By Kevin Buckle

Copyright scotsman

We get a message like this every year but the council never seem to learn how disruptive this is for the shops in the Waverley Market who are trading all year round and paying a king’s ransom in business rates. This year we were told that no vehicles will be permitted on the bridge, with the exception of emergency vehicles, apart from a delivery window of between 10pm and 10am. The obvious thing to say straight away is that none of this window for deliveries coincides with the shops actually being open, except for a few of the food places. As happens every year shops are asked to schedule their deliveries to coincide with the acceptable timings which completely ignores that shops have no ability to time their deliveries and in fact it is all one of our main delivery companies can do to turn up by 6pm when we close. Only this week we had five important boxes delayed with the message the driver needed a security code to enter. What this actually meant was that our regular driver was off and his cover just couldn’t be bothered trying to deliver. As all of this wasn’t bad enough, shops are then being told they have to book slots for delivery, so even if a driver does turn up at an acceptable time, if the delivery depot is busy they will be turned away and not allowed to wait on Waverley Bridge. Some drivers have in previous years gone beyond the call of duty, parking in a nearby area that is acceptable and then bringing boxes in using a trolley. But we are told that that too is unacceptable, as drivers are already not allowed to deliver to the front of shops this way. In reality, drivers do this throughout the year and nothing is said and we are particularly lucky being so close to the entrance. So to enforce this rule at the very time access this way is needed is unfortunate to say the least. There obviously has to be increased security at this busy time and one year there was the sensible decision that somebody would stand at the top end of Waverley Bridge letting through drivers who had copies of delivery notes for the centre. This worked fairly well but there would regularly be nobody there to let the drivers through as the market seemed loath to incur the extra cost of monitoring the entrance, despite the fact that the entire problem was caused by the Christmas Market being there in the first place. The delivery companies struggle to get good drivers these days, especially for the city centre and we are actually quite lucky in that we have a good relationship with most of our delivery guys. But especially at Christmas, when there are more temporary drivers, they are already looking for a reason not to deliver, so all these restrictions give them an easy excuse not to bother. Every year we are asked for feedback and you would think that common sense would prevail, but sadly that never happens.