Thursday June 11th 2026
Westfield Court, Gorgie
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Joe Sullivan
An objection to the historic listing of an Edinburgh flat block may be lodged by the council as it seeks to demolish the structure.
The council said in November last year it wanted to pull down the eight-storey Westfield Court block in Gorgie over a litany of maintenance issues.
They include persistent issues with sewage pipes leaking into flats which it said was beyond economical repair, along with difficulties with flooding, services ducts and fire safety.
However, after news came that Historic Environment Scotland (HES) was considering listing the structure, the council ceased a buyback programme aimed at making it the block’s sole owner.
Now officers have proposed the council object to the structure’s listing, and appeal if it is listed, in an effort to continue the buyback.
Councillors will consider the objection and appeal request at next Wednesday’s planning committee meeting.
It currently owns 32 flats in the block, with 62 in private hands. The council is working to decant tenants from the flats it owns there for ‘their own safety and wellbeing’.
In a report before the planning committee meeting, officers state that the building is “not of any particular architectural or historic interest.”
They add that there are active demolition and redevelopment plans for the site, which they say could run afoul of HES’s own policy for listing.
In addressing architectural interest, officers at points compare Westfield Court with A-listed Cables Wynd House in Leith, better known as the Banana Flats, a building from the same era as Westfield Court.
They state that both have a curved shape, and note that Cables Wynd House is both already listed and is cited in HES’s literature as an example of social housing from its time, where Westfield Court is not.
HES had summarised the curved nature of the block as part of a possible argument for listing it.
Councillors also struck back at HES’s suggestions that the building’s essentially being made up of tenements and that the flats being built as social housing from that era with balconies made them rare or unique.
They stated that the building’s internal form of several tenement blocks replicated existing tenements in the city.
They added that other buildings of a similar architectural style, including the older A-listed Ravelston Gardens flats built in the 1930s, had balconies. The flats are also curved.
Officers concluded their commentary on the architecture of the blocks by saying they did not represent ‘overall design innovation’, and that the building is ‘architecturally unremarkable’.
On setting, they stated that the building appeared ‘alien’ in its environment, and ‘fails to contribute positively’ to the surrounding townscape.
And on historic interest, they state that while Westfield Court was the first multi-storey block of its scale in Edinburgh, other buildings – including Cables Wynd House – project a more complete image of multi-storey housing in Scotland.
Writing on condition, they emphasise that the building is beyond its serviceable life, with drainage failing in three of the six blocks and the perimeter of the building needing to be fenced off due to parts of the facade falling away from the building.
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