Edinburgh gangster involved in high-speed chase caught with £500,000 of heroin refused landlord registration

An Edinburgh gangster who led police on a high-speed chase and was caught with half a million pounds worth of heroin has been refused a place on the landlord register.

Paul Macaulay was jailed in 2017 after pleading guilty to the supply of controlled drugs and dangerous driving – including driving the wrong way around a roundabout – which put road users at “significant risk”.

The 37-year-old, who has over a dozen convictions going back to when he was 16, applied for landlord registration for two properties in Edinburgh.

However police told the council’s licensing sub committee the applicant’s “clear links” to serious organised crime and “large-scale distribution of illegal drugs” was “not compatible with being a registered landlord”.

Macaulay, who declared having no previous convictions on his application, was unable to attend the meeting on Monday, July 15 as he was still in prison serving out his seven-years-and-four-month sentence.

Sergeant Grant Robertson from Police Scotland said on June 7, 2017 the force received information of a car being driven in west Edinburgh “with a quantity of drugs within”.

Road police officers approached the car at a petrol station but Macaulay hit the accelerator and sparked a high-speed chase, driving across a pavement and grass verges before taking off along Calder Road and going the wrong way round a roundabout.

The reckless driving, which Sergeant Robertson said put other road users at “significant risk” and forced them to make “evasive manoeuvres”, saw him banned from holding a licence for six years.

“The vehicle was eventually contained and the driver was identified as Paul Macaulay. A search of the vehicle identified several packages of diamorphine, which is heroin, cash and other items relating to drug supply,” Sgt Robertson said.

“Various properties were thereafter searched… and other items relating to the supply of drugs were recovered.”

The searches uncovered high purity heroin with an estimated street value of £520,000 and £15,000 in cash.

Sergeant Robertson said the perpetrator was “living beyond his means” – as a search of his home found paperwork detailing more than £77,000 worth of deals and debts.

He added: “Paul Macaulay would not be a fit and proper landlord.”

Councillors refused his landlord registration application.

Lord Armstrong said at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2017 if Macaulay had been found guilty after a trial he would have jailed him for 11 years but the judge reduced his total sentence to seven years and four months following his guilty pleas.

Defence solicitor advocate Stuart Carson said Macaulay had been working as a self-employed joiner and his partner was due to give birth later that month.

He said he regretted his crimes “very much”.