Plan to demolish pub to make way for student flats approved
Plans for new student flats at the site of the former Murrayfield Sports Bar in Gorgie were approved by a committee in Edinburgh.
The proposals will create 80 units of student accommodation for the area which has nearby amenities for students and a direct public transport link to Edinburgh University's main campus.
The developer said the proposals 'can also help shift students out of flatted accommodation to free up much needed housing during a 'housing emergency''.
The site. (Image: Fletcher Joseph/Google) Maurice McCann, development manager on behalf of EH1 Students Gorgie, said: 'I'm absolutely delighted to get the backing of Edinburgh's planning committee for our first student housing proposal in the city. We're determined to make this a development of which Gorgie and the city can be proud and one that will provide an outstanding living experience for the students who choose to stay here.'
Tony Banks, chief executive at EH1, said: 'It is good to see planning approved for this development. It will be a great addition to the city's accommodation for students and free up capacity in the stretched housing system in Edinburgh. We welcome this positive step and look forward to continuing to invest in the city as the project progresses.'
Harrods-owned H Beauty officially launches Silverburn store
H Beauty has opened its second Scottish store with the brand officially launching its Silverburn shop.
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The Herald Scotland
3 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Dark day for SNP if Falkirk added to Proclaimers song's litany of loss
Irvine was where Sturgeon grew up. She witnessed its degeneration, and she came to believe that only the SNP and independence could restore the country's position as a manufacturing powerhouse. This post-industrial decline turned much of central Scotland into the equivalent of the US rust belt: an urban fallout zone, blighted by generations-deep unemployment and heroin, which seeped into the cracks created by economic upheaval. Sturgeon's own experience, which chimed with others', coincided with a gradual shift within the party, towards the left and from rural to metropolitan. It also instilled a conviction that workers must never again be abandoned to their fate. As awareness of the impact of climate change grew, it was clear Scotland was going to have to distance itself from the black, black oil: the totem in which so much political faith had been invested. But this time round, the SNP assured us, there would be 'a just transition', with jobs lost in fossil fuels matched by jobs created in renewables, and support for retraining. How hollow that pledge must feel in Falkirk today, as the town and its surrounds face up to a double whammy of closures: first the Grangemouth refinery, which stopped processing crude oil in April, and now, if no-one steps in, bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis. The company, which is threatening to move its Larbert and Falkirk factories to Scarborough, employs 400 people across the two sites, while 450 are being made redundant at Grangemouth. But many more livelihoods are linked to their supply chains, or dependent on their workers having money to spend. The impact of big closures ripples out through communities, and filters down the generations. (Image: Alexander Dennis president and managing director Paul Davies Image: ADL) SNP EVASION HOW galling, too, to watch the Scottish Government try to exculpate itself from blame. In its efforts to evade responsibility, it has exposed how little it has done to support the beleaguered labour forces. When Westminster pushed through emergency legislation to prevent Scunthorpe steelworks from closing, John Swinney called for the same quasi-nationalisation for Grangemouth. But his remarks were countered by owner Petroineos, which said: 'If governments had wanted to seriously consider different ownership models, the time to start that work was five years ago when we first alerted them to the challenges at the refinery.' This was nothing compared to the humiliation meted out by Manchester mayor Andy Burnham when he revealed his city had bought four times more Alexander Dennis buses than the Scottish Government. Burnham's flaunting of his Wee Bee electric fleet, which Alexander Dennis helped to create, was particularly embarrassing, given the poor state of our own public transport network, and the fact Burnham's drive towards creating the UK's first fully electric, zero-emission, integrated public transport system by 2030 feels like a model for what a 