Two Edinburgh councillors are celebrating as work to reduce flooding in their local park gets underway – nearly five years after they first called for action.
The Conservatives' Max Mitchell and Lib-Dem's Hal Osler, ward councillors for Inverleith, first submitted a motion to fix the 'damaged' drainage system in the eastern part of Inverleith Park in September 2017.
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Councillor Mitchell said following rainfall, sections of the park's pathway get flooded "very badly" and "big portions" of grass are waterlogged.
He said: "It's one of those things that comes up consistently. Any time we've ever been door knocking or at a public meeting the things that are always mentioned about Inverleith Park is the lack of loos and the fact that the eastern half frequently floods."
He added previous attempts by the council to solve the flooding issues were done "on the cheap" and "didn't work".
After the pair requested a report confirming that drainage infrastructure in the park would be "fully repaired", work was costed at £200,000 and Cllr Mitchell said it was then made an unfunded project which was "kicked into the long grass".
"I didn't think it would ever happen," he said. "Rather than actually dealing with it, it was marked as an unfunded pressure and so then every single year through the budget process she and I in each of our respective groups managed to find the cash.
"Then Covid happened which was very dreadful but the Government gave so much money to fund all the Covid pressures and passed a good chunk of that on, but it was only capital funding so it could only be spent on capital projects.
"Essentially, the parks department got lots of money to do lots of upgrades and projects and they're getting round all the different projects they can do."
Part of the funding is being used to upgrade the drains in Inverleith Park with a carbon-negative system that will ensure rainwater remains below the surface, no longer causing floods.
Work finally got underway this week, almost five years on from the duo's cross-party motion.
Councillor Mitchell, who was first elected in 2017, admitted he was "naïve" to think it would be an easy process.
He added working free of party politics alongside Councillor Osler, who he called "both a colleague and a friend", is key to tackling local issues such as the park's flooding problem.
"We do get on and everything that we do day-to-day is completely apolitical, we're trying to serve the area that we both live in, I grew up in and we shouldn't be letting politics get in the way of that," he said.
