4) On Marketing Edinburgh

This posting outlines in brief an episode from late 2012 where two people employed by the arms length company Marketing Edinburgh (Gerry Farrell and Lucy Bird, respectively a marketing contractor and the CEO) had their careers badly damaged in unusual circumstances. The story is eight years old but it’s in the interests of good governance that there is a public record of what happened.

The difficulties that the pair were undergoing became public on the 14th of October 2012 with a report in the Sunday Herald. Following an advance presentation to councillors, various matters relating to a new advertising campaign had been anonymously passed to the paper.  In particular former council leader Jenny Dawe and a number of opposition councillors had been asked their opinions of certain “catchphrases” from the campaign. The Depute Leader, Cllr Steve Cardownie, was also reported as having walked out of a presentation by Ms Bird. The campaign was described as being in “turmoil”. Anonymous sources spoke of a “huge amount of friction”. The Daily Record took up the story the next day with the heading “You lot must be off your Headinburgh”. Several other newspapers followed suit.

It was notable that the story was published nine days before the actual campaign launch.

On the 22nd of October the SNP group executive were briefed on developments by the group leader Cllr Cardownie under his Leader’s Report. It was minuted that “There had been some media coverage on the slogans to promote Edinburgh. A Burns [the council leader] and himself [Cllr Cardownie] had provided feedback to S-A Harris [a council officer] that the “logos” should be dropped.  A Burns would be attending the winter launch the following day but to note that he was not in support of the campaign.” Whether this was Cllr Burns’ actual view is not clear as he didn’t appear to comment publicly on it at the time.

On the day after the launch, the 24th of October, the Scotsman still ran a positive article headed “Oscar nominated animators turn spotlight on Edinburgh advert”. The newspaper’s twitter account also promoted a link to the unusual, quirky and memorable animated advert which would be shown on TV in the lead up to Christmas. The ad featured the Edinburgh rap group Stanley Odd and cartoons created with input by animators who had worked on the film The Illusionist. It’s linked below for interest.

However a week later on 2nd November 2012 a new development (see here) was reported in the Scotsman: “Advertising guru Gerry Farrell suspended over Steve Cardownie ‘incredinburgh’ tweets”. A more detailed tabloid-style version of the same story was featured very prominently in the Evening News that day on the top of the front page and across two inside pages.

Farrell, a director of the Leith Agency, and the person who produced the campaign was in no doubt as to where the leaks were coming from. He had posted numerous highly insulting tweets accusing Cllr Cardownie of undermining the campaign. He stated that his agency had been asked, and agreed, to change one word (“Incredinburgh”) in the campaign but complained that details had been “anonymously leaked to the media just two weeks before the official lunch in what appeared to be a spoiling tactic”. According to Mr Farrell the word was only designed as a hashtag to “magnetise” social media comment for the campaign. It wasn’t mentioned in the rap.

Mr Farrell was suspended for many months and the backlash also cost Lucy Bird her job. Her demise was reported on the 15th of December 2012 in The Scotsman (see here) and in the Evening News with a rather lurid front page splash with the headline “Bird Stuffed by Turkey”. This was presumably intended to be clever and funny.

However, the most of the criticism of the campaign had come before the launch and based on leaked information supplied to a small number of people with the expectation that they would handle it appropriately. By contrast the content was immediately leaked. And again it was erroneously branded the “Incredinburgh Campaign” when there was no such campaign. Councillor Cardownie commented that “there was no whispering campaign”.

On the 15th of December the Scotsman reported that Ms Bird had sent emails to colleagues expressing concern about council interference in what was supposed to be an independent body. These internal emails were, once again, anonymously leaked to the press.

One SNP councillor who would ordinarily have been responsible for liaising with Marketing Edinburgh from his position as the Council’s Economy Convener was Tom Buchanan. He was also the only councillor to sit on the board of Marketing Edinburgh. However, Cllr Buchanan was very seriously ill for most of 2012 and had no involvement in the campaign. He was replaced by SNP Cllr Frank Ross on the 24th of September 2012, one month before the first leak.

A replacement campaign called This is Edinburgh came out a year or so later. One of the advertisements is linked here. It could fairly be described as following a much safer approach than the original.

