Local Government and Communities Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Official Report 572KB pdf

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“Draft Climate Change Plan: The draft third report on policies and proposals 2017-2032”

Good morning and welcome to the fourth meeting in 2017 of the Local Government and Communities Committee. I apologise for my voice this morning—I am a little bit under the weather. I remind everyone present to turn off their mobile phones. As the meeting papers are provided in digital format, members may use tablets during the meeting—if you see us with laptops or whatever, we are accessing our committee papers. We have received apologies from our deputy convener, Elaine Smith MSP, who unfortunately cannot be with us this morning. She must be feeling even more poorly than I am.

Agenda item 1 is an evidence-taking session on the Scottish Government’s “Draft Climate Change Plan: The draft third report on policies and proposals 2017-2032”, or RPP3. Today’s session will focus on local government and planning, and at next week’s meeting we will have a session on the plan’s housing aspects. I appreciate that there are clear connections between the two areas, but that is how the committee has decided to divide things up.

I welcome to the meeting Chris Wood-Gee, who is the chair of the steering group of the sustainable Scotland network; Philip Revell, who is projects co-ordinator for Sustaining Dunbar; and Craig McLaren, who is the director of the Royal Town Planning Institute Scotland. I thank you for coming along, and I will give you the opportunity to talk briefly about your organisations to inform MSPs and those who are watching the meeting. Chris Wood-Gee can go first.

The sustainable Scotland network, which works across the public sector in Scotland, is looking to improve reporting, among other things. For example, we have been leading on mandatory reporting developments across Scotland with regard to climate change issues. We are seeking to share experience and expertise across the whole Scottish public sector, with a particular focus on climate change and sustainability.

Sustaining Dunbar is a community development trust that was founded in 2007-08. It is part of the global Transition Network, which is trying to find ways to involve communities in making the transition from dependence on fossil fuels and to offer positive opportunities to shape a better future and better, stronger communities. We are part of the Scottish communities climate action network, through which I am involved with the Scottish Community Alliance, and I am also on the board of Community Energy Scotland.

The RTPI is the professional body for town planners throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland, and around the world. We have 23,000 members in 82 different countries, including 2,100 members in Scotland. Our members work across the public, private and third sectors with the aim of advancing the art and science of town planning for public benefit. Our key roles are to set standards for education in planning and for planners themselves and to make sure that we promote the best possible planning system.

I thank you all for those introductions. It is important to put on record that the plan, which is a rather sizeable document, was published only on 19 January; we appreciate that, as well informed as you are in your various fields, you have not had long to digest it. We also appreciate the fact that Craig McLaren agreed at the last minute to come to today’s meeting in order to assist the committee.

We now move to questions.

Good morning. Perhaps we can start off by hearing your reflections on how the planning system can best deliver development that favours sustainable travel modes.

If no one is going to go first, I pick Philip Revell to respond. [Laughter.]

We really need to join up the community empowerment and climate change agendas. You will probably laugh at me for saying this, but a crucial part of creating sustainable places, where people are actively involved in local decisions that impact on them and are involved creatively in finding solutions to fossil fuel dependency, is to invert the planning system completely. We need to ensure that the process starts from the bottom up, with local place plans that connect people with a vision of what their community could look like, and of the possibilities of moving to a low-carbon future and what that might mean for local food supply, employment, energy, health and wellbeing and so on. Those plans can be collated at area and local authority levels and brought together at a strategic level so that people can deliberate on where the conflicts of interest lie and consider them in a creative way.

I am sorry for dropping you in it a little bit, Philip, as the three of you were debating who was going to answer the question. Craig McLaren can go next.

Planning is all about creating great places for people, and that is what we do as a profession. A key part of our work is to ensure that we put things in the best possible place—in other words, that we put them in the right place at the right time as soon as possible and as best we can.

Planning is all about trying to do that in a sustainable way, and we think that the planning system needs a number of things in order to make that approach work. As the committee will know, a review of the planning system is under way, and we have been talking about how the system needs some newish principles to make it more effective and ensure that it delivers much more sustainable development. For a start, the planning service in local government and in the Scottish Government needs to be seen much more as a corporate function. We are slightly worried that it has been sidelined and is not part of the key mainstream approach to deciding what is built where and what infrastructure is required. We need the corporate, influential and collaborative working that planning can bring.

We also feel that the system needs to be a bit more front loaded. In truth, the system at present is more reactive than we would like it to be. Planning performs best when it sets out a vision of what the future of a place should look like and provides a route map for reaching that future and achieving the outcomes.

We would like there to be much more debate about, and agreement on, a place’s constraints and opportunities at the start of the process so that we can develop a route map to get there, and so that everybody knows what their responsibility is and what resources are required. It is important that a new planning system focuses much more on delivery. At present, we have a slight problem in that planners plan and others deliver. We need to try to bridge that implementation gap and have a clear idea about how we can resource sustainable infrastructure and development.

