The Trust have made a short written deputation to the City of Edinburgh Council meeting on 5 February — to support the Motion by Cllr Bruce – Defibrillators: Saving Lives (9.1). The text is as follows:
Our deputation is in support of the motion by Cllr Bruce.
We believe our experience on Calton Hill is relevant to the points made by Cllr Bruce in the motion.
The Trust are committed to making Calton Hill safer for visitors. One of many measures we have suggested is the installation of a prominent, readily-accessible defibrillator on top of the hill.
On 26 May 2025, we received a donation for the purchase of a defibrillator (and an outdoor box unit) and contacted council officers to ask for assistance with installation.
For the eight months since May, we have been in contact with a number of different sections of the council and city councillors to try to determine what type of installation would be suitable and which part of the council is responsible for the work.
Originally we hoped the defibrillator box, which requires a small electrical charge (unlike the defibrillator itself), could be attached to a lamp-post as we knew this had been done elsewhere (e.g. outside Greenside Church). In this connection, we note the relevance of item 1.5 of the motion explaining that, “other local authorities use street lighting to power defibrillators …”.
The last time we heard from council engineers we understood it would be necessary to lay a special cable underground, for which the Trust might be liable to a charge of £8,000 to £10,000! We hope this impossibly high charge can be avoided by using supply from the lighting or by using an alternative such as solar panels.
There is a .pdf of the deputation on the website here.