Currie Community Council

October 1999 Meeting

Waste management

The first part of the October Community Council Meeting was devoted to Waste Management, with speaker Alan Harper, Senior Waste Management Officer of SEPA, who is based at the SEPA East Office at Riccarton. Mr Harper was supposed to be accompanied by John Ferguson, a senior colleague from SEPA, but the latter was prevented by illness from attending, so we were very grateful to Mr Harper for taking the whole burden on himself. The questioning was forthright, well informed and penetrating. There were 25 people at the meeting (plus the speaker), which nearly filled the room.. A group of 4-5 came from Kirknewton Community Council, and others were from Balerno. Siobhan Samson from Friends of the Earth made several valuable contributions and asked searching questions. Most questions were about the Kaimes site, but the meeting was broader in scope than this. There is a report of the meeting elsewhere in the C&B News.

Police report

In the last two months there have been four break-ins and another half dozen instances of property being stolen without the need for forcible entry. Four further attempted break-ins were thwarted by good security. The message is clearly that property should be kept locked up so as not to allow burglars an easy time. Please phone 449 5991 or 999 to report any information which may help prevent crime.

There have been a few cases of vandalism, which is always distressing to the victims. Car crime consisted of two attempted break-ins and one theft of a vehicle (later recovered).

Finally, a man has been charged with two counts of indecent exposure - one in Currie and one in West Lothian.

The new Fountain Park leisure centre, which will contain a 12 screen cinema, a nightclub, four restaurants and a fitness suite is due to open in November. It will make extensive use of CCTV in an effort to reduce crime and increase customer safety.

Currie Community High School

The Standards Sub-Committee of the City of Edinburgh Education Committee finished its consideration of the recent inspection by HMI and complimented the school on an excellent report.

Distinguished visitors from the Scottish Executive, the World Bank, Argentina and Germany have been filing through the school recently for various purposes. The Sportscotland lottery-funded initiative was launched in Currie, and the school has appointed Gillian O'Brien to be its own Sports Coordinator. 300 High School pupils currently participate in 11 school clubs.

George V Park

The Millennium Cedar will be officially planted by Iain Gray MSP at 2 pm on Friday 26 November. Everyone is welcome to attend this event, which will be our way of marking the start of the year 2000. (Trees do not like being planted on 1 January any more than people like to watch them being planted!)

Vacancies

There are still three vacancies on the Council, including one for Secretary. Would any public-spirited person like to volunteer to fill one of these places? All meetings are in the Gibson-Craig Hall at 7.30 pm on the second Monday of each month.


Graham Dane
Chair