 Good morning and I welcome everyone to the National Galleries of Scotland Bill Committee's third meeting of 2015. Can I ask everyone to switch off mobile phones and any other electronic devices as they do interfere with the broadcasting system even when they are switched to silent? However, committee members may use tablets for committee business as the meeting papers are now provided in digital format. Welcome. The first item in our agenda is to decide whether to take item 3 in private. Do our members agree to take item 3 in private? Thank you. Then we can move on to agenda item number 2. The main item of our business today is to hear from the representatives of the city of Edinburgh Council following on from our session with the promoters at our last meeting. Graham Tully, sorry, estates services manager, and Karen Stevenson, who is the senior planner for the city of Edinburgh Council. Welcome to you both. I believe that Karen you may have a short statement to make before we begin. If that's okay, I'd like to just do an introduction. Okay, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. The city of Edinburgh Council has a working relationship with the National Galleries of Scotland with regular collaboration on a management and maintenance and the operation of the mountain precinct and the western link entrance within East Brent Street Gardens. In 2011 the council through its planning function facilitated a piece of work with the galleries to review how further future investment in the area could best meet the needs of a variety of users and reinforce the special qualities of the gallery's complex and its relationship with Prince Street Gardens and of course the surrounding area. In particular the council highlighted the problem of legibility of some of the connections for people navigating around and through the area. Prince Street Gardens is a centerpiece of the heart of the World Heritage site and provides a linking landscape feature between the old and new towns of Edinburgh. The council has a management and conservation plan in place to guide changes to the gardens. The council has continued to dialogue with the gallery's design team during the development of their proposals and we agree that further work is required to take account of appropriate integration within the gardens. The council's legal and property teams have worked with the galleries in the promotion of the bill and secured a mandate from the Finance and Resources Committee at a meeting on 3 February to engage with the galleries on the sale of the land and the terms of which would require further committee approval. The council's planning authority has had pre-application discussions with the galleries and expect planning and listed building applications in due course. Thank you, Ms Stevenson, for that. I am aware now that there are a few of the questions that Muriel has been covered with your opening statement but can I just ask you to expand when the promoters were here? They explained during the oral evidence that the council agrees with the bill and that there has been that close discussions with the promoter in relation to the project. Can I ask you to expand on the issues and the nature of the co-operation between the various council departments and the promoter, please? I touched on an outline of how far back the discussions have gone. I think that the original introduction and working partnership with the galleries started quite a few years ago and we do have this constant relationship and working with them anyway about the management of the galleries. We have engaged principally through the planning department and the planning function of the council but planning have drawn together other departments within the council such as the parks department and finance and obviously my colleague here Graham in the property department as well as the arts teams and other management transport a whole range of departments actually interface on the gardens and the whole of the the man complex. So it is a complicated arrangement for us and involves a number of people. So we've certainly had a lot of discussions about how we progress changes and look at changes and the implications of what the galleries may or may not have wanted to do and we've obviously been there in partnership and by the side during their own personal process on appointing the design team and thinking about the way that they could change the building. So we have attended design team meetings as well but all on a sort of preliminary basis so there's been no formal position of such in planning terms taken yet that's still very much a pre-application. Thank you Mr Tully would you like to add anything? Just like to add that the council certainly is delighted to hear of the possibility of investment in the galleries and the council certainly at the committee on the third of February supported the galleries in commencing this process as the first stage to achieve the improvements. Could I ask just a further question to detail and then I'll open it up to the other committee members. Could I ask you to explain the likely impact on the gardens during the construction? I'm not sure who wants to answer that Mr Tully. Maybe in broad terms the actual building changes will obviously require to have sections of the gardens potentially may be closed off for sections which would happen in any development that takes place. I mean when we have festivals and events we have to restrict access in certain parts of the gardens so I think people are used to that and there are alternatives and alternatives would have to be put in place and there are alternative routes and accesses around because of where it's located in the city centre so I think that would be reasonable to expect. Okay thank you very much Mr Tully sorry. I could just add that you know with estate services we would have discussions with our colleagues in parks and between the council and galleries we would enter into a licence agreement to govern the operations on site method statements of working and hours of working just so we can control how