The cost of the original aborted campaign was reported as being £300,000. The already poor reputation of the Council was, by association, further tarnished. The Council’s Chief Exec Sue Bruce stepped down on the 14th of December, the same day as Ms Bird, and neither her successor nor any other senior council officers ever joined the board again. Marketing Edinburgh was eventually closed down in early 2020 after all the board resigned when the funding from the council was heavily cut. The company was only founded in 2011, the year before the first political difficulties emerged.

In response to this blog post, Mr Cardownie reserved his rights to take legal action in future if he deemed that defamatory statements have been made against him.

[On a personal note, when Mr Farrell was suspended I raised my concerns with two senior SNP colleagues at the time; the then whip Cllr Gavin Barrie and Cllr Frank Ross the only councillor on the board of Marketing Edinburgh. My feeling was that there had been inappropriate SNP involvement in the campaign and that we as councillors had a duty to ensure that employees, including arms length company employees and contractors, were treated fairly and supported. But neither of them were minded to support me. I was the only SNP councillor to even express concerns to colleagues and, to the best of my knowledge, no opposition or other administration councillors expressed any support for Ms Bird or Mr Farrell or any concern about the propriety of what had happened.]

7) On planning..

Planning is a quasi-judicial matter and so councillors are expected to be extra careful in accordance with their code of conduct.

For several years between 2012 and 2017, former councillor Tom Ponton hosted an annual pre-Christmas lunch where former council colleagues would meet businessmen and others. Two old friends, Councillors Steve Cardownie (SNP) and Eric Milligan (Labour), were regularly invited to this annual event. For the occasion which the guest list below relates to (which is not dated but which is understood to date from 2016 or 2015), they were joined by conservative Councilors Jason Rust and Dominic Heslop. Mr Ponton also served on the Edinburgh International Jazz and Blues Festival with the first three councillors named above for the full council term until 2017 and knew all four well.

Also present were several people involved in licensing and property development. These were: Kevin Doyle, owner of numerous bars around the capital see here, a gentleman from Hardies Property and Construction – involved in developing student accommodation at Meadowbank and the council’s former offices at No.1 Cockburn St (see here), Property Developer Steve Jack, Entertainment developer Nick Russell, and Bob Tait from Format Design. Format Design were linked to numerous planning applications in Edinburgh around this time such as this site development here and the conversion to a bar/cafe of the old music library on George IV bridge. The library building was sold to an adjoining owner without going on the open market and that raised a few eyebrows. Mr Ponton is also a consultant and developer and involved in projects such as the proposed Edinburgh Arena here.

There is no suggestion that any of the businessmen present did anything wrong. They’re entitled to meet whoever they like but that’s not quite the case for the councillors or for the senior council staff member(s?) who attended similar “Pre-Christmas Lunches” in other years.

The main potential issue is that three of the councillors (Cardownie, Milligan and Heslop) also sat on the Planning Committee at various times during the 2012 to 2017 council term. For the entire council term Councillor Milligan was also the Convener of the Licensing Committee which oversees the licensing arrangements for all the bars in Edinburgh, including those owned by Mr Ponton with his son Iain.

If the existence of this annual event was ever reported to fellow councillors then it’s not clear where or if it was recorded. It certainly wasn’t widely known within the SNP group or mentioned in SNP group minutes. A review of the council’s online register of interests showed no indication that any of the councillors present ever recorded that they had received hospitality from Mr Ponton at this event.

This is what the councillor’s code of conduct says about hospitality.

• You must not accept any offer by way of gift or hospitality which could give rise to real or substantive personal gain or a reasonable suspicion of influence on your part to show favour or disadvantage to any individual or organisation. (3.7)
• You must not accept any offer of a gift or hospitality from any individual or organisation who is an applicant awaiting a decision from the Council or who is seeking to do business or to continue to do business with the Council. (3.10)
• You must only accept offers to attend social or sporting events where these are clearly part of the life of the community or where the Council would be expected to be represented. (3.11)
• You must not accept repeated hospitality […] from the same source. (3.12)
• You must register the details of any gifts or hospitality received [subject to some further clarifications of the conditions] (4.21)
• The key principle is the need for transparency in regard to any interest which might […] be objectively regarded by a member of the public, acting reasonably, as potentially affecting your responsibilities as a councillor […]. (5.11)
• To reduce the risk of your, or your Council’s, decisions being legally challenged, you must not only avoid impropriety, but must at all times avoid any occasion for suspicion and any appearance of improper conduct. (7.4) [This is with particular regard to quasi-judicial matters such as the planning and licencing committees.]

