Royal High plans

The sorriest aspect of the World Heritage Trust’s Tynecastle own goal at the Royal High School inquiry in Edinburgh is that it wasn’t necessary (“Football-style vote of confidence for World Heritage boss?” October 13)

As columnist John Mclellan states, the Architectural Heritage Society for Scotland critiqued the scheme on the basis of the developer’s own visual proposals, while there were several thousand objections lodged long before the exaggerated image appeared.

The elephant in the room with this project is the validity, or otherwise, of the 2010 award and subsequent contract which is being kept secret under a questionable “commercial-in-confidence” exemption to Freedom of Information provisions. It is difficult, on the face of it, to reconcile the EU’S prohibition of a contract being modified after an award had been made with this case. Logic suggests that when the £35m “arts hotel” which won the 2010 award

becomes a £75m “international luxury hotel” that particular scheme has been modified every bit as much as Adam Wilkinson’s photoshopped image, and so would appear to breach EU regulations.

I have submitted evidence on this matter to the planning

appeals inquiry, asking that it be examined as a preliminary point of EU law which, if it has effect, could save a significant amount of public money. The response has been an assurance that this evidence will be referred to in the final report, but that in the meantime I will

not be invited to submit it orally. They don’t seem to understand the meaning of the word “preliminary”.

The Scottish ministers were happy to throw the “protected” Foveran sand dunes to the wolves for the promise of thousands of Trump jobs which failed to materialise.

We’d be foolish to expect them to back the unanimous decision of an Edinburgh council committee and thousands of citizen-objectors who wish to save the architectural integrity of one of the world’s most important neo-classical public buildings. It’s the way we seem to do things in the new Scotland.

DAVID J BLACK Glanville Place, Edinburgh