Behind the Shroud: Edinburgh’s World Heritage Site and the Advertising Problem

Walking along Princes Street last week you were as likely to encounter a giant fried chicken advert as you were a Georgian façade. That has since given way to a Sky advertisement, smaller but still prominent, which was itself quickly replaced by a Chanel advertisement of similar scale. The branding changes, but the impact remains. In a World Heritage city, that should concern us all.

This is why the Cockburn Association is speaking out, and why the issue has now reached the pages of The National. What we are witnessing is not an isolated lapse in judgment, but a growing pattern that risks normalising the commercial takeover of Edinburgh’s historic environment.

We recognise that historic buildings require investment. We recognise too that scaffold advertising, in moderation, can help fund essential repair and restoration. This is not a new debate. The alternative to a scaffold wrap is not always a pristine façade; it may be prolonged vacancy or delayed works. But there is a clear distinction between sensitive, well-designed coverings that respect a building’s character and proportion, and the kind of full-scale commercial branding that treats listed buildings as little more than billboards.

That distinction is now being eroded.

Recent cases illustrate the problem starkly. The large KFC billboard on Princes Street, directly facing the Scott Monument, was mounted on the former Forsyth’s building, now being converted into a hotel. Its rapid replacement first by a Sky advertisement and then by a Chanel advertisement only reinforces the point: these interventions are not occasional or exceptional, they are becoming routine. Elsewhere, sites such as the G&V Hotel on George IV Bridge have remained shrouded in scaffolding and banners for years, turning temporary measures into semi-permanent features of the city centre.

Individually, each case may be defended. Collectively, they are corrosive. Layer by layer, decision by decision, the integrity of Edinburgh’s skyline and historic townscape is being diminished. This is how World Heritage value is lost: not through one dramatic act, but through the steady accumulation of small compromises.

These concerns are not new. From its earliest years, the Cockburn Association warned against the visual degradation of the city through unchecked advertising. In 1884, it called on the city authorities to prevent “the amenity of the city being destroyed” by advertising hoardings, including those erected near the playing fields of Edinburgh Academy. Five years later, in its Fifteenth Annual Report, the Cockburn Council reported to members that it had done “everything in their powers to oppose the disfigurement of buildings” by advertising, and gently reminded them of their own responsibilities. The language may belong to another century, but the principle is unchanged.

What is particularly troubling is the inconsistency. Edinburgh rightly maintains strict controls over conventional signage, yet vast commercial shrouds, often far more visually intrusive, continue to be approved in some of the most sensitive parts of the city. This is not a call for prohibition, but for proportion, consistency, and proper scrutiny. At present, something in the consent process is failing.

Nor is this issue confined to Edinburgh. Similar concerns have emerged in Glasgow, where long-running cases such as the Egyptian Halls demonstrate how easily scaffolding and advertising can become entrenched. Across Scotland, historic façades risk being reduced to commercial surfaces, their architectural and cultural value subordinated to short-term gain.

The time for a firmer approach has come. Clear limits are needed on the scale, design, and duration of scaffold advertising, particularly within the World Heritage Site, where the protection of key views and settings must be paramount. Any covering should be visually recessive and rooted in the form and character of the building it conceals. Historic buildings are not hoardings.

This is not an abstract debate. On 22 April, the director of the Edinburgh World Heritage Trust will deliver a public lecture on George IV Bridge, currently dominated by long-term scaffolding and advertising, posing the question:  Does Edinburgh still deserve World Heritage status? It is an uncomfortable question, but a necessary one. If we continue to allow the unchecked commercialisation of our historic fabric, we risk undermining the very qualities that designation is meant to protect.

Edinburgh’s historic environment is not a marketing opportunity. It is a civic inheritance of international importance. We support investment, we support conservation, and we recognise the financial realities involved. But that cannot amount to a blank cheque for advertising at any scale, in any location, for any duration.

This is the moment to act. The question is no longer whether scaffold advertising should be permitted, but whether we are willing to allow it to steadily erode one of the world’s great historic cities.

We stand ready to work with the Council and partners to establish a clearer, stronger framework, one that supports genuine conservation without compromising Edinburgh’s character. Anything less risks allowing the city’s defining qualities to be quietly, incrementally, and irreversibly diminished.

Image: B. Golden

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