'just transition' should look like. NOT A REALITY SCOTLAND, and particularly Glasgow, has been fantasising about the creation of a similar network for years, but it has not yet managed to translate it into reality. Further reddening Scottish Government faces was the revelation that 208 orders from the Scottish Zero Emission Bus Challenge Fund – set up to accelerate the transition to zero-emission buses – had gone elsewhere, including China. This must have hit Alexander Dennis hard given one of the challenges it says it faces is 'strong competition from Chinese electric bus manufacturers whose share of the market [has] risen from 10% to 35%'. Grangemouth and Alexander Dennis have much in common. They both have foreign owners: PetroChina had a 50% stake in the oil refinery, while Alexander Dennis was bought over by Canadian company NFI Group Inc in 2019. This means decisions about their future were/are being made outside Scotland, with the UK and Scottish governments left scrabbling about trying in some way to respond. 'I think if we are going to allow these sectors to be run in this way, it ought to be with much more dialogue and agreement,' Dr Ewan Gibbs, senior lecturer in economic and social history at Glasgow University, told me. 'If we think these sectors and these workforces are so important we should be devising longer-term forms of planning.' Climate change made the demise of Grangemouth oil refinery all but inevitable. In this case, it is the failure to prepare that shocks. PROJECT WILLOW THE much-vaunted Project Willow – a £1.5 million feasibility study funded by the UK and Scottish governments – is less a plan than a menu of potential low-carbon opportunities such as hydrogen production and plastics recycling. Its belated delivery rendered one of its options – the production of sustainable aviation fuel – nigh-on impossible because the processes necessary for it to be carried out had already stopped and it would be very expensive to restart them. To create the mooted 800 jobs forecast would require £3.5 billion of investment. The £200m the UK Government has offered to support it will only be released if and when a suitable investor comes forward. None of this is of any use to those who are losing their Grangemouth oil refinery represented the past, Alexander Dennis – with its electric buses – is a symbol of the future, a vital spark in our supposed green revolution, ripe for nationalisation. It could be that, having burned its fingers (and squandered £200m) on the disastrous nationalisation of Ferguson's shipyard, and the ferries scandal that followed, the government is wary about acquiring another struggling company. But you have to ask: if it's not prepared to step in and rescue a proven enterprise like this bus manufacturer, will it ever be prepared to intervene again? It must do something, though, because there's so much at stake and the losses feed into a larger picture. According to the census, there are 100,000 fewer people working in manufacturing in Scotland now than there were at the start of the 21st century. Deindustrialisation isn't something that happened in the late 1980s/early 1990s and then stopped, but part of a depressing pan-Scotland continuum. As for Falkirk itself, we know what happens to places which experience job losses on a mass scale. Their shops close, they lose their sense of identity, crime rises, drug use rises, life expectancy drops. It's a decline that has its own momentum, difficult to stop once it has started. READ MORE: Dani Garavelli: A good death is an extension of a good life Dani Garavelli: Even for great writers, the pursuit of truth is perilous Dani Garavelli: Voters are done with politicians who talk big and act small 'SCUNNERED-NESS' SOMETHING else we know: that decline breeds a certain kind of scunnered-ness. Voters in places which have lost their main sources of income look at how little the established parties have done to help them and want to crush them. It is those communities, where poverty is rife and employment a distant memory, that are most vulnerable to populism, to parties promising to better the lives of ordinary working-class people. Once – and with much better intentions – that was the SNP. Now it is Reform. We are already seeing it capitalise on misery across the country. It is in the SNP's interests, then, to make sure solutions to Grangemouth and Alexander Dennis are found: for the communities involved, for the planet, and for its own political survival. It would be a grim irony, if, almost 40 years after The Proclaimers' album came out – and on the SNP's watch – Falkirk had to be added to the litany of loss.
