Copyright scotsman
Councillors have received more than 200 individual emails after Dune Bakery had a lease on a building in the town suddenly refused - leaving them with a bill for thousands of pounds. We reported that Dune Bakery was facing a bill of around £70,000 after Edinburgh council pulled the deal for the unit at The Loan at the last minute. However, councillors have now instructed officers to take no further action on the site before the next Finance & Resources meeting on Tuesday, November 18, calling the decision to reverse the lease as “politically contentious”. The emergency motion by the Liberal Democrat group was agreed by 46 councillors, despite a Conservative bid to block it. The motion reads that “Dune Bakery, as an award winning business, is a successful and welcome addition to Queensferry’s High Street and welcomes their ambition to expand their operations in the town. “Dune Bakery had expended considerable expense in preparing to take over a lease of a council owned lot, which has sat vacant for over a year, to provide another venue for their operations.” Councillors will discuss overturning the decision at the meeting next month. Lewis Gill, who owns Dune Bakery, said that £20,000 had already been sunk into the project through legal costs and a further £50,000 had been earmarked for contractors that were set to work on revamping the unit - a cost that will need to be incurred by either Mr Gill or the contractors who had set three months aside for the work. He said: “It's £20,000 that we've paid already, and then the rest, basically either we have to eat it, or our contractors have to eat it. So it's one of us, but either way it is absolutely huge.” The project would have given a second location to the popular bakery in South Queensferry, which recently placed second in the Isigny Sainte-Mère croissant competition at the Savoy in London. A council spokesperson said: “We’re grateful to the Dune Bakery for their interest in leasing this space and are sorry we’re not able to take this forward. We’ve written to the business to apologise and explain – and have offered to cover the costs they’ve incurred to date.”