that will impact on the gardens. Thank you very much thank you for that and could I now move over to my colleague Fiona McLeod who has a few questions. Thank you. As you know one of the primary purposes of the preliminary stage in looking at a private bill is on whether there is a need for a private bill and I was wanting to ask the council's views on why you have supported the national gallery in going down the route of this private bill especially when you look at in 2003 for the play fair project where the council first went to the court to dispose of the common good in the inalienable part of the process but this time the national galleries has decided to put both into the one bill and I wondered what the council's feeling on that was. I know that you support it if you'd just like to reiterate that support. Mr Tully. I have to say I'm not a lawyer having had discussions with the council's legal team they concurred with the gallery's legal team that the various legal hoops could be wrapped up in this single parliamentary process. So I'm probably again asking the wrong person the next question which is in the 1991 act that prevents the council from using the gardens for building on it except for specific purposes like for electricity generators and such like. Why there wasn't any consideration given to amending the 1991 act in this position was the council worried that to amend the 1991 act for this specific purpose would then have left the gardens open for a lot more development. I couldn't really comment on that final point. It might be something that we can write to the council and just pursue. You can write, we will be able to respond to that for you. I just really wanted to ask you if you could clarify the arrangements for the transfer of common good land and the council's evaluation of best value. I'm really asking that because as you know there could be a headline, council sells off parts of Princess Street Garden's shock horror. Obviously I think that this is absolutely a wonderful development for both the council and the gallery and more so the general public. How do you evaluate that best value in terms of public concern? I agree that there are sensitivities around the gardens and common good and clearly that the principle of the project will be governed by both this process and the planning process but in terms of the transfer arrangements the council would appoint external valuers to assess the best value issue and that would look at the very fact that what is being transferred is a quite a narrow strip about five meters wide which in itself doesn't have a lot of value on its own. It would also look at sort of the fact that the gardens will hopefully be the beneficiaries of some improvements or access so that will be a basket of benefits which will capture the issue of best value. When we did our site visit it seems to me that there's a very positive outcome in this instance but it's important that we record and acknowledge just what these are through this bill and that there will be disabled access to understand and the monument to the Spanish Civil War which has kind of never really been given much prominence will actually be in a better place and I think would you agree that these are benefits that we would want up a better word sell to the public in terms of better access and a more enjoyable space and improvement to the play first steps and so on? Absolutely and as Karen mentioned that once we've had a discussion following the values assessment we'll have discussions about other terms things like rights of access to maintain and clean the facade that's being created and all this will be documented and report back up to committee so that will be a public document so they will see all the benefits flowing from the project. Thank you, thank you for that. Thank you for that and okay, are we all okay? Sorry, yeah, any other further questions? Could I ask the last question you'll be glad to hear? The legal obstacle in 1991 act and I'm aware that my colleague but I just really wanted to get on record is the same one which led to the play fair project that needed to parliamentary approval in 2003. Although that doesn't relate to the bill itself, can you say whether it needs for a more general amendment to be made to the 1991 act so that there is an exception for public museums, galleries, i.e. so that the private bills are no longer needed for construction linked to such buildings in the garden what would be your advice or your opinion on that? I think I would have to have discussions with our colleagues in parks to see if there are any risks associated with that because obviously there are sensitivities surrounding the gardens and their use and it's quite difficult to at this stage identify whether this would be opening the door to intrusions into the gardens. It's maybe, sorry, Mrs Stevens. No, I was going to say in planning terms certain specific uses are obviously defined in the planning legislation but again that would have to be something that would be sensitivities there I think around those terms which the legal experts would have to look at very carefully. It's maybe something that, as committee members want to write to yourselves and hopefully get some clarification. Mr Todd? Mr Todd is associated with the sensitivities that in terms of the sale of the 5m strip and the development taking place on that, we would be imposing restrictions on the use of that to gallery space and ciliary uses again for the very reason that there are sensitivities around the use of the gardens. I think that that clarifies that and if we need any further clarification we will write to yourselves and hopefully get back to us to put that on record and I think that that's all of the questions that we were aiming to ask from the committee this morning so can I thank you once again for coming along this morning and I know it's been fairly brief however fairly wholesome and thank you again for coming along and I think we are now moving on to the next item on the agenda which now moves us into a private session so I close the meeting.