Edinburgh Sucks! | Mountgrange makes Private Eye

City Council

Mountgrange makes Private Eye

By The Basa ⋅ August 31, 2007 ⋅

Mountgange’s PR consultants, PPS GroupÂ who carried out the public consultation on the trashing of the Canongate were recently trashed on Channel 4’s Dispatches programme.

Private Eye have now continued with the trashing and tells us that concerned locals are now jumping mad:

Take the group’s work for developer Mountgrange, which wants to flatten homes and heritage sites at the Canongate, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.Â Much of the impetus behind the development comes from the favourable responses obtained by PPS during a public consultation on the project in 2005.Â It mustered just 219 replies but – surprise, surprise – more than 180 of those were pro-development.Â Since PPS’s reputation is now in tatters, concerned locals are calling for the consultation to be done again.

PPS were exposed for bugging private council meetings, forging letters from residents in support of developers and disguising themselves as students to help builders obtain planning permission.

Why don’t the council and their planning committee now get right back to Mountgrange and ask them to re-do the consultation.Â Better still, why don’t the council hire a competent and honest company to come in and re-do the consultation and then bill Mountgrange who in turn can bill PPS.

More info: http://eh8.org.uk/files/scan_7830212816_1.jpgÂ and you can watch the Dispatches programme by clicking here for quite a shock to the system – the part that worries the people of the Old Town starts at about 17 minutes.Â It is really worth watching the whole programme.