News & Blog

Scotland, like the rest of the UK, is awash with mega-schemes, major regeneration schemes such as Edinburgh Waterfront and Clyde Gateway and more new villages and urban expansion areas than you can shake a stick at. However, they have all stalled. There is currently no funding available (private or public) to bring these schemes forward and whilst innovations such as TIF and greater use of CPO powers may help get the glamorous major city schemes off the ground, this is not going to be the case for the new villages and expansion areas.

It is probably too big an ask for these schemes to be dropped, too much time and effort has been put into them for that, but the reality is that to kick-start revival there is a need for local authorities to release some smaller (and deliverable) sites that they wouldn’t otherwise allow. There have been hints in some Local Development Plan Main Issues Reports that this may happen, but until this filters through the system to the officers at the coal-face then not much is going to change. It also needs planners to think about the next 2-5 years and not become obsessed with the fact that they are planning for the next 20.

As a side, but related issue, it will also require a more enlightened attitude to be taken to five year land supplies. At present, there is hardly a local authority in Scotland that has a five year land supply because most sites are no longer ‘effective’ due to market conditions, or because the supply is dominated by a larger site that is not currently viable due to the upfront infrastructure costs.

In normal circumstances, this would be a strong argument in favour of releasing an alternative site for housing, but in the two appeals where this has been considered to date in North Ayrshire and North Lanarkshire the two reporters concerned have both suggested that this is simply a sign of the times and does not warrant allowing another site to be released.

The issue has now been tackled head on by Homes for Scotland, the representative body for the housebuilding industry in Scotland, and this has led to the Chief Planner writing to the heads of all 32 authorities in Scotland urging them to have a more “flexible and realistic approach” to whether sites are effective and, if there is no longer a five year supply, should be supportive of other sites that can be delivered coming forward instead. Let us hope that this more proactive approach filters down to the front line.

Following the first anniversary of the main provision of the Scottish Planning system in August, there have been a whole host of meetings and seminars allowing practitioners to reflect on the good, the bad and the ugly. This has proved to be an interesting exercise, although the volume of new (particularly major) planning applications in Scotland is still probably too low to really get a feel for how this part of the system is working. The fact that one year on there are still local authorities who haven’t received a single major planning application means that they will be a large percentage of public sector (and private sector) planners who will know the theory, but not the reality. The same is true of the other innovation, Local Review Bodies, where some local authorities have had a flurry and some none at all.

As with any new system, it will take time to bed in. Experiences are being shared and, over time, the foibles in the system will be ironed out. For example, one bugbear for many in the private sector (and possibly the public sector as well) is the fact that pre-application consultation currently applies to any application that is classed as major in Scotland. This has meant that a whole variety of simple applications that are seeking to amend planning conditions are themselves subject to consultation and the 12 week minimum timescale that comes with this. The Scottish Government has recognised this problem and, as part of a current consultation, is asking for comments as to whether these applications should be exempted altogether from the pre-application consultation requirements, or somehow the system could be made less onerous in relation to them. Hopefully this change at least will come in before everything is thrown into chaos by the election in 2011!

As for my reflections one year on, the reality for me is a system that is different, but administered by the same people with the same attitudes. Culture change may have been a central theme of ensuring that the new system worked, but has proved extremely difficult to filter down to the coal face. The situation is now not helped by spending reviews, retirements and possible redundancies such that the system may well have to be administered in a very different way in future. Indeed, the Government has recently consulted on ways to do this with shared services and outsourcing being looked at and possible other measures for delivering the system more efficiently and for less money.

The other big innovation is Scotland has been Local Review Bodies. I have been personally involved with a number of cases that have been considered this way, rather than on appeal to Scottish Ministers, and my experience has been mixed. Some authorities are doing their best to make the system work, accepting that it is far from perfect, but in some areas the system is frankly farcical with decisions made for parochial and political reasons , with some novel application of the statute and guidance and a limited understanding of what constitutes a material consideration and planning policy.

One issue that has created real problems with reviews is the ”no new matters” rule for appeals and local reviews. As a concept it is laudable, an appeal or review should be based upon the case that was before the local planning authority, but depending upon where your review is heard it might be interpreted as “new evidence” or “new issues”. I have suffered where it was interpreted as “new evidence” where my client’s application was refused for lack of a tree survey, this was submitted with the review, but the case dismissed on the basis that we had submitted new evidence! If this approach were to be consistently applied across all local authorities then this would effectively mean that there is no right of appeal on local applications that have any refusal reason resulting from to a lack of information or lack of evidence during the determination period.  No doubt all these glitches with disappear over time, but not many people these days have deep enough pockets to judicially review the system however absurd it may sometimes be.