The Herald Scotland
3 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
FM funding row as £90m for Scots jobs given to firm going to England
It came against a background of the Scottish Government being criticised for the levels of support for bus manufacturing. According to Scottish Government records, ADL received £58m of public 'subsidy' for green vehicles since 2020 under two schemes aimed at transitioning Scotland to green buses - despite the company having embarked on a 2020 plan to axe a third of its Scottish workforce. And some £30m of jobs grants for research and development over 10 years has come from the Scottish Government's economic development agency Scottish Enterprise. Some £11.2m of those jobs grants from Scottish Enterprise came in 2023, three years after concerns were raised over ADL embarking on major job cuts in 2020. By the time the 2020 jobs cut was in place ADL had already received over £8m in 'job securing' taxpayer funding which was promoted as supporting building a new greener business in Scotland. It has led to calls for action to be taken to claw grant money back. READ MORE by Martin Williams: A Scottish Enterprise source said: "The company is aware of Scottish Enterprise's right to potentially reclaim funding where the terms and conditions of a grant contract are not upheld." The relationship between Alexander Dennis and the SNP can be traced back to 2013 when then First Minister Alex Salmond and then deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon used its Falkirk base to launch the economic case for Scottish independence. In 2016, millions in taxpayer's cash was given to Alexander Dennis which at the time was closely linked with major SNP donor and Scottish tycoon Sir Brian Souter, despite having recorded an £18.5m profit the previous year. Video: The First Minister and Deputy First Minister set out the economic case for Scottish independence in 2013 at the Alexander Dennis's Falkirk plant The First Minister said last week that the SNP minority government would do "everything it can" to support the workers saying he was "deeply concerned" that the firm planned to move its full operation to a site in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, putting 400 jobs at factories in Falkirk and Larbert at risk. ADL, which said the move would lower costs and "increase efficiency" said that current UK policy "does not allow for the incentivisation or reward of local content, job retention and creation, nor does it encourage any domestic economic benefit". It has emerged that the First Minister had been pushing for support for the company for nearly a year after a row blew up over levels of support. An official note of a meeting between Mr Swinney and representatives of Alexander Dennis as recently as August of last year revealed that there were plans for earlier restructuring with the prospect of redundancies. The note said that Mr Swinney had "reflected on the importance of ADL to Scotland, assuring NFI [ADL's parent company] of the Scottish Government's support for ADL". According to the record, seen by The Herald, at the meeting Paul Soubry, president and chief executive of NFI told Mr Swinney that they were "at a crossroads for investment decision-making given a lack of assured demand and sought clarity on the Scottish Government's prioritisation of support for domestic bus manufacturing". The First Minister "noted the potential for further capital support should be explored". Alba Party leader Kenny MacAskill said the job losses were "unacceptable" and added: "If public money was paid out and they go then the funds must be returned. It was for supporting the jobs and community. "It's absurd to be losing this skilled work and leading technology in the place which should be the epicentre and hub. Its industrial vandalism and indicative of a lack of an industrial strategy." A row between ministers and ADL emerged over levels of support and had it roots in Scottish Government schemes launched from 2020 to accelerate the use and manufacture of zero and low emission buses in Scotland and 'help drive a green recovery out of the Covid pandemic" which have been worth a total of £155.8m to date. Frustrations emerged after May, 2023 when Alexander Dennis hosted the second phase of the Scottish Government's Zero Emissions Bus Challenge Fund (ScotZEB) which was to have funding worth £58m. It also showcased its Enviro100EV concept, a lightweight single-deck zero-emission bus with new in-house battery powertrain confirmed that grant backing accelerated its development. The fund was established to "disrupt the bus and coach market" and allow operators the chance to make the move to zero-emission vehicles. Then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon visited ADL's Falkirk plant in a trip which coincided with Scottish Enterprise providing a £7.3m million research and development grant (Image: ADL) And a Scottish Government memo to the deputy first minister Kate Forbes a year later states that Alexander Dennis had initially accepted that the Scottish Government's direct investment in ScotZEB would "underpin and grown the 500+ green Scottish jobs it supports". But it revealed that a subsequent series of letters were received from ADL and NFI raising concerns about the outcome of ScotZEB and wider Scottish Government support of bus manufacturing. "The company claims that the ScotZEB outcome will have a catastrophic impact on the business." It said the letters compare the Scottish Government's approach to funding programmes, subsidy control and Fair Work First "unfavourably with policies of other governments to protect their domestic manufacturing base". But the memo said that ADL had received orders for 363 zero-emission buses from ScotZEB more than any other manufacturer benefitting from the schemes. A separate briefing states that Alexander Dennis was awarded only 17% or 44 buses from second phase of the programme. According to Scottish Government records ADL received £58m of public 'subsidy' for green vehicles under the four phases of the low and zero emission bus schemes A significant grant through the ScotZeb 2 programme was awarded to Zenobe, and its consortium of bus and coach operators to support the transition of bus fleets to electric. ADL, which incurred total losses over