Dunbar & East Linton Area Partnership
Area Plan
2025-2030
Making Life Better
Introduction
Welcome to Dunbar & East Linton Area Partnership’s Area Plan.
The Dunbar & East Linton Area Partnership Area Plan 2025 – 2030 has been developed to meet the requirements of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. This Act gives greater powers to communities to get involved in local decision making and to have greater control of buildings, land and service provision that will bring benefits to their communities.
During the preparation of the Local Place Plans in 2024, residents were invited to share their concerns, and the matters not related to buildings and land are recorded in this Area Plan. There are two sections in this plan. The first section deals with those matters over which the Area Partnership has some influence but no control and includes the way that the Area Partnership may be able to influence the actual decision makers. The second section (pages 11-12) details the matters over which the Area Partnership does have some control and shows how the Area Partnership plans to make the Dunbar & East Linton Area, including the villages contained therein, a better place to live in over the next five years.
The main priority for each Area Partnership is to reduce inequalities and poverties across and within its communities. The needs of the DELAP area are very real, and this plan contains data that outline the depth of the challenge facing the Area Partnership.
However, the scope of the work of the Area Partnership is much wider than this, and, even if the financial resources are principally focussed on bridging the inequality gap, the objectives of the Area Partnership also include meeting the needs of the young and the old, supporting our local economy, caring for our heritage and our environment, and acting to find ways to mitigate the effects of climate change. Much of this is achieved through supporting our third sector organisations and the volunteers in the area.
Work by the East Lothian Partnership is underway on the next version of an East Lothian Plan. The production of a DELAP Area Plan, before the East Lothian Plan has been written or finalised, is designed to inform the East Lothian Partnership of the matters that the local communities want to be taken into consideration when the ELP draws up the East Lothian Plan.
The Area Partnership brings together the elected East Lothian Councillors for the ward, representative Community Councillors, Tenants & Residents Association representatives and members from School Parent Councils who work with representatives from active community groups. They work together to determine how, together with public services and the third sector organisations, they can deliver the planned outcomes. Our Area Partnership was first established in 2014 and is made up of a broad range of community representatives, all of whom give of their time on a voluntary basis.
Since 2014 we have successfully supported and delivered projects aimed at improving our communities and making lives better for everyone who live and work here.
These projects included delivery of the ourdunbar website, the very popular Dunbar Summer School activity project for children and young people in our Area, supporting the improvements to West Barns Village Hall, the installation of superfast broadband in Stenton, the inter-generational group, supported places on the Battlefields project, improvement works to East Linton High Street and Preston Road. We have delivered projects that help people to live active, safe and healthy lives and are also working to reduce the attainment gap and increase the achievement potential for our young people. Our aim is to continue, and improve, this work by delivering the priorities identified in this plan.
Our priorities, detailed in the plan, help identify ways in which we can make Dunbar, East Linton and the surrounding villages even better places for everyone who lives there. The plan has also been shaped by a wide range of consultation and engagement activity over the last five years, including the recent feedback into the Local Place Plans. It has been developed by looking at available data, analysing this evidence, and sharing the conclusions as widely as possible.
It is an evolutionary plan, and the Area Partnership is always ready to hear of new ideas as to how we can make improvements to the lives of those living and working in the Area.
Allison Cosgrove
Chair – Dunbar & East Linton Area Partnership
May 2025
The concerns of the community in the DELAP area
As part of the Local Place Plan process, people were consulted across the four community council areas in the ward, and were asked to say what was concerning them, not just about matters to do with place, but also on matters such as health, transport, education, and the environment we live in.
These concerns are shown on the following pages 6 to 8, representing the views of over 800 people in Dunbar and West Barns alone with equally proportionate participation from Dunpender and the outlying villages.
What role can the Area Partnership play to address these concerns?
The Partnership is made up of a very small number of volunteers, so its priority is to consider what are the matters within its control, capability and capacity to action itself, making life better for everyone living and working in the area. These actions are described in the second section of the Area Plan
There are many matters listed in this section which are not within the Area Partnership’s area of control. At best, the Area Partnership may have some influence over some of them, but the reality is that many of these subjects need to be delivered by government agencies with resources far greater than the Area Partnership can offer.
So, what is the purpose of this list of concerns?
The list represents the view of the people at a particular snapshot in time. These concerns will evolve and change with time. Most of the subjects are well-known to our politicians and decision-makers, but if anyone needs to know what the people want, this list leaves them in no doubt. If action is to be taken in any of these areas, and the decision-makers want the community to get involved in co-producing a solution, they will know that the Area Partnership is ready and willing to pull together the resources to help.
The Area Partnership may from time-to-time choose to write to or meet with decision-makers to ensure that these concerns are understood. The volunteers in the Area Partnership hold many different political views, so the Area Partnership itself will always remain apolitical.
