STOP. HARBOUR POINT

Email: environment@eastlothian.gov.uk Address to: Graeme Marsden by 01-09-2026

Planning application number 25/01247/PM or complete the form below, and we’ll pass on your objections to the planning department.

I object to the planning application for student residences at Newhailes Road. This proposal represents a gross overdevelopment that fails to respect the historic character, scale and mass of the proposed location.

1. Breach of Landscape Character and Height Precedent

The proposal fails the primary test of Policy DP1, which mandates that development must be appropriate in scale, massing, and proportion.

There are no buildings on Newhailes Road exceeding three storeys. Increasing the established height with a 6-storey block creates an "alien mass" that disrupts the local skyline.

This historic route is defined by a building line set well back from the road screened by trees.

This is the only structure from Newhailes House to Edinburgh Road seeking to abandon this setback, destroying the "boulevard" character

New Plan

The original Design and Access Statement (2025) put the crest of the building’s set-back

top story as 26.61 metres. The raised elevation 11 May 2026 “Revised Scheme V1.0”, shows

the height of the building now reaching 29.87 metres., an increase of 2.36 metres or

around 12%.

2. Failure of Design Quality and Distinctiveness

The development is a "city-centre" model forced into a historic town context with complete disregard for its surroundings.

Incompatible Typology: The high-density design fails the NPF4 Policy 14 "Distinctiveness" test. This belongs in a metropolitan core, not a sensitive approach to Musselburgh and Fisherrow Harbour.

Harsh Interface: By pushing the building line towards the footway, the design creates an "oppressive urban wall" that contradicts the open, green character of the route.

3. Misleading Environmental Baseline

We challenge the Biodiversity Statement under Policy NH5. The baseline fails to account for 5 large mature trees removed in May 2024. Pre-emptive removal of trees to justify a higher, closer building line is a circumvention of environmental protections and a gross misrepresentation of ecological loss.

The New Plan

The original scheme’s Design and Access Statement described an “extensive green roof”

of 1,710 square metres as critical to its biodiversity net gain and drainage strategy. The

revised Design and Access Statement Addendum confirms the roofscape has since been

redesigned to introduce “pitched roof forms and dormers”, significantly reducing the

green roof area that the developer’s own biodiversity statement relied on to justify its

ecological uplift claims. Increasing the Height, Scale and Massing of the building.

4. Violation of Infrastructure and Community Balance

Social Infrastructure; there is no evidence local GP capacity, policing, or emergency services already under strain can absorb 290 transient residents.

Sustainability: This "studio-only" model fails to create a balanced community, contradicting Policy. Any alternative use (e.g., Short Term Lets) must be strictly conditioned to prevent further loss of local amenity.

5. Experimental Transport Strategy

Unprecedented Risk: One disabled space for 290 residents is discriminatory and a failure of Policy T2. This "zero-car" experiment is completly untested at this scale in East Lothian and will cause unacceptable interference with traffic flow on a primary arterial route.

Logistics: Delivery, Visitor and refuse collection volumes will exacerbate pollution and congestion.

6.Scale driven by the market, not local demand

The developer’s own Supporting Planning Statement provides evidence the scheme’s scale was never designed or assessed based on local demand.

“A critical mass of students is needed to attract student housing operators to a location

which does not have any other facilities of this nature and the scale of the development

is therefore designed to attract operators to East Lothian for the first time”

The proposed 269 beds was set to make the site commercially attractive, not to meet any demonstrated shortfall in accommodation for students at Queen Margaret or Edinburgh College’s nearby campus. The plan needs to be rooted in whether 269

occupant rooms is appropriate planning scale for the location, Not what will make the

developers business plan attractive to operators. There is no evidence that there is a requirement for student accommodation of this scale in Musselburgh.

Conclusion

This application represents a gross overdevelopment that ignores the established 3-storey limit and historic building line. It violates the core tenets of the East Lothian Local Development Plan and NPF4. We urge the Planning Department to refuse this application.