Care Home clarity

My colleague, Maureen Child, was speaking at an Age Scotland hustings earlier today ... a little bit of preparatory work has clarified the truth behind a recent spout of "lets claim credit for everything", in relation to Edinburgh's recent Care Home expansion ...

... Edinburgh Council has opened four new care homes in the last five years, an achievement of which the city can be rightly proud. But it is wholly facetious for the the present SNP/Lib-Dem Council to pretend that this is something for which they are entirely responsible.

Like all major construction projects, the process of commissioning, planning and building these new homes took years, and in reality all four new care homes were conceived in 2002 when Edinburgh Labour ran the Local Authority.

As Maureen explains:

"The SNP/Lib Dem coalition claim credit for building four new care homes, but the reality is that they were all conceived in 2002. The sites were identified and planning permission granted while Labour was running the council, and construction on two of the projects was even started under Labour.  All the the SNP/Lib Dem coalition has had to do is cut the ribbon on each one!"

"Like their claims for schools, they claim credit for the initiatives of Labour and have coasted along on Labour's record over the last five years."

The construction timetable for each of the new care homes is as follows:

Home	On Site	Completion Date	Opening Date
Marionville	January 2006	July 2007	September 2007
Castlegreen	August 2006	December 2007	January 2008
North Merchiston	July 2007	November 2008	December 2008
Inchview	July 2009	January 2011	February 2011
Drum Brae	October 2011	Due February 2013	Due March/April 2013