOCKSIDE HOMES: Forth Ports been given the go-ahead to build up to 250 homes on the dockside near the First Stage film studio in Leith. The four blocks of up to six storeys will feature one, two and three-bedroom apartments, including a third classed as affordable, as part of the wider Harbour 31 masterplan. The development plans also include a Bath Street to Ocean Way bus route, cycle lane and footpath connecting the site to wider developments of Leith docks.
PHONE-FREE FESTIVAL: Audiences at the Edinburgh International Festival will be asked to switch their phones off and put them away ahead of performances this summer. The campaign to make the festival “phone-free” comes after complaints that every performance in its Queen’s Hall chamber music series was disrupted by phone use last year.
SCHOOL VIOLENCE: The number of incidents of “violence with injury” reported in city schools has risen by more than 40 per cent in 12 months to 2,680 in the last academic year, according to a report to the council’s education, children and families committee. The EIS teaching union says more needs to be done to protect teachers as violence against them has become “normalised”. The same report shows racism is linked to almost a quarter of bullying incidents in schools, more than any other issue.
BORN SLIPPY: 1990s rave stars Underworld will perform Born Slippy, the dance anthem famously featured in the first Trainspotting film, as part of their set in Princes Street Gardens at Hogmanay. They have been confirmed as headliners for the gig in the Gardens.
CHEAPER IN MANCHESTER: The Edinburgh TV Festival has confirmed it will relocate to Manchester, after 50 years in the Scottish capital, in a move which puts Edinburgh’s soaring accommodation costs back in the spotlight. Organisers cited “affordability for delegates” as one of the key reasons for its choice.
Your Pick of the (Cultural) Pops
I am writing to you while soaking up my final few days of peace, quiet, food, drink, and Northumberland sunshine, writes Will Quinn. Very soon, I will have to return to a chaotic inbox and a frantic final month before Edinburgh Festival Fringe claims my life for the entirety of August (keep an eye out for my upcoming Fringe picks and first-week highlights!). But whilst I pack away the deckchairs and brace for the madness, the capital’s cultural scene seems lively as ever. This week’s chart serves up an eclectic final feast for June, featuring world-class contemporary choreography, blistering American blues, intoxicating Nordic fiddle traditions, and a healthy dose of 80s martial arts nostalgia.
Let’s count them down...
Honourable Mentions: Derren Brown, The Phoenix Choir & Candlelight Concerts. Just outside the main standings, the final days of the current run from Derren Brown (Edinburgh Playhouse, until Saturday) are wrapping up; no doubt he will still be going absolutely ‘mental’ till his final minutes in the city. Meanwhile, the Usher Hall (Saturday) plays host to a milestone as The Phoenix Choir celebrates a decade of performance. Expect oomph from this epic mustering of four fine local choirs. For those seeking a change of pace, the ongoing series of Candlelight Concerts (St Giles’ Cathedral) will continue to offer atmospheric, tuneful evenings under the historic gothic arches.
Staying at Number 5 is... The Karate Kid – The Musical (Festival Theatre, until Saturday). By this point in the run, a few of you might well be cursing my name for pointing you toward the box office for this one. Conversely, it is just as likely that this unashamed celebration of wax-on, wax-off showmanship has won you over, meaning you actually owe me your enduring gratitude. Either way, there is no denying that this barmy stage experiment has unadulterated nostalgia on its side. Hopefully, that makes it a fun night out, if all else (like the music and acting) fails.
New in at Number 4 is... Christone “Kingfish” Ingram (The Queen’s Hall, July 1st). Arriving at number four is a phenomenal American blues guitarist and songwriter. Still only 27, this formidable prodigy has spent the last few years gathering up industry awards at roughly the same rate the local birds hoover up mealworms from my garden feeders after a morning refill. If you are looking for authentic, powerhouse blues in the capital this week, your search ends here.
New in at Number 3 is... Soundhouse: Catriona MacDonald & Annbjørg Lien (The Queen’s Hall, June 30th). Taking the bronze is a super acoustic booking within Soundhouse’s summer programme, uniting two acclaimed masters of the Shetland and Nordic fiddle traditions, respectively. Anyone who thinks they know the limits of trad music will find this collaboration an eye-opener; expect ventures into rhythmic and melodic territories you won’t encounter at a standard parish hall ceilidh.
Moving to Number 2 is... The Burns Project (Royal Lyceum Theatre, until July 5th). Climbing up to take the silver is a fascinatingly close-quarters look at the life and legacy of Robert Burns. When one of my reviewing protégés Alena Shmakova caught an earlier incarnation of this staging back in the winter, she was captivated. The big question now is how the production team has conserved or translated the original’s intimate, focused power within the grander Lyceum confines. I suspect the result will be something special.
New in at Number 1 is... This is Rambert (Festival Theatre, July 2nd – 4th). Claiming the gold this week is a milestone centenary triple-bill from a contemporary dance company that belongs firmly in the global premier league. Rambert routinely sets the standard for modern choreography, and this visit features exceptional new work from the likes of (LA)HORDE and Emma Evelein. They bowled me over on their last visit to Edinburgh, and there is every reason to expect this landmark touring programme to continue that unbroken streak of excellence.
And that’s your Top 5! I will leave you to explore the box office while I squeeze the last drops of relaxation out of this holiday. Grab your tickets, support the arts, and I’ll catch up with your verdicts—good, bad, or indifferent—when I finally return to my desk! Now, where did I put my Caipirinha?
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The battle to save Marionville Fire Station is far from over
“You can’t address something simply by closing, because there is an increase of response times and all kinds of other ramifications that come from the closure of a fire station,” says Davey Strachan, the Fire Brigade Union representative at Marionville Fire Station. “If you’ve got a sore leg, you don’t cut it off.”
There was, if not celebrations, then certainly a collective sigh of relief, when the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) on Monday officially dropped Marionville from a list of eight station it planned to close, writes Cliff Heberden.
That decision has lifted the immediate threat of closure. It has not saved the station. In fact the fear is this is just a stay of execution.
The reason the idea of closing Marionville has created so much anxiety is largely down to its location.
Sitting among the bungalows of Marionville, at the bottom of Smokey Brae, it is tucked in behind one of the most significant urban development sites in Scotland. Work is set to start on building more than 700 homes at Meadowbank with accommodation for nearly 200 students planned for neighbouring land at Jock’s Lodge.
Not only is the population the station serves about to expand rapidly, the communities it already serves are among the most heavily tenemented in the city, where when fire breaks out it can spread particularly rapidly.
It is also the first responder station for the wild fires which have broken out with increasing frequency on Arthur’s Seat. As a result, crews from Marionville have been responsible for putting out the vast majority (63.5%) of wildfires in Edinburgh over the last decade.
That, along with the increased risk of flooding, was one of the concerns raised by Katherine Sangster, the new Edinburgh and Lothians East MSP, when the issue was raised in the Scottish Parliament.
“We’ve got another heat wave this week, haven’t we? So we’re seeing that the weather is changing in Scotland and things that the Fire Brigade have to respond to are changing,” Sangster said.
”They’ve made the point that housefires are decreasing and needing to then…redeploy services, which I totally get, but there are other concerns, like wildfires that we really need to think about.”
A financial mountain to climb
The financial challenges facing the fire service mean the odds may still be stacked against Marionville.
Part of the argument to close the station revolved around the aging facility and structural risks presented by Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC), a material threatening the complex with collapse.
In 2022, the Scottish Parliament released a study that estimated a renovation of the station would cost upwards of £5.5 million, a number that will almost certainly have increased given the impact of inflation on the construction industry.
It was a project deemed financially unfeasible for the SFRS.
