NTBCC, along with Old Town CC and West End CC, has issued this statement on Edinburgh Council’s Princes Street and Waverley Valley draft strategy: NTBCC:OTCC:WECC Response to PrinceSt:WaverleyConsult 2025-02-20. The CCs recognise that Princes Street is urgently in need of a plan for ongoing regeneration and restoration, because it has fallen into poor condition.

For many years there has been no clear and agreed view for its future, letting the street become an embarrassment for residents and visitors alike. The statement expresses the view that the priority should be the regeneration and protection of Princes Street. However, the draft strategy fails to address the needs of the street. The CCs contend that it contains no vision, and hence fails to qualify as a strategy.

The full text of the strategy is below the ‘read more’ cut.

Statement on the City of Edinburgh Council Princes Street and Waverley Valley Draft Strategy, 20 February 2025

The New Town & Broughton, Old Town, and West End Community Councils believe Princes Street is urgently in need of a plan for ongoing regeneration and restoration. 

Our members are aware that Princes Street has fallen into poor condition. For many years there has been no clear and agreed view for its future. The street has become an embarrassment for residents and visitors alike.

We have spent some time discussing a response to the Council’s document. Our statement here expresses the view that the priority should be the regeneration and protection of Princes Street. The draft strategy fails to address the needs of the street. Indeed, we contend that it contains no vision, and hence fails to qualify as a strategy. 

Any real strategy should lay out a developed and coherent idea of what Princes Street could and should look like in the future, grounded in a view about what purpose or purposes it should fulfil within the City Centre. 

Instead, we find nothing more than a shopping list of generic urban planning measures. There is nothing specific to the location of Princes Street and its requirements. Suggestions in the document are minor, conventional and — apart from the cycle lane proposals — uncontroversial. No real choices are put forward. There is no meaningful prioritisation of the competing demands of retail and hotels, or heritage and development, vibrancy and the natural environment, transport and tourism, pedestrian and cycling space, through traffic and destination traffic, buses and trams etc. etc.

We need to consider what the different involved parties want to see in the future — detailed analysis of what may inhibit, and what may facilitate, changes. These changes will not be under the exclusive control of the city council, so we need to look at what other factors will shape the future of the street. We also need to consider what is happening in other comparable cities to help us develop our own vision. 

The Draft Strategy lacks any ambition for Princes Street to restore its prestige, build on its heritage and pursue developments that embody the highest standards of urban design. We need a serious consideration of what Princes Street should be, rather than what is needed to fit it into other existing city-wide plans, especially when these invariably involve lower standards.  

We need to engage professionals with imagination and insight to develop a vision for Princes Street  – ideally through competition – to reclaim its place as one of the world’s great thoroughfares.

The decline of ‘high street’ retail and conversion to hotel, office and leisure use are likely to have an impact on Princes Street by reducing footfall. This could adversely affect the ambiance of the street and its attraction for other types of commercial investment.   

We need a better grasp of the likely commercial future for Princes Street and incorporate this into the strategy to promote sympathetic developments, while considering the impact on the rest of the city centre.

Until Princes Street has a proper strategy, as outlined above, we don’t think it is possible for us to comment, unrelated item by unrelated item, on the other parts of the consultation. 

The Draft Strategy lacks priorities and timescales. We call for a new version than gives due priority to preserving, protecting and enhancing the built heritage of Princes Street. Once this is in place, other aspects can be taken forward.

The present Draft Strategy mixes strategic issues and a lot of operational matters. It is unclear what are, or are not, priorities and how the different parts are interrelated. In a real strategy the sum should be greater than the individual elements. It should not be a ‘To do’ list. We should be clear what benefits will be derived from following the plans.

In summary, we believe that the strategy needs to be re-thought, starting with a coherent vision for Princes Street. After that other parts of the ‘Waverley Valley’, including the gardens, Waverley station and the overall city centre transport system can be added to create a coherent model of the city centre that the public will be enthusiastic in supporting. 

Finally, some simple operational changes to the city centre, such as the entrances to West Princes Street Gardens, should go forward as soon as possible, subject to appropriate consultations, and not be delayed by being caught up in some grand, but vague, strategic master plan that advances at the pace of a poor endangered snail in Princes Street Gardens. 

NTBCC, OTCC and WECC 20 February 2025