three years of £44.9m between 2021 and 2023, made its own bid to the programme but was unsuccessful. While ADL was a supplier to the successful consortium it was not a formal part of it. The note said that ADL had "praised support from Scottish Enterprise" it added that the First Minister had "assured the company of the support available for its continuing investment in Scotland". By September, 2024 a further call between the First Minister and NFI and ADL showed that Mr Swinney advised and asked that Scottish Enterprise "exhaust all options to support the business". And a note of the meeting cleared by Mr Swinney stated that he requested that "all options are exhausted before any final decision is taken by ADL". By then, Alexander Dennis had already benefited from a raft of taxpayer-funded grants and support from the Scottish Government. In the same year of the ScotZeb2 launch, Scottish Enterprise sanctioned a £13.2m grant on top of £49.7m ADL investment into the development of zero emissions technology for the creation of new battery-electric and hydrogen fuel powertrains - the systems designed to propel vehicles forward. Some £11.2m was drawn down. Alexander Dennis president and managing director Paul Davies (2nd from left) and then transport minister Kevin Stewart (centre) with Alexander Dennis apprentices as the bus company launched ScotZEB2 (Image: ADL) At that point Alexander Dennis said it was repurposing its Larbert plant to make it a "manufacturing centre of excellence' for the production of zero-emission buses. The plant had successfully piloted hydrogen-electric and said it was expanding to battery-electric full production from August 2023. Three years earlier Scottish Enterprise sanctioned a further £10m grant on top of £29m Alexander Dennis investment into the development of zero and ultra-low emission buses in Scotland. In September, 2016, £7.3m of public money was given by Scottish Enterprise to accelerate Alexander Dennis's expansion of its low-carbon vehicle programme. It was at the time the largest research and development grant in the quango's history and came despite the manufacturer recording an £18.5m profit the previous year. One of the company's chief shareholders at the time was Stagecoach tycoon Sir Brian Souter - a major financial supporter of the Scottish National Party. Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon launched their 2013 economic case for Scottish independence at Alexander Dennis coach builders in Falkirk. (Image: NQ) That was before NFI took over the Scottish firm for £320m in May, 2019 and announced it wanted to hit a sales trajectory of £1 billion for the coach and bus maker, including expansion in Scotland. Both ADL chief executive Colin Robertson and Michael Stewart, chief financial officer, stayed on to continue the work done in Falkirk and Larbert. Scottish Enterprise said the £7.3m taxpayer boost would "help increase their innovation, research and development and global reach". It helped Alexander Dennis set up a £30m development and product market programme to allow the launch of the eco-friendly Enviro400XLB, its highest capacity bus for the UK market, in conjunction with Lothian Buses. Scottish Enterprise lauded the launch of the green bus manufactured in Falkirk saying it was "securing jobs and adding value to the Scottish economy directly and via the extensive local supply chain". "This accelerated our growth much faster," said Mr Robertson at the time. Then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described Alexander Dennis as a "true Scottish success story". She added: "ADL's continued commitment to invest in Scotland is testament to the skilled workforce here in Falkirk." Mr Robertson handed over the first bus to Lothian managing director Richard Hall on November 8, 2018 in a ceremony at the manufacturer's Falkirk plant that was attended by transport secretary Michael Matheson, and representatives of Scottish Enterprise and Transport Scotland. One worker told the Herald that the cuts were a "bolt from the blue", described the jobs threat as "horrendous" but said he would now be seeking employment elsewhere because the future looked "bleak". "I haven't slept since being informed my job was at risk and while I think everything should be done to keep it open, I just wonder whether it will be the case because the fear will be that even with further support, the move to England will just rear its head in the future," he said. "I won't be hanging around to find out because I'm not sure more support would be coming under the circumstances or will even be sufficient. I will take my redundancy cash and get out if I can." ADL was established in 2004 when a consortium of Scottish entrepreneurs led by Mr Souter and including Dame Ann Gloag (Souter's sister), Sir Angus Grossart and Sir David Murray acquired the business from Trans Bus International's administrators. A Scottish Enterprise spokesman said: 'Scottish Enterprise has had a strong strategic partnership with Alexander Dennis Limited for more than 10 years, during which time we have supported technology development, skills and cultural transformation at the company. We have recently been working closely with Alexander Dennis Limited to explore a range of possible options. We remain fully committed to continuing to work with the company during the consultation period to try and find a positive solution, despite the challenging circumstances. 'This is a deeply concerning time for the workforce and along with our public sector partners we will continue discussions on how best to support them at this difficult time.' Deputy first minister Kate Forbes said: 'The absolute focus right now is on supporting Alexander Dennis Ltd its workforce, as well as the families and communities they support. We also recognise the significance of the company within the local economy and across the wider supply chain. 'The Scottish Government has committed to exploring all viable options throughout the consultation period to allow the firm to retain their hard-working employees and manufacturing and production facilities at Falkirk and Larbert. 'We will continue to work in close collaboration with the company, trade unions, Scottish Enterprise, Transport Scotland and the UK Government.' Alexander Dennis was approached for comment.
