February 2021
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Fairmilehead Community Council - Information Bulletin – February 2021 1 Free transport for people with mobility challenges to their vaccine appointment HcL (Handicabs) are delighted to share that we are offering FREE transport for people with mobility challenges to get their vaccine. We would really appreciate it if you could share this with your community – share our Facebook posts or retweet our tweets. Please note: - Any person who has challenges with getting out and about due to age, disability, heath issues, additional support needs or geographic remoteness is eligible to use the service. - You do not need to be registered with HcL already. Bookings are subject to availability so we recommend passengers call as soon as they have their vaccine appointment. We will do our very best to help transport a many people as we can, under current guidelines. Call 0131 447 9949 to book for transport in Edinburgh, East Lothian or Midlothian. Many thanks Laura Laura Kearney Fundraising Officer [email protected] 2 Community Council contact by Police Scotland Your Ref: Our Ref: February 2021 Oxgangs Police Station 270 Oxgangs Road North Edinburgh EH13 9NB Contact 101 Police Liaison with Community Councils Dear all, You were all sent a letter in October 2020 explaining that officers were no longer dedicated to a particular ward and that, as a consequence, we would not routinely be in attendance at Community Council meetings nor would we prepare police reports. We have had some queries regarding this update so thought it might be judicious to send a further letter to clarify and use the opportunity to introduce ourselves too. We have recently joined the South West Community Police Team but have both worked in the area before. The South West Community Police Team will continue to focus on local issues and undertake patrols and initiatives identified as priorities. We hope to bring you a flavour of these over the coming months. To do this, we intend sending out a monthly newsletter which will contain some highlights and some key messages that we are keen for you to share within your group and as you see fit. These will contain some local information and links to crime prevention information among other things and will hopefully be of use to you all. At the moment we are working to pull together an appropriate and useful document to send out – please be patient with us while we do that, as you can imagine we have to follow a due process. This monthly newsletter will be emailed to all the community councils in the South West locality and therefore may not contain the level of local detail that previous reports did. Our hope is that this will free up officers to spend more time in the community and working with all of its members. The community team now has a single mailbox that is regularly monitored and can be used for getting in touch with us: [email protected] Please do not use that mailbox to report ongoing crime – that should always be via 101 or 999 in an emergency. You are, however, welcome to contact us in this way to discuss community issues. Please also use this email address to notify us of your planned Community Council meetings. We may not be able to attend as many of these as we have done in the past but will hopefully get to some! There are various online reporting mechanisms available via https://www.scotland.police.uk/your-community/edinburgh/south-west In addition to that, local policing activity and requests for information will be updated on social media: Twitter: @EdinPolSW We hope you are all keeping safe and well at this time and look forward to working with you all. Yours sincerely, Sgt Keith Watson Sgt Scott Walker 3 Police Scotland Consultation on the use of Body Worn Video Members of the public are being asked for their views on the use of Body Worn Video (BWV) by armed police officers when interacting with communities in Scotland. BWV has been shown to have a positive impact on the safety of the public and the officers wearing it, and all other armed police units in the UK are currently deployed with cameras. The introduction of BWV will bring Police Scotland in line with these other forces and ensure best practice and evidence as well as increased transparency and accountability at incidents. The online survey, which opened for three weeks from February 1 2021, will allow members of the public to engage and offer their opinions on the deployment of BWV in Scottish policing for the future. The move follows Chief Constable Iain Livingstone’s support for the deployment of BWV to armed police officers as a “pressing, critical, ethical and operational imperative” and his commitment to focused and concise public engagement prior to rollout. An initial roll-out of BWV will equip our armed police officers as soon as possible during the course of 2021. This deployment will also provide a valuable basis and learning for the consideration of a broader national plan to roll out BWV to police officers across Scotland in the future. Assistant Chief Constable Kenny MacDonald, who is leading on the introduction of BWV, said: “The Chief Constable has consistently expressed strong support for the greater deployment of body worn video by Police Scotland officers and staff. “Armed policing remains an area of high risk and understandable public scrutiny and as such this roll-out will help improve transparency and accountability. The safety of our officers and staff as well as that of the public remains paramount in our decision to introduce this technology. “While this is not new technology, and every other armed policing unit in the UK uses body worn cameras, it is a significant introduction for Scottish policing and as such our public engagement survey is essential to ensuring people have a voice and it will help us gather and address any ethical and community related concerns where possible." Martyn Evans, Chair of the Scottish Police Authority, said: “The use of body worn video is widespread across UK policing and the benefits to effective policing such as improved officer safety, reducing and resolving complaints against officers and an increase in early guilty pleas, have been positively evaluated in the current limited use across Scotland. “However, it is important that whenever new technology is adopted, that the implications are fully considered through an extensive stakeholder consultation process. We welcome the launch of a public survey and would encourage as many people as possible to register their views. The SPA looks forward to considering all responses as part of our oversight of the implementation of BWV.” Link to survey: https://consult.scotland.police.uk/strategy-insight-and-innovation/police-scotlands-use-of-body-worn-video/ 4 Edinburgh Airport Noise Review Panel Dear Stakeholder In 2017, Edinburgh Airport established an independent noise advisory board. Its purpose was to create and maintain an impartial pathway for the Community at large to engage with Edinburgh Airport Limited (EAL) in the understanding and resolution of issues relating to aircraft noise associated with Edinburgh Airport (EDI), with the primary aim of minimising the noise impact on affected or potentially affected communities. Three years on, a panel was been established to review the effectiveness of the Edinburgh Airport Noise Advisory Board (EANAB) as the means for Edinburgh Airport to engage on noise issues. You can find out more about EANAB at www.eanab.orguk . The review panel is now launching an online consultation so all those with experience of EANAB and those with a wider interest in noise issues from Edinburgh Airport can contribute their views. You can access the dedicated consultation survey to complete online here – it runs until 18.00 on Wednesday 31 March. We will consider all the responses received as we work towards presenting a report and recommendations later this year. We look forward to hearing your views. Best wishes, Robert Carr and Kevin Lang Co-conveners Edinburgh Airport Noise Review Panel 5 Lord Provost - Fundraising for the OneCity Trust Dear friend, In January 2020, we enjoyed another successful fundraising Burns Supper, celebrating together, the life and works of Robert Burns at the eloquent Prestonfield House, whilst raising thousands of pounds for the OneCity Trust, 'Edinburgh's social inclusion charity.' In a pre COVID19 world, we would have joined together again tonight for celebrations and to raise much needed funds for the charity. Details of the projects we have supported in the past can be viewed at www.onecitytrust.com. The last few months have been tough for everyone; the impact of the COVID19 pandemic has been far- reaching as most of the world continues to practice social distancing, or some form of local 'lock downs.' This has had devastating effects on the economy, business, charities and personal wellbeing, to name but a few of the many issues that we have been faced with. The OneCity Trust did in the summer of 2020 distribute grants worth £180,000 to organisations within Edinburgh; yet the number of applications and value of funding being sought was well over £408,000 and far outweighed the funds we had available to distribute into the community. The pandemic has seen our income from donations reduce greatly and now with our annual fundraising Burns Supper unable to go ahead, we have very little income available to use in the 2021 Main Grant funding programme and it is expected that the need in the city is even greater than it was a year ago! We have set up a crowd funder page at https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/onecity-trust-main-grant-funding- programme-2021 where we are kindly asking our supporters to help us raise much needed funds to help many of the small-scale organisations in Edinburgh that reach out to us for help.