A museum charting the working class history of Edinburgh is to remain closed in a bid to bridge a council budget gap.
The Peopleโs Story will shut until at least April next year having already been shuttered for two months due to a lack of staffing.
Critics have accused City of Edinburgh Council of attempting to โexpungeโ the capitalโs working roots.
But the local authority said there was โno silver bulletโ to reopen the museum, which sits in the 16th-century Canongate Tolbooth.
Plans to close the facility were unveiled last month.
The council is projected to spend ยฃ26m over its budget this year and has frozen museum recruitment as a result.
The Queensferry Museum, which tells the story of life on the Firth of Forth, will also be closed permanently as part of the money-saving plans and will be accessible only on an โappointmentโ basis.
But residents, councillors, academics and trade unions hit out at the blueprint after it emerged those measures would save just ยฃ260,000 per year.
It represents about 1% of the savings needed for the council to balance their annual budget.
The cityโs culture and communities convener, Val Walker, did not accept a recommendation to keep the Peopleโs Story closed through autumn and winter during a council meeting on Thursday.
Plans to charge visitors for entry as part of tentative re-opening proposals will not be considered until December.
โThe administration wants the Peopleโs Story to re-open,โ Cllr Walker said, โbut we recognise that there are challenges, hurdles to overcome. We cannot just re-open it tomorrow. There are not the staff to have every museum open.
โThat is an absolute commitment from me that at the December committee meeting we will be looking at the ways in which we can re-open that museum โ not in April but in December.โ
Old Town resident Jim Slaven, who is leading the campaign to save the museum, said the facility needed โlove and investment,โ describing plans for its closure as โsocial vandalismโ.
โFor working class people in this city, life is pretty difficult,โ he said.
โPeople are pushed to the margins in every sense and the symbolism of having a working class history museum telling their story right in the centre of town is absolutely crucial, and to close it will be the final nail in the coffin.โ
The councilโs head of museums and galleries, Karl Chapman, admitted the interim closure โseems harshโ but said he wanted to โbuy ourselves some timeโ to draw up alternative proposals.
โAs officers itโs our responsibility to mitigate [the overspend],โ he said. โOn staffing at the moment, we just donโt have the numbers.โ
The museum collection includes paraphernalia from social and political movements and realistic depictions of workshops, wartime kitchens and a jail cell.
Mr Chapman said it needed to remain as a โstandalone museumโ.
Former councillor and MP George Kerevan, who was part of the cityโs first Labour administration which agreed to establish the Peopleโs Story, said its closure risked โlosing [Edinburghโs] identityโ.
He said: โIโm incandescently angry because itโs a trivial amount of money they are trying to save.
โItโs a huge budget the council has, to take ยฃ200k out of it, itโs not really about that, itโs about expunging the history of Edinburgh.โ