At present, the planning system is underresourced, and needs to be better resourced. Our research has shown that between 2010 and 2015 there was a 20 per cent drop in planning staff in local authorities across Scotland. The average amount in a local authority’s budget that goes directly to the planning service is 0.63 per cent, and the money that is recovered to cover the processing of planning applications amounts to only 63 per cent of the total. I have in the past quoted those figures liberally, so you might have heard them before.

Planning is well placed to deliver development that favours sustainable travel modes. To be honest, more thought could be given to how the climate change action plan could set out how the required changes to the planning system might be made.

Was there a specific mention of transport in the question?

Yes, there was.

I was waiting to hear whether one of you would address that aspect.

I will try. Transport planning is about understanding how people get about, and we are going to have to make changes. I am from rural Dumfries and Galloway, where we are struggling in relation to electric cars. We have them in our work environment but we cannot get from one end of the region to the other—we are not yet allowed to buy Tesla cars. I know that local bus services and other local services present challenges. I am not sure how the planning system could address that issue, but it is important that it looks at it from the perspective of where the infrastructure is—for example, infrastructure in out-of-town shopping facilities would be handy, and would certainly suit me on the way home from work. We need a planning system that recognises where people live and considers transport and movement around those areas. There should probably be more of a presumption in favour of cyclists and so on.

In Edinburgh, it is great to see so many push-bikes around, but it is more of a challenge where we are. One really would not want to go on a push-bike on certain roads—it is just not safe, and there are no footways and so on. It is important to bring about connectivity, and it is crucial that the planning system works with people like the south west of Scotland transport partnership in our area, and with rural transport partnerships, so that we can have a joined-up approach. I do not know whether that answers your question in full. Rather than thinking, “We need a nice new road here”—roads come with their own challenges—we need to ensure that different modes of transport are taken into account at the outset.

I do not think that anybody would argue with what Philip Revell said about involving communities. Craig McLaren mentioned that we want the planning system to be more front loaded. What would that look like? How would we achieve that?

It is important to acknowledge that community engagement has been part of the planning system since 1968, which is slightly before my time. Progress has been made, and we have moved from holding meetings in draughty church halls on a Wednesday night to much more sophisticated approaches to engaging with communities. A powerful example is the charrette, which is an all-embracing term for lots of different types of workshops. It is the concept of discussing, at an early stage, the future of a neighbourhood, town or city. As I said earlier, people can explore the opportunities and talk to each other about their ambitions for the place. They can also look at the constraints—on resources, for example—and at the things that may not be particularly pretty, and which people may not want sited next to them, but which are required. It means having an open and honest debate and coming up with a vision for what a place could look like in future.

As I said earlier, there is a key role for charrettes—this is where they need to improve a bit—in setting out the route map for delivery. A charrette can bring together communities, different parts of local government—such as transport, which Chris Wood-Gee mentioned—developers and investors, utility companies, which have a big role to play, and government agencies to try to agree things at the start of the process. That is a much more positive way of doing things, and we hope that it will be a more fruitful way of delivering better places for people.

09:45  

Does anyone else want to answer? If so, just put your hand up. I will take Phil Revell next.

I should say that when I ask, “Does anyone want to answer?”, you should not feel pressured into answering.

It has to be tied in to reform of local democracy and filling the void that exists at local level with a forum for proper representative and deliberative debate about local issues. That might start with a type of citizens’ jury: a representative sample of local opinion that could come up with a picture of what a resilient community needs to look like to face up to the challenges of climate change.

To answer the transport question, there needs to be much more focus on reducing the need to travel. That is not mentioned in the climate change plan at all as far as I could see.

Craig McLaren mentioned the charrette process. I started off as a huge supporter, but I became unsure whether it was a process or a workshop of a couple of days that was great at getting a snapshot in time of what the wider community wanted. I was unclear whether, after that, the planners go off and do what they do well, because they are the professionals, and then consult in the same way that they have always consulted.

Philip Revell’s submission used the expression “co-production”. Consulting after a charrette is better than we used to do, but it is still not co-production. I have gone back to organisations that are taking forward developments and asked them to speak to community groups that are looking at X, Y and Z. Sometimes they have said, “But we have had a charrette”.

Is that a theme that others recognise or have I just been unfortunate in picking one official at a bad time? Does that ring true for anyone?

You are right that some of the charrettes, particularly the early ones, did not quite promise the moon but did set out ideas without a process to check the rigour of delivery. They became one-off set events.

We are improving to an extent, in that the charrette is seen as the start of a process and dialogue. That is important: once you have an idea of what you want to deliver, you have to have continuous dialogue to see where things are going and make sure that people are up to speed.