The Area Partnership has a keen interest in the services that East Lothian Council delivers. It will use its influence wherever possible to provide positive guidance to the Council and to suggest ways in which services can be improved or delivered more efficiently.
What the DELAP community has asked for
The Place Plan projects of 2024 offered up wide range of ways by which our lives might be made better. The most common suggestions made were as follows.
The facts that lie behind these concerns
HEALTH DATA
- Male Life Expectancy in Dunbar is lower than in East Lothian & Scotland.
- Higher rates of Coronary Heart Disease, Chronic Kidney Disease, Diabetes, Hypertension, and Dementia than Scotland overall.
- Higher rate of Alcohol and Drug Related Hospital Admissions for children and young people (aged 11-25) than in Scotland overall.
- Prevalence of cancer, diabetes & hypertension is generally higher than in Scotland.
- More East Lothians are overweight or obese, on average, compared to Scotland.
- Depression is more prevalent amongst patients at East Linton Surgery & Whitesands Medical Practice than in East Lothian and Scotland.
- Non-specified mental health issues are slightly more prevalent among GP patients in Dunbar & East Linton
- More people die by suicide in Eastern
East Lothian than in the West. - The forecast is that the number of elderly in the area will increase significantly over the life of the plan
(Source – NHS)
POVERTY DATA
- The number of people seeking debt advice has trebled over the last five years.
- The amount of debt handled has risen by 225% over the last five years
- 36% of households in East Lothian accessed the Foodbank in 2022-23. That number is increasing.
(Source – Dunbar Debt advisory Team)
COMMUNITY LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT DATA
- Youth Anti-social Behaviour has been raised as a priority in 34 out of the last 36 Community & Police meetings.
- 94.5% of our Young People in the area reach a positive destination, the second lowest level in East Lothian.
- Connected Communities Dunbar provided 492 Capacity Building Opportunities in 2023/2024.
- Area Partnership members have undertaken 313 volunteer hours in 2023/24 on DELAP matters only, a small percentage of the total volunteer hours that this group gives to the community.
(Source – East Lothian Council)
HOUSING DATA
- The number of houses in Dunbar and West Barns has risen by over 1000 in recent years, placing increasing stress on the town’s infrastructure. With the increase in the number of houses has come an increase in anti-social behaviour.
- Hallhill (520 houses); Newtonlees (250); Newton manor(113); Belhaven Cala (98); Golf Club Cala (78) have been the major developments.
- The number of houses in East Linton has also risen over the same period with the development at Nobel Gardens (56 houses).
- Over the last five years 995 affordable homes have been built in the whole of East Lothian, but insufficient in the Dunbar & East Linton Area to meet demand, and no affordable homes in the Golf Club development.
- The level of unoccupied Council Houses remains much higher than in the private rented sector.
(Source – East Lothian Housing publications)
ENERGY PROJECTS DATA
- Off-shore windfarms come ashore in the area.
- Battery farms will spring up in the area
- On-shore windfarms proliferate in the area
- Consequential damage to the lives of those living in the area and the environment is inevitable.
(Source – Published development plans)
The Action Plan for DELAP
These are matters that are currently being addressed by the Area Partnership, or which are matters considered to be within the competency and capacity of members to address over the life of the plan.
Community based groups provide most of the resource and energy required to implement these plans. The Area Partnership will provide support, and, where asked for, guidance to these groups, to ensure that the community projects achieve the desired outcomes.
Member organisations
Dunbar and East Linton Area Partnership Member Organisations:
Councillors
Community Councils
- Dunbar Community Council
- Dunpender Community Council
- East Lammermuir Community Council
- West Barns Community Council
Pupil and Parent Councils
- Dunbar Grammar School Parent Council
- Small Primary School Parent Council Representative
Community Groups
- Bleachingfield Management Committee
- Climate Action East Linton
- Dunbar Trades Association
- Home Start East Lothian
- Innerwick Parish Welfare Association
- Sustaining Dunbar
- The Ridge
- Volunteer Centre East Lothian
Tenants and Residents Associations
- Dunbar Shore & Harbour Neighbourhood Group
- Monksmuir TRA
East Lothian Council
- Stevie McKinlay, Connected Communities Manager – Dunbar
Dunbar and East Linton Area Map
Version Control document
| Version | |
| 1.0 | February 2025 draft |
| 2.0 | April 2025 Draft |
| 2.1 | April 2025 Draft |
| 2.2 | April 2025 marked up with members’ contributions |
| 2.3 | April 2025 after Review Meeting amendments |
| 2.4 | April 2025 to include explanatory headings |
| 2.5 | May 25 to change H&WB heading and insert support for the economy on page 3 |
| 2.6 | May 25 following DELAP Business Meeting |
| 3.0 | Version submitted to the East Lothian Partnership May 2025 |