Hello all,
My name is Mark Provan, and I live at 16/8 Salamander Street.
I have created SECAB to help get the back green or garden area between our tenements back into use by all residents. Once the space has been cleared and kept clean professionally, it can be there for the benefit of all the resident community. I hope it can be used as a nice place to sit and relax, or maybe to participate in outdoor activities like gardening, or even just somewhere clean to hang out the washing.
Once we have a high-quality communal space to share between us all, we can all work together to make the most of it. In the process we can learn about and get to know our neighbours and foster a new sense of community in this corner of Leith.
I have created this website as a source of information for the SECAB community so that we can find out what is going on, what we can do and how we are going to do it. I hope that as I get to know other residents, some of them will wish to help lead SECAB alongside me.
SECAB Phase 1 – Making contact
SECAB Phase 2 – Making decisions
SECAB Phase 3 – Getting organised
There are also specific guides for different sorts of members of the SECAB community:
SECAB for me: private landlords
SECAB for me: social housing tenants
Alongside this website I have created a Facebook page and a Twitter profile: @secab_scot.
My flat overlooks the back green area between the tenements bound by Salamander, Elbe, Cadiz, Assembly and Baltic Streets in Leith.
When I moved in, the back green wasn’t top on my list of priorities. I didn’t even receive a key for our back door.
After I moved in, it took months to learn who the other residents in my stair were. By chance one day, I heard someone hoovering. I knocked on the door and met my first other resident. Funnily enough, this was the person who had bought a flat just a few months before me. He didn’t know anyone either.
After a few months, I managed to find another resident. Thankfully this time he had been there for years, and knew all about the goings-on in the stair and around the area.
I was making an effort to find my fellow owners because I knew I would need to work with them one day.
From my experience, I can see how some residents may take years to learn who else lives in their stair, if they ever will at all.
The last few months have been a whirlwind. Things have happened which most of us couldn’t have possibly imagined only a few months ago. Even our parents and grandparents have not seen anything like this.
For many, the biggest impact this has on your life is that you’ve been trapped at home. You’re only allowed to go out for food, medicine, to help others, or to do important work that cannot be done from home.
For many, there may not be any work left for you to do, even from home.
Some people have fared better than others in lockdown. Many people have been able to sit out and enjoy whatever weather and activities they wish, in the privacy of their own garden.
Living here, many people may have treated Leith Links Park as their garden. It is open and green and free for all. That is, until now.
Times are difficult enough for everyone without losing your outdoor space to sit and relax.
I had only ventured out into the back green once or twice to have a look. I could hear that some people do use it at times, but the space is almost always empty. The most common sight seemed to be some washing, hung up only outside a few of the flats.
We aren’t allowed to leave our homes, the law says.
But what counts as our home?
PART 3
Restrictions on movement and gatherings
Restrictions on movement
5.—(1) Except to the extent that a defence would be available under regulation 8(4), during the emergency period, no person may leave the place where they are living.
(2) For the purposes of paragraph (1), the place where a person is living includes the premises where they live together with any garden, yard, passage, stair, garage, outhouse or other appurtenance of such premises
The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Restrictions) (Scotland) Regulations 2020
The garden of our home counts as part of our home. We are allowed to be there.
Clearly, some people in these tenements know that they have somewhere they can go outside. I have heard them, and I have seen their washing out on the lines.
But do other people know?
Our tenements are not especially grand. They were built for workers and their families in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Unlike earlier tenements, they were all built with full indoor plumbing. The majority of the flats are single-aspect. You get a view of the road, or of the back green, but not both.
Some of the residents will never have even known they had a back green. If your flat overlooks the street, and you never got a back door key, then you’d have no way to know. None of the back green is visible from the street.
Even if you do have a flat which overlooks the green, you may still have never received a key.
And in either case, whatever you did see or go out into is covered in weeds, dumped rubbish or worse. Some areas are better kept than others, but the whole space is dragged down by the state of the worst parts.
Could we change this?
Could we bring this space back into full use by all residents?
Yes, and that’s what I created SECAB to do.
Thank you,
Mark Provan
SECAB 