The other thing that is important as part of that process is the concept of local place plans which is being looked at in the planning consultation paper that is out now—“Places, People and Planning: A consultation on the future of the Scottish Planning System”. The idea is that communities can put together a plan for their area that can become part of the development plan. A lot of detail has to be developed on how that would work but the concept is a good one if it engages communities in thinking about how their place can work and helps them to work with different stakeholders to deliver that.

That is helpful.

The key thing is that local authorities and planners need to have the courage to believe that people have sensible things to say. Sometimes they think, “If we do that, it might get in the way and slow the process down.” There might be deadlines for making things happen because of spending or other reasons.

I have been involved with community engagement for most of my working life and it works well. You need the courage to work with people and we are much better at that than we were in the past. It is important to have a process, rather than seeing it as a bit of a hindrance.

Last week, Parliament had a debate on the Government’s planning consultation. Parliament voted for a greater emphasis on protecting green space, which comes back to climate change. How should we do that better and how should we direct development into brownfield sites rather than into precious green space?

My current role is in energy and sustainability, but most of my working life has been in green space. I used to work around Glasgow on things such as some of the early work on the seven lochs project, which is now in development.

Protecting green space is a challenge and we might need to resource the remediation of brown space land to a greater degree than we do at the moment. For developers, the easiest thing to do is to go on a nice alluvial soil into which the drains can be put. Everything is perfect, it is very quick and easy, and the profits are better. However, we have huge amounts of vacant land of one sort or another, including poor quality land, and it makes more sense to deal with that, although some legislative emphasis might be required to deliver it.

Green space, including urban woodlands, is crucial to the quality of people’s lives. With temperatures rising because of climate change, urban woodlands are more of an adaptation than a mitigation measure, but a lot of the work that was done years ago on future urban heat problems found that putting in an urban woodland—as well as the rural woodland that is talked about in the climate change plan—can have a huge effect. However, green space also improves the quality of people’s lives and, ultimately, this debate is about people’s quality of life, so it is crucial that we ensure that we protect the green space. I am not quite sure how we do that, but a move towards reusing old land—recycling is another core part of the climate change plan—must be a critical part of what we deliver.

The green space element is important and you will find that most local development plans include policies to protect local green space. Some interesting work has been done and an example that springs to mind is the green spaces plan of the City of Edinburgh Council. Staff have done an audit of where green space is across the city, how accessible it is and what condition it is in, and used that as a basis for making policy on where new green space can be delivered and what should be protected. The audit element is incredibly important.

We can also ensure that there is green space in new developments and, in appropriate circumstances, planners try to do that as much as possible. That can be done through negotiation with developers as, although we would like to think that developers will come to the table with green space in the development to start off with, sometimes it is subject to negotiation.

As Chris Wood-Gee said, the other key part is brownfield sites. Unfortunately, most of the easiest remediation work on brownfield land has already taken place; we are getting to the harder sites now, which inevitably means that there is a resource issue for doing the work. From a climate change perspective, it is essential that we try our damnedest to remediate as many brownfield sites as possible, because those sites generally lie within the envelope of existing towns and settlements, so people do not need to drive to them, there is good public transport and the locations are much more sustainable. We need to tackle that issue and to resource it as best we can.

I hope that the aspirations of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 and the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 will open up new possibilities for community groups to find out who owns derelict brownfield sites and give them opportunities to gain access to do what they want to do. That might help in some way to relieve pressure on green space. More generally, we need to access the local knowledge of local people.

Craig McLaren talked about planners planning rather than waiting for developers to come in and make their pitch. If planners were able to say in advance where the green space should be—and will remain—and that they are not going to wait for the developers to come in and say that they want to build there, would that be a better way to protect what we have?

Yes. The development plan is supposed to be the primary consideration when we make decisions on planning applications. Therefore, having a plan that sets out those parameters is incredibly useful.

Developers, investors and communities tell me that the one thing that they want from the planning system is certainty and predictability. If a plan provides that predictability and gives them confidence to do things in a certain way, I would imagine—I would hope—that that would help.

Chris Wood-Gee mentioned resources, which is a huge issue. Do you have any thoughts on where those resources might come from?

The short answer is probably no. The energy plan has a figure of £10 billion to deal with the whole climate change issue, although I suspect that that is a fairly conservative figure. In that regard, it gives me some comfort that, south of the border, we are just about to spend £40 billion on a railway that does not go that far. The sums of money to deal with climate change are not perhaps as scary as they could be.

It must be all about collaboration. Whether it be straight action to tackle climate change or development to enable a project to go ahead, people need to recognise what the benefits would be of taking out a smaller profit rather than maximising profit at the other end.

There probably is money out there, including the money that people like me have, who put eco-bling on our houses, or others who recognise the benefits of undertaking work.

We know where local government is financially. Without a doubt, the situation is challenging. The loss of resource, including the loss of staff, which Craig McLaren mentioned was happening in the planning system, is an on-going problem. I have been in local government for many years and we have had a spending cut every year as far back as I can remember. That might not be the case, but that is how it feels.