It appears highly questionable whether the four councillors present at the event adhered to all of the above rules.

For further context the following case studies are relevant.

Case Study 1 – Torduff Road (Bonaly Farm)

The consultant or agent representing the applicants for permission for a change of land use to a cemetery in this case was Tom Ponton. The environment agency SEPA required a survey on the impact of burials on the water environment and Mr Ponton was lobbying for planning permission to be assessed without it and for the survey to follow afterwards. To this end he was in touch with both the Head of Planning and Transport (who wrote the report to the committee) and the Chief Operating Officer about his request before meeting the SNP chair of the Economy Committee (Cllr Barry) about it in mid 2016. He was clearly well connected at the council.

Unfortunately there does not appear to be any public record of Mr Ponton’s connection to the project, for example, any mention in the minutes of the Development Management Sub-committee when it was discussed there on 18th January 2017, or in the report to the committee for this application on the same date.

Furthermore, although councillors Cardownie, Milligan and Heslop were all present at this meeting, there is no record of any declaration of their friendship with, or hospitality received from, Mr Ponton. According to the minutes (see right) Cllr Cardownie even appeared to help secure a continuation of the application to April 2017 to allow time for further discussions to take place and further information to be submitted. All without any mention of Mr Ponton’s role. In the end he was unsuccessful and the application was rejected.

There is no suggestion that Mr Ponton has erred, but the three councillors do not appear to be acting exactly in accordance with their code of conduct.

Case Study 2 – St James Quarter

On becoming Economy Convener in 2013 Cllr Frank Ross moved quickly to commission a study of high profile renovation projects in Edinburgh, including the St James Quarter – see here. He met with John Swinney on several occasions in 2013 agree government support for some kind of growth accelerator funding.

Cllr Ross led the project from the front and moved motions at Full Council such as on 1st May 2014. An extract from those minutes is as follows: “The rationale for public sector intervention in the regeneration of the St James Quarter was outlined together with proposals for a new investment model known as the Regeneration Accelerator Model (RAM).” Around £61m of the total £850m cost would be borrowed and repaid from revenues such as increased future business rate returns.

What is questionable is that Cllr Ross attended both of the meetings of the Planning Committee where the St James Quarter was approved, on Wednesday 1st July and Wednesday 12th August 2015, as a substitute both times. The minutes don’t record who voted for what, just the total for and against, but they do show that Cllr Ross did not declare any interest in the project and recuse himself from the vote. As the scarcely impartial person who made it a personal goal to get it funded and see it through, he should not have voted on it at all. There is an inherent and significant conflict of interest between economic development and planning.

The graphic on the right was developed by a member of the public and appears to be accurate. The vote was more or less split by party block as was quite common during that council term.

The problem was the culture of the council. There was no real oversight from e.g. senior governance staff or auditors, nor was there much to be feared from the group leaders or whips of the political parties. So there were no adverse consequences for any councillors straying from the rules. Consequently, adverse outcomes from the project, such as the effect on the Edinburgh skyline, will be a feature of the city for a very long time. The fact that the code of conduct does not appear to have been strictly adhered to during these meetings indicates that different outcome could have been possible.

Case study 3 – The LDP fiasco

Individual planning decisions were not the only questionable matters around the planning committee. The inability of the city council to publish a Local Development Plan was the greatest of them all. The draft plan emerged (see here) over two years late in May 2015 to a wave of derision. The referendum of 2014 and general election of 2015 were two reasons for the delay but councillors from wards on the fringes of the city were also understandably reluctant to support plans which would lead to huge new developments next to their communities.

The biggest reason for the delay however was that too many of the councillors, particularly the senior ones, simply didn’t want to expend political energy on producing an LDP. Collectively the council had ceased to think and act strategically with senior councillors preferring to lunch with developers rather than prioritise the statutory task of developing a coherent LDP. Good councillors would look forward to addressing the complex political challenges needed to develop and finalise a LDP.

And finally..

Councillors should adhere rigidly to the code of conduct as once a culture of non-compliance develops it can take root. In 2019 several SNP councillors were revealed to have met with businessmen including David Murray junior at a VIP event in Cannes which his firm was involved with sponsoring (see here). Given Mr Murray’s ongoing interest in property development in Edinburgh, this meeting was also questionable in terms of the councillor’s code of conduct. Again, businessmen cannot be faulted for wanting to meet politicians but the politicians should be prepared to decline the invitations or at least be transparent when they accept.