5. Open up our estate

Including key changes and impacts since 2020.

The last five years have seen us open up our estate in various ways, by catering for community use as we open new buildings, maximising community use of existing ones, and making it easier to find out what we’re doing with our developments. We’ve taken further steps to make available the cultural heritage for which we are custodians, too. As a key civic partner, we have played our part in improving local green spaces for communities, including woodland we own. This last year, we have seen great progress in how we maximise the community benefits of our procurement spend, launched our new Gaelic Plan, and celebrated Gaelic culture, 900 years of the City of Edinburgh, and our annual Colour Run. 

  • Gaelic Week events
  • The Colour Run
  • Friends of the Pentlands
  • School visit to Rullion Green Wood

Images show Gaelic Week and our Gaelic Plan launch, our Colour Run, and communities at Rullion Green Wood.

Through the Plan, we’ve made significant progress in ensuring local communities enjoy positive impact from benefits offered by our suppliers. We’ve worked on embedding an approach to community delivery through the goods and services we procure. A community benefit menu was developed through consultation with external stakeholders, including suppliers and community groups: the menu provides a framework for suppliers to choose relevant community benefits that they can commit to delivering, safe in the knowledge that local communities will benefit. To further encourage the delivery of meaningful benefits through our procurement activities, we have worked closely with our partner ESES (Edinburgh & South East Scotland) Communities. ESES Communities, funded through the ESES City Region Deal, manages and delivers a community benefits portal which matches communities and good causes with suppliers across the ESES City Region.

In December 2024, we refreshed our commitments to Gaelic speakers and celebrating Gaelic culture across our campuses and into local communities with the launch of our Gaelic Plan 2025-30, welcomed by Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes MSP. Once again, we took part in February 2025’s Gaelic Week Edinburgh, established in 2022, for which we work with local and national groups to create the programme. We have continued to coordinate Gaelic conversation circles in our community space at 127 Nicolson Street.

As part of the citywide Edinburgh 900 celebrations, two pupils from James Gillespie’s High School looked at how Gaelic at the University has had an impact on Edinburgh. Also, as part of the celebrations:

In October 2025, we were proud to offer fifty free tickets to local New Scots to take part in University of Edinburgh Sport’s Colour Run in partnership with EVOC and local charities including Care4Calais Scotland, Edinburgh Refugee Sponsorship Circle, Chapter House, and Mission of Innocents.

This was also the year that volunteer activities like tree planting and wildflower meadow creation began at Rullion Green Wood, near Flotterstone in the Pentland Hills Regional Park. We've repurposed this thirty hectare site to create woodlands and improve the habitats of plants and animals. Involvement of nearby communities with the Wood is also important for us. We’ve installed information signs about the site and improved access for people by removing livestock. We’ve met with nearby communities to understand their aspirations for Rullion and plans with local schools are underway.


Commitment 28: “Designate a physical front door on each of our campuses all year round, so that members of our community know how to reach us in person.”

In year four, we reported the opening of both the Edinburgh Futures Institute and Usher buildings, which have spaces designed for welcoming members of the public, community groups and schools. In 2023, Dick Vet in the Community, our veterinary outreach clinic, moved into a physical home behind a shopfront at 127 Nicolson Street, a bustling road in the heart of Edinburgh’s Southside accessible to clients.

Commitment 29: “Trial opening up some of our buildings to allow community bookings on a cost-free basis.”

Between September 2022 and October 2025, the Community Access to Rooms scheme has provided:

  • Over 7,200 hours of community use of University spaces.
  • More than £530,000 in in-kind value (based on the cost of commercial hire of University space).
  • At least £55,000 in savings to local community groups (compared with nearby community centre hire rates).
  • Support to over 180 different community groups.

The pilot launched in autumn 2022 and the scheme was adopted as business-as-usual by our University Executive in December 2023.

Find out more at:

Commitment 30: “Aim to operate on a ‘no surprises’ basis with community partners on developments of our estate which could impact local communities, and be as open and transparent as possible about our future plans.”

Our Stakeholder Relations team and Estates colleagues have worked closely on communications and engagement related to development work involving our estate. Details of planned developments, and consultations on these, are shared on our community facing webpages, along with contact details of the Community Team (the Team includes Stakeholder Relations colleagues).

Commitment 31: “Create positive community benefit through our procurement processes.”

We’ve actively built and maintained key relationships to ensure we deliver for the benefit of communities in line with best practice. Community benefits are prominent in our recently launched Procurement Strategy 2030 and are detailed in our Annual Procurement Reports. Various resources have been developed to support Procurement colleagues through opportunities and barriers, and these are readily accessed via our internal Procurement Hub.

Commitment 32: “Work with community partners to protect our shared cultural heritage and enhance access to green spaces.”

Formation of the Outwith initiative and Binks Hub, and their work, are two recent, salient ways we have worked with community partners to protect our shared cultural heritage.  Our Heritage Collections team are the custodians of the University’s cultural heritage, which includes many items linked to local communities’ heritages, and are “open to all”.

We’ve been involved with several community projects in local green spaces, with partners including Duddingston Field Group, Friends of Saughton Park, Friends of the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links, SCORE Scotland, and Rowanbank Environmental Arts & Education. Through the GroundsWell research project, we’ve been involved with the Thriving Greenspaces Programmes led by the City of Edinburgh Council. And, in 2021, we ran a themed round of micro-grants for community-driven ‘green’ activity, a response to the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (‘COP 26’) being held in Glasgow.


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