I do not know where the money will come from, but there are pots of money out there, including the sovereign investment fund, and we need to be clever about how we pull everything together in order to get things to work.

I am sorry—I have probably not answered the question well, but it is a big, difficult question that challenges us all.

I will point out a couple of things. We need to think more creatively about the issue. We all know that local government resourcing is very tight. However, there is a big pot of money for placemaking and infrastructure provision through the city deals. Indeed, a lot of money has been invested in city deals. I do not know the details of every single one of them, but I would be interested to see whether, through them, money is being put in to remediate sites, particularly important brownfield sites, to bring transformational change for the cities. I wonder whether the city deal money can be used a little bit more creatively. Key projects are being progressed, but they are not bringing that transformational change.

Land ownership is important. If you own land, you have much more control over what you can do. If ownership of a brownfield site lies in the public sector and we manage to remediate that land, its value increases immediately, and it would increase even further if we were allowed to build on it.

If the land is owned by a private sector developer, we need to see whether a mechanism could be put in place that would mean that the state and not just the developer would share the value uplift. There is a bit of work to be done on that, but the concept of sharing the benefits of investment should be explored.

I can answer your question on city deals: the answer is probably no—that is not happening. The committee might well take a look at city deals, so I will leave the issue there rather than delve into it today.

10:00  

I was going to put on the record that we will return to the issue of city deals at some point, as it is important to stress that, but Graham Simpson has just mentioned it.

We move to a question from Andy Wightman.

The planning consultation contains some interesting points about extending permitted development rights to developments, such as microgeneration and renewable heat networks, that help to reduce emissions. It also contains a proposal to repeal section 72 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, which inserted in the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 a new section that made it obligatory for a local development plan to

“include policies requiring all developments ... to ... avoid a specified and rising proportion of ... greenhouse gas emissions”.

Do you have any insight as to why on earth we would want to repeal a piece of legislation that places duties on the planning system to incorporate measures that reduce emissions?

Had any of you picked up on that? Chris Wood-Gee is nodding his head.

Work-wise, we are in the process of reading our local development plan. One of the policies is very much about getting renewables into buildings, but that takes the emphasis away from demand reduction.

It is great to have such measures—depending on where a house is orientated, solar thermal heat pumps could be used—and the climate change plan is looking for such an approach overall in the next 10 to 15 years. However, the technologies are not quite there yet. It is useful to have such policies included in local development plans, but sometimes they get in the way of other measures that would reduce the need to put in energy in the first place. The Passivhaus system is an example: it may not require renewable energy going into the house because the insulation and the heat recovery ventilation systems are so effective that a lot of external heat is not needed.

I have debated to some extent with our planners how we get the balance right between the need to put in renewables and the demand reduction side, which involves looking at where we go with technology to reduce the need for energy input in the first place.

We need a bit more flexibility in the system in that respect, which might be why the change that Andy Wightman highlighted has been proposed. However, we do not want to lose out—we need to ensure that, if we do not have a policy to incorporate renewables and so on, we take a very big demand reduction approach instead.

I do not have any particular insights on the section that Andy Wightman mentioned, except to say that I do not understand why we do not simply move as quickly as possible towards Passivhaus standards for all new builds.

Does Craig McLaren want to add anything?

I will comment on the situation, although I am not totally au fait with it. My understanding is that the research that was done showed that the real impact came from building standards rather than the planning side of things, so it was felt that such a requirement is not necessary and is perhaps a bit of a burden.

I still think that there is a need to ensure that development plans in particular show the role that planning can play in the location, siting, massing, density and design of housing. There is still a big role for planning in that respect, but I got the impression that the proposed change was more about the impact of internal measures, which would be a building control matter.

A review that was conducted in March 2016 concluded that section 72 should be kept in the 2009 act.

I move on to the wider point that Craig McLaren made. The danger is that we focus—as Chris Wood-Gee indicated—on individual buildings and bits of technology, and all the rest of it. To what extent is there an argument for including climate change mitigation as a principal purpose of the proposed new planning bill? In other words, it would be an overriding consideration that local authorities could more easily use to say that certain developments would not even get through the door because of their carbon impact.

That is a good question. At present, planning is based on the principle of sustainable development, which incorporates environmental sustainability. As ever, planning involves a balance in trying to pull together—if possible—something that maximises the environmental, social and economic circumstances.

It is a difficult question to answer just now, but I would say that planning and planners have environmental sustainability and climate change at their heart. As a profession, we see environmental sustainability as something that we are there to promote and push, and we see the tools that we have—such as development plans—as a means of doing that.