North Wales Live
3 hours ago
- North Wales Live
Upgrade your tablet, earphones and smartwatch for £0 as retailer dishes out Samsung freebies
Samsung enthusiasts can bag a tech bundle worth nearly £600 this month in a massive summer giveaway. Everyone loves a freebie, and we've discovered a method to get three items for free when upgrading to a new mobile phone. For a limited period, customers who purchase a new device from Samsung's Galaxy S25 range can secure a complimentary tablet, smartwatch and earbuds with a combined value of £596. The offer is available from Currys-owned retailer which includes a free Galaxy Watch7 and Galaxy Buds3 Pro with orders of the Galaxy S25, S25+ or S25 Ultra. Additionally, customers can visit the Samsung website after placing their order to claim a free Galaxy Tab A9+ worth £259. As reported by the Express, our top pick among the mobile phone deals comes via iD Mobile's £24.99 per month plan, which offers a 500GB data allowance for the price of 100GB. The 24-month contract has a £79 upfront cost but also includes a six-month free trial of Google One AI Premium, typically priced at £113.94. It's crucial to note that iD Mobile – supported by the Three network – is one of many providers that increase their prices every April, with this plan set to rise to £26.49 from April 2026. Despite this, the total cost of the plan amounts to £702.76 over the contract term. This is still less expensive than buying the S25 128GB phone from Samsung for £799 and only slightly pricier than Amazon's £699 asking price. Those considering the S25+ might fancy iD Mobile's offer at £39.99 a month with a £79 upfront cost, while the S25 Ultra comes in at £44.99 a month and £119 upfront. has left the end date for this promotion open, indicating it will run 'while stocks last'. The smartwatch and earbuds will be shipped separately to the tablet, arriving directly to the address provided at checkout. To snap up the free tablet, customers must head over to the Samsung offers site post-purchase, though they'll need to do so by June 26 to qualify. While EE and O2 might be more familiar names, garners praise on Trustpilot, earning an overall rating of 4.3 out of five from over 16,900 reviews. A five-star review reads: "Excellent service again. Ordered a SIM contract for my daughter who was paying much more. I highly recommend this company, brilliant service and help." A second wrote: "Great deal on the Samsung S25. Very quick process, with phone and extras delivered within 24 hours. No issues at all." Another customer remarks: "Bought my new Samsung mobile and new contract from online. Very easy, received everything as agreed. Brilliant service, would certainly recommend." Unfortunately, one buyer was less impressed, as they explained: "I bought a phone contract and chose to keep my existing number. It's been over 10 days, and the number still hasn't been transferred." However, another reviewer had a very positive experience, sharing: " Outstanding company who went above and beyond to ensure I had the best deal. The team were efficient and Sham the customer service representative who sorted my mobile deal was amazing. This is the second time I have used this company and recommend them to all. Speedy delivery once deal is sorted, and quality prices."
