Central Edinburgh Greens

Central Edinburgh Greens Sub-branch Report - June 2026

Status

Final

Sub-branch Committee

The 2025 AGM of the Sub-branch was held on Tuesday 3rd June at LifeCare in
Stockbridge. The following office bearers were elected:

Amanda stepped down in August 2025 in order to become East Lothian Co-convenor

Membership numbers

Membership numbers have increased across the Scottish Greens during 2025 to
2026, the Edinburgh branch, and CEG sub-branch. According to the party
membership system, from 20th of June 2025 to 26 May 2026 sub-branch membership
grew:

Sub-branch Meetings

CEG continued to meet monthly, alternating between Inverleith and City Centre
venues, with a break for December. Instead of the usual July break, an online
meeting was convened because of the Holyrood 2026 campaign.

Inverleith meetings have all been at LifeCare in Stockbridge. City Centre
meetings moved from The Crannie to Tollcross Community Centre in 2026. Best
efforts are made to make meetings hybrid, but this is made difficult by
connectivity issues.

Green News Delivery

Autumn / Winter Green News was delivered in both Inverleith and City Centre
wards. More were ordered for City Centre but it was a struggle to get enough
delivery volunteers.

Holyrood 2026 Campaign

Canvassing

After a pause to free volunteers to support SWEG’s Fountainbridge/Craiglockhart
by-election, CEG canvassing was restarted in August, 2 weekends out of 4 -
alternating between Inverleith and City Centre. The last 2025 canvassing took
place in Canonmills on 7th of December 2025.

From 11th of January cadence was increased to every Sunday, initially
alternating between our two wards

The final Inverleith canvassing session of the campaign took place on the 1st of
March combined with a stall in Stockbridge. From then until polling day campaign
activities were concentrated in City Centre supporting Lorna’s bid for the
Edinburgh Central Constituency, increasing cadence to twice a week from the 11th
of March, adding Wednesday evenings.

Sunday canvassing attendance rose steadily throughout March up to the elections.
Wednesday evening attendance did not pick up until the clocks changed at the
beginning of April.

Inveleith canvassing was concentrated in Stockbridge (colonies, St Stephen
Street, Saunders Street). City Centre canvassing was meticulously organised by
Councillor Claire Miller and covered most of the target polling districts.

Deliveries

Deliveries were done later in the campaign with around 21,000 of 3 types of card
delivered in City Centre from February to May, including around 7,000 Eve of
Poll cards in the final week.

In Inverleith only Stockbridge colonies and St Stephen Street were covered by
the final campaign card and Eve of Poll cards.

Posters

Around 280 posters were delivered to members and G1s in the City Centre ward, as
well as posters handed out during canvassing. The number of Green posters
visible in City Centre, as well as other areas in Edinburgh, were noticeable and
often commented on by members of the public.

Only members (about 110) in Inverleith received posters in Inverleith.

Day of Poll

All Inverleith and City Centre Polling stations were covered by A-boards.

Other Day of Poll campaigning was concentrated in City Centre with 500
designated G1 and G2 doors knocked as part of the Get Out The Vote during the
day.

At peak times during the day leafleting was carried out at key polling stations
in the City Centre:

Of those polling stations Novotel and Dynamic Earth were suitable for accessible
campaigning.

Councillor Reports

Councillor Claire Millar - City Centre

City centre ward casework

Since our last AGM, I’ve logged 252 casework enquiries for residents in the city
centre ward. While there have been a large number of cases in relation to
ongoing hot topics such as the communal bin review and problems experienced with
holiday lets, I have also provided in-depth levels of support on some very
serious casework such as homelessness and social care needs. I have continued to
hold a monthly drop-in surgery at the Customer Hub and have successfully built
some good relationships with residents who have opted to meet me face-to-face
for support this year. I look forward to identify how to work collaboratively
with Lorna Slater on constituency casework and local projects.

Equalities portfolio

During 2025 we had a mini reshuffle of portfolios in order to utilise our
capacity better within the team and I took on the equalities portfolio.

Possibly the highest profile action I took was to table a motion regarding the
imprisoned Palestine Action hunger strikers. While ultimately the council forced
us to withdraw the motion, it still garnered a great deal of press coverage and
so achieved one of the aims which was to bring attention to the poor conditions
and human rights violations being endured by the prisoners.

Another focus for me was to work on building support for community cohesion in
order to counteract the rise of the far right in communities, see through flags
on lampposts and dog whistle events, and to ward off the danger of anti-asylum
seeker protests outside hotels being used as temporary accommodation. I worked
hard to bring a cross party motion together with the Labour, SNP and Lib Dem
groups and have taken an active role in the cross-party Community Cohesion
working group that the council has formed.

At budget time, I developed several proposals to support minority communities
and hope that we can build on this work in future budget rounds. We were able to
propose a package of measures such as improved access to ESOL (English for
Speakers of Other Languages), core funding for organisations supporting asylum
seekers and refugees, continued funding for community cohesion work and support
for residents with “no recourse to public funds”, as well as our headline-
grabbing proposal of free bus travel for asylum seekers.

Councillor Jule Bandel - Inverleith

Sadly, Jule has been unwell since December 2024. Jule has managed to attend some
council meetings online, and has maintained her role as a councillor.