I have a supplementary to the previous question about transport. One of the issues with the climate change plan is that there are carbon targets for each sector but it is not clear how they have been arrived at. We are not told why agriculture is taking virtually no strain and heat is taking a lot of strain. A question that has come up is that the TIMES model, which has been used to generate the plan, contains exogenous demand drivers, so criteria have been agreed outside the plan and put into it. For example, on transport, my understanding—it is important to stress that we do not have this information firmly from Government—is that a 25 per cent growth in road travel was used as a criterion and put into the plan. In other words, there is no capacity for the plan to be a dynamic model that says that we should reduce certain sectors. Is that your understanding?

I do not know the science and the calculations behind the plan, but one thing that struck me when I read it was that much of the section on transport tended to deal with technological innovation as a means of trying to drive down emissions. As far as I could see, the plan did not mention the need to try to restrict the growth of car use. I think that planning has a key role to play in doing that, but that is missing from the plan.

I am very disappointed that the plan relies on the very speculative technology of carbon capture and storage to meet the targets. As I said, the emphasis must be on designing our communities so that we reduce the need to travel. We should aim to drive down transport emissions.

Thank you for putting that on the record.

We need to reduce the travel that we do—I am probably very bad for the number of miles that I do—but we need to do that in a way that does not necessarily affect rural communities too adversely, because we do not have village shops any more. It is about trying to get the infrastructure right. Again, that comes back to the planning system so that we ensure that we get the right facilities in the right place closer to people’s homes. It is a huge challenge. The plan is focused on techie fixes, whether it is electrolysis for driving cars in the future or electric vehicles, all of which have incredible challenges in the longer term.

The motor industry has done relatively well on fuel consumption and reducing some emissions, but a whole issue about diesel particulates is coming up. We were probably less concerned about it 10 years ago when the drive towards diesel came in, because that was purely about fuel efficiency based on miles per gallon. We now need to look at ways of not having to drive. The train service up from Lockerbie is great. Otherwise, it is a two-hour drive up here and parking is a problem. It is about having the right facilities so that people do not have to jump in the car every time.

Okay. Thank you.

Gentlemen, how can we best equip the professional planner and the councillor with the skills base that is required for them to deal with the policies, plans and procedures around climate impact?

When you answer that question, can you talk about skills for councillors and members of the Scottish Parliament? When Mr Wightman—who has expertise in this area—mentioned exogenous demand drivers, I thought that I could do with a skill set. I think that that gives a good context to the question.

SSN has been looking at the carbon management assessment tool, which is a mechanism for members of our councils—senior officers—to assess where they are, in terms of climate, and to identify gaps in knowledge. That would allow us to get people on board and understand what we know and do not know.

Those of us who are up to our eyeballs in climate change all the time might assume that people know what they are talking about and understand what we are talking about—which is probably a bigger challenge. I have the word “exogenous” written in my notebook; I heard it yesterday at a seminar at Victoria Quay and thought that I would look it up and find out what it means. We all have the same problem with some of these words. That is statisticians for you, I guess.

We need to have a dialogue. We need to work together and talk together, and we need to ensure that there is understanding, particularly when we are thinking about developing leadership. I work up through the middle of an organisation, trying to ensure that climate change measures are a bigger priority where we are delivering. They save us money, save us emissions and help us to hit our targets. There needs to be that kind of dialogue so that we can get leadership. Unless MSPs and councillors understand what is happening, we will not get the level of leadership that we need to ensure that this issue, which is probably the most important thing that humanity faces, is right up there, where it needs to be. There needs to be education.

The future skills that anybody working in public service in any way will need are really around facilitative leadership and how we bring together conflicting opinions and ideas and use them creatively to design a sustainable future.

We have a role as the professional body that accredits planning schools. We are making sure that climate change is one of the key things that future planners must learn about. However, it is a lifelong learning issue and it is a constantly changing field. Technology is changing, as is the context.

We have been working with the Improvement Service and the Scottish Government, and we are tasked with pulling together an audit of skills needs across local authorities. Some initial work has been done on that. It is looking at the technical needs, which include some of the climate change things. We keep getting asked what will happen when driverless cars come in. Some people tell me that they will change the future of the built environment totally and some people say that they will make no difference whatsoever. There is a need for some rigour so that we have a clear understanding of where we are going.

We are looking at technical skills, including skills on climate change and its measurement, and at generic skills such as leadership and collaboration. If you talk to heads of planning, you hear that they tend to think that their staff need more generic skills, whereas the members of staff think that they need more technical skills. I am sure that it is somewhere in between, but that is the way it is.

As part of the planning review process, we want to look at how we can put in place a programme, a process or something that allows people to work out what skills they have and what skills they do not have, and allows them to fill their skills gaps. My feeling is that that will require some sort of co-ordinating role nationally, to identify and share good practice, and to look at where there are expertise gaps and perhaps get local authorities to share expertise. We are looking at different models for that and we will report back by the end of the financial year.

