Scottish Government will settle Edinburgh Digital Quarter planning battle with council

A property developer has appealed to the Scottish Government’s Planning and Environmental Appeals Department after the City of Edinburgh Council’s planners failed to make a decision about its planning application on time.Crosswind Developments is a subsidiary of Global Infrastructure Partners, which also owns Edinburgh Airport.The company owns the brownfield land and submitted a planning application to the council to transform it into a dedicated ‘Digital Quarter’. The masterplan for the proposed commercial development next to the airport includes more than 2,500 homes, hotels, retail units and leisure facilities.The project will encompass 30 hectares of land encompassing 1,020,000 sq ft of commercial space. It has been adapted to meet the new conditions that have evolved from the pandemic such as green transport, touch-free offices and shorter travel times.The site stretches from south-east of the passenger terminal towards the Gogar roundabout on the A8.A report by BiGGAR Economics last year predicted the development could boost Scotland’s gross value added (GVA) by £460m per year and support 6,600 jobs – including 4,800 high-value technology jobs.The City of Edinburgh is set to fight the appeal, claiming the Crosswind site plan is not a part of its local development plan. It has marked the land for an expansion of Edinburgh airport, in particular a “contingency runway” in a city plan for 2030.An old report from 2016 refers to the previous master plan to extend the airport and road, which has not been updated to reflect the Crosswinds development and is the reason behind the council’s reluctance to agree to the changes.An appeal was lodged on 22 February, giving the City of Edinburgh planners 21 days to respond after the planning application remained undetermined for more than six months.Edinburgh councillors received a report ahead of the development management committee on 3 March, urging them to accept it on the basis of the submission to support the council position at appeal.The report stated that the current National Planning Framework (NPF) identifies the application site is of strategic importance to Edinburgh Airport, noting that no masterplan has been brought forward by the airport that alters the importance of this land for the airport.