The other question was about councillors, and the issue is mentioned in the planning review. As you know, local government elections are coming up in May. We are trying to see how, after the new councillors come in, we can work with the Improvement Service and local authorities to put in place training for councillors. Most local authorities have that already.

We are interested in not just telling them—and scaring them—about what the planning system is and what responsibilities they have. We also need to raise their sights and make them realise what the opportunities and potentials of the planning system are, and how the planning system can help them not just in the planning department, but corporately. We are exploring ways in which we can put something in place to support that, and we are talking to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities about that, as well.

10:15  

You are right: a balance needs to be struck. Some local authorities are leading on that with their professional employees and the councillors that they have but, as you rightly identify, a new intake of councillors will mean that a large number of individuals will require a lot of basic training initially. People will become more expert in the field, sit on committees and be more involved than others. They will become much more technically involved, and the issue is the opportunities that they will face as they move forward.

All of that comes at a cost. It has been identified that that has a part to play when people consider where they will put training funding for officials and councillors. The issue is how we can develop that. It will be interesting to see where we are in three or four years’ time with the new intake and how it progresses. However, that is still a challenge for all authorities.

That is an interesting point. We should not tell just councillors who sit on planning committees about planning, but that is where the focus goes. We can understand why that is the case, but we need to try to broaden that. Often, the issue is that many councillors are told to keep away from planning. They are told that it is quasi-judicial and really tough, they would have to make tough decisions, they would make some people happy, and they might make some people unhappy. There is a job to be done to try to show the value, benefit and potential of planning.

I have spent 18 years as a councillor and am well aware of the challenges that people face in planning.

But he is still smiling.

My first question is really to Philip Revell. In your submission, you talk about communities having

“a sense of disempowerment and lack of control over decisions which have a local impact”,

and you talk throughout about the need to take decisions from the bottom up. How does that work when one faces the situation, which is faced in many communities, in which the community is in favour of new housing and new schools, wants a flood prevention plan, and supports wind turbines and biomass, but wants things to be built somewhere else? The community might be in favour of a new harbour, but might want it to be built somewhere else.

How do you ensure that strategic decisions are made and that we do not just pander to people who are well housed, but do not particularly want other people to be well housed in their community? That is a real issue in many communities in my constituency. People are in favour of those things, but they simply do not want them near them. How do we square that circle of having community democracy and needing to provide on a more strategic level?

I totally acknowledge that that is a potential issue, but if we can start with plans that have been created from the bottom up and which local communities have a real sense of ownership of, people being brought together and a forum being created in which conflicts can be deliberated on in a creative way, I do not see why that is any more difficult than the current situation, in which, for example, the strategic plan decrees that East Lothian needs 10,000 new houses and local communities are left totally powerless. In fact, the local authority is pretty powerless; it is obliged to find sites for those houses. Basically, everybody is disempowered. I am not suggesting that things will be easy, but we need to find ways to create properly facilitated forums in which conflicts can be deliberated on.

There are proposals to involve communities at an earlier stage in all planning proposals, and that is certainly welcome. Are you suggesting that communities should ultimately take the final decision on those developments, or should local authorities or, where appropriate, the Scottish Government or even the United Kingdom Government do so?

I honestly do not have an opinion on who should have the final decision. I have not thought that through. The crucial thing is that everybody should feel that their voice has been heard.

Okay. Thank you.

Mr McLaren, you have talked about “a vision”, “a route map” and a focus on delivery. Who should ultimately decide on such things? Mr Revell talked about an issue with local democracy.

How do you square the circle on the difference between what a specific community might want and what is required at local authority or Scottish strategic level? I ask that with particular reference to climate change. As you know, there will be lots of issues regarding turbines, biomass and so on, whatever happens.

Absolutely. Just now, there is a planning hierarchy in place in which we have the national planning framework, which has targets attached to it that provide the context for what has to be delivered. We then move down to strategic level, local level and community level.

For me, the decision making has to take place at the proper democratic level. The Scottish Government is trying to keep pushing that to local authorities and down to communities, where it possibly can. Earlier, I mentioned local place plans. Those are interesting, because what they can do is allow communities to come up with a vision for their area—but within the context of the national targets that have to be achieved and also those in their own local authority area or their own neighbourhood. That contextualises it for them, but it still means that they are looking at the constraints as well as the opportunities.

The one thing that I would highlight is that there is a need for some professional judgment on that as well. It is very easy to make a bad planning decision; it is much more difficult to make a good one. People forget that.

A lot of work goes into deciding what can, or what should or should not, be built. Planners must think about not only the specific settlement place or planning application, but about what happens beyond that—in broader geographies. They must think not just about what happens in the short term, but about what should happen in the medium term and the long term as well.

We need to think about how we take that into consideration. There is a need for planners to make sure, when they make those decisions and have discussions about what should be happening in the area, that those criteria are taken into consideration. In essence, a decision should not be taken on a whim.

That is an important point. The national planning framework is very important, and we need to see how locality planning, local authority planning and the national planning framework can tie in. There are issues about who thinks what should happen and where. How do we try to deal with that issue? That remains a bugbear in many parts of Scotland, at community level.

I understand that. There are two points in what you have said, one of which is about trying to ensure that the national planning framework is not a totally top-down document. To give the Scottish Government credit, in “Scotland’s Third National Planning Framework”, which was published in 2014, it tried to do a lot of work beyond the planning profession and what we might call the usual suspects. It went out to shopping centres the length and breadth of the country and asked people what they wanted Scotland to look like and what it might look like spatially. That is quite a difficult question to ask someone, and there is work to be done on refining it, but credit should go to the Government for attempting that.

You also asked about locality planning and local authority planning. For some time, we have been saying that there has to be a stronger link between spatial planning and community planning. We are concerned that, in some circumstances, they tend to be done in parallel streams. Land use planning, spatial planning, developing—or what the place should look like, physically—community planning, local outcome improvement plans and so on are looking at the service provision for that area. We should be matching those together more. We have been advocating more joined-up engagement exercises, because we are asking the same questions of communities there, to be honest with you—the difference is just in how we articulate them.

We need to join those up. There are different ways in which we could link local improvement partnership plans with development plans. We could think about what is being delivered and see whether we could match resources. Community planning tends to focus on public sector and third sector resources. As I said earlier, delivery of the local development plan tends to come from the private sector. If we could marry some of those approaches, we might achieve some complementarity, which could make things work a lot more effectively and efficiently.

Excellent. Convener, I have just one more question for Mr McLaren. I know that Mr Wood-Gee has not had a chance to address any of those points, and I would be happy if he would.

Mr McLaren, you said that, from 2010 to 2015, there was a 20 per cent reduction in the number of planners. What has been the impact if we compare that with the number of planning applications? For example, I know that, in the private housing sector, the number of houses being built is about half of what it was a decade ago, which must have had an impact on applications. How does the reduction in the number of planners compare with the number of applications that are coming in?

There was a drop, but the number is rising again. Usually, over a year, there are about 30,000 planning applications to be assessed, and the demand is still there. There might have been a reduction in the number of major planning applications in that period, but the demand is starting to kick in again as there is probably a bit more confidence in the market to build new housing estates and the like.

You do not have the figures, though.

I do not have the exact figures with me, but I can get them for you if you wish.

That would be helpful. A 20 per cent reduction in the number of planners is a problem if there is a 20 per cent increase in the number of applications but not if there is a 40 per cent decrease in the number of applications. It would be good to have the figures in order to be able to make a judgment on that.

Mr Wood-Gee, do you have any comments?

I think that the issue is about communication and letting people know. We had a local issue with a 400 kilovolt power line that was going to be sited about half a mile from my home. As somebody who is involved in tackling climate change, I thought that that was a great idea—we really need the network upgrade. However, as somebody who lived a quarter of a mile or so from where it was going to be sited, I was a nimby. It is really difficult to balance those factors.

The problem with that particular project was that it looked as though it had been completely thought through, including by the landscape architects who turned up one day hiding plans under the seats, without anybody bothering to ask for opinions. It is about getting the communication right. We took Scottish Power to task about that, because it needs to talk to people. If the case can be made for doing the work—whether it is a harbour, a power line or whatever—however difficult it is, people understand.

Imposing things on people does not work particularly well; there needs to be engagement right from the outset, with the case being made for why these things need to happen. Locally, we do not want new housing, power lines or whatever right next to us, but we need to recognise that such things are crucial for how Scotland works. We need that engagement right from the outset.

Thank you. That is very helpful.

Time is almost up, but, after listening to the exchange with Kenneth Gibson, I want to add something. I know that we are here to talk about RPP3 and speak a bit more generally about planning—the connection being that, if we get the planning process right for the type of developments that we want to see, we will meet our obligations in relation to climate change and carbon emissions reduction. However, in terms of plans and the planning bill that is going to come before us, I might be one of those nimby characters.

In Summerston, north of Maryhill in my constituency, the city council has decided to release all the greenbelt land for housing. My issue is that, as someone who lives a stone’s throw away, I was not notified. The local community council was not notified, either. Two years earlier, the main issues report said that a cornerstone of council policy was the prioritisation of brownfield sites—a point that Mr Simpson made earlier. It said that releasing greenfield land would undermine that policy and that there was no need to release it. The main issues report therefore did not inform the final city plan or the development plan. The nimby in me, as well as the MSP in me, was infuriated partly because of the seeming secrecy of it all and the lack of transparency in the process.

A lot of such developments can be mitigated. Why should there not be houses across the road from where I live? As Mr Gibson said, I do not have the right to prevent other folk from getting a decent house. I have one and they deserve one as well. It is about balance and proportion, but it is also about community buy-in. What if the local authority does not get it right? Perhaps, when the development close to where I live starts, it will get the balance and proportion right. There might be segregated cycle lanes and community heating systems. Who knows what the council will do to mitigate it and make a positive of it all? However, if it does not get that buy-in, it loses the community.

In relation to RPP3 and how we look at planning, how can we do that better? The plan in my area was going to be a five-year plan but it is now changing to a 10-year plan under Scottish Government plans, and the Government does not want a main issues report. I have issues with those two aspects of Scottish Government policy. How can we get community buy-in?

We support getting rid of the main issues report because we are seeing that it is a bit of a false stage in the process. There is a more honest, constructive and fruitful debate before all that happens. We talked earlier about charrettes and about engaging communities early in the process and front-loading it.

How would I, as a local MSP, have known that the council’s officials believed that releasing greenbelt land would undermine the policy of prioritising brownfield sites? That would have been thought but not published, and I would never have known about it. There was no charrette to decide what was happening in my area. Can you say a bit more about why less information is good for communities?

10:30  

I would not say that it is about providing less information. The charrette would inform the local development plan, on which there would then be consultation of all stakeholders including communities. There would therefore be a process of engagement. As I said, I would like the profession to have that initial debate and discussion with communities earlier and maintain a dialogue with them throughout, so that the process is transparent.

That could be really helpful. Let us be clear: you are saying that the main issues report should go only if there is a charrette process to replace it.

We want much more front-loaded engagement. Many local authorities are undertaking a charrette-type engagement at the start of the process to inform their main issues report. However, the main issues report adds a stage that is not required, because we can go straight from the charrette to thinking about the plan, which can then be consulted on. There is still a process of engagement.

That is helpful. Does Chris Wood-Gee or Philip Revell want to add anything?

As a council, we are going through the process at the moment and are not directly involved other than in throwing the odd bit of climate change stuff into the plan. However, I know that we have that process of going round communities and having open meetings to ensure, as far as we can, that people can feed into the process right from the outset. I do not know how effectively that process works, but it is about getting people engaged. Having open and transparent engagement is probably the most crucial aspect of it.

Okay. Philip Revell can add to that if he wants to, but he does not have to.

I reiterate my earlier point that the process must start at the bottom, with community-led plans for creating resilient communities that can then cascade up. The main issues report can perhaps try to juggle the different priorities coming from the different neighbourhoods.

I wanted to ask my question and explore the matter a bit further because, after Mr Gibson’s question, I felt like one of those nimbys.

In the little time that we have left, I will give the final word to all three witnesses. We have had our lines of questioning, but there will be something else that you want to put on the record before you leave here today. I would therefore like your final comments and reflections on RPP3. There might be something that you think shines as a really good example, which you should draw to our attention, or you might want to talk about where you think the Government could have done a bit better. This is your opportunity to put that on the record before we move to our next evidence session.

We welcome the climate change plan. I like how it is structured and how it tries to give an evidential basis for what is being taken forward. The one thing that I find disappointing about it is that, again, only three or four paragraphs talk directly about the role that the planning system has to play. That has been an issue for us with previous RPP documents, and I would like to see more about the role that planning can play. A key part of that, which we have touched on, is assumptions about travel growth. There is a key role for planning in designing settlements and creating active travel arrangements that minimise travel growth, and I think that that could be strengthened in the document.

That is helpful.

Although there is much in the plan that I welcome, it misses a trick with regard to recognising the contribution that the community sector can make from the bottom up in addressing climate change. The top-down and bottom-up approaches need to be joined together. The top-down role should put in place supportive policy and physical infrastructure to enable bottom-up action, but that does not come across as being properly understood in the plan. The community sector is desperate to contribute, and we would like to be enabled to do so.

The key point is that it is great to see such a document. We recognise that there will be a huge challenge in terms of finance and resources, but it is great to see a plan with real ambition.

I do not know whether the balance is absolutely perfect. Somebody who plays at farming could probably do with a bigger kick, and the plan will be a really serious challenge for those in the public sector. However, it is good that we have a document that tries to do what we need to do. I am keen that we do that, and the SSN is keen for the wider public sector to engage in the process and make it work. There is a huge skills base in the public sector. Historic Environment Scotland has done a huge amount of work on how we deal with emissions reduction in older buildings, and Scottish Natural Heritage has done green-space work. A massive amount of work is going on, and we have a resource that needs to come into the plan to help to deliver it.

It is great that we have the ambition to tackle climate change, because it is the most important issue that humanity will face. We are struggling with a million people coming across the Mediterranean at the moment but, if climate change kicks in, that problem could increase tenfold. We need to tackle climate change now, and the wider implications around the globe will have a massive effect on what we do locally.

I thank all three witnesses very much for coming along and giving their time to inform the committee.

10:36 Meeting suspended.  

10:39 On resuming—