Cairngorms National Park (Draft Orders)
Agenda item 5 is to take evidence as part of the committee's consideration of the draft orders for the Cairngorms national park, on which the committee is the secondary committee. We welcome Allan Garvie, the head of planning of Aberdeenshire Council; Councillor Sandy Park, the chairman of planning, development, Europe and tourism of Highland Council; Graham U'ren, from the Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland; and Robin Pellew, the chief executive of the National Trust for Scotland.
You have all given us written submissions so, given the pressure of time, we have decided not to take opening statements. However, we hope that you will be able to give the committee all the relevant evidence in answer to the questions that we will put to you. As the secondary committee for the consideration of the orders, we intend to concentrate on the planning aspects of the orders to determine whether the planning arrangements are appropriate to the establishment of the national park. I recognise that the orders give rise to broader issues that members might want to discuss, but I hope that those issues will be covered fully by the Rural Development Committee, which is the lead committee on the matter.
My questions are for all the witnesses. Do your organisations support the proposed split of planning powers between the national park authority and local authorities, as outlined in the draft designation order, and will you explain the reasoning behind your answers? Would your organisation like to see different arrangements for the administration of planning in the Cairngorms national park? If so, will you outline your proposals and explain what benefits those would have over the system that has been proposed by the Executive?
Allan Garvie (Aberdeenshire Council):
Aberdeenshire Council wants to make the draft designation order work well. It will accept the proposals, provided that a clear protocol for the call-in arrangements is finalised as soon as possible, to be available for operation on day one. The council is concerned that, given the amount of detail that is required, it is running short of time. It wants to ensure that all councils can make the protocol workable with the national park authority, and in its reports to committees in the past few weeks, the council asked the Scottish Executive to appoint a special planning adviser to facilitate that discussion.
So far, the council has worked with the Cairngorms Partnership on many environmental projects, but not on development control or planning powers. Therefore, many detailed matters must be prepared, and the sooner discussions begin, the better.
The council is equally convinced that there must be clarity about handover arrangements. The draft designation order states that local planning powers cease on the due date. The council is well down the path of preparing an Aberdeenshire-wide local plan, which has been the subject of extensive consultation and, of course, objection. The council wants to hand the plan over to the national park authority as a done deal and, subject to the authority's agreement, work through any matters about which it is concerned. That approach is necessary because by that time it is likely that the plan will be before a public local plan inquiry. Therefore, we must consider transitional arrangements and workability.
In principle, the content of the protocol must be considered. It should enhance public confidence and should, perhaps, be the subject of limited consultation of interested parties to ensure that the right measures are included. That said, the council believes that the clear initial objectives and focus of the national park authority should be on land and visitor management issues. Therefore, the council will offer its services to help to deliver the planning function, possibly on an agency basis.
The council's objectives may change in the future. The Scottish Executive has promised a new planning bill that will rearrange forward planning functions, and councils must be alert to possible developments in 2004 with the arrival of city region structure plans, single development plans and, dare I say it, a single local plan for a national park.
Persons travelling along the Deeside Road from Aberdeen will have passed through three major policy zones by the time they reach the national park. Only one area committee will determine the applications in those zones. The Marr area committee, which covers 40 per cent of Aberdeen and has delegated powers to determine most planning applications, will have to get into three different mindsets, either as consultee or decision maker, as it moves through the geography of Deeside. I suspect that it will be difficult to convince the public that that is a coherent approach.
Thank you. I now invite Councillor Park to express his views on Mr Harper's question.
Councillor Sandy Park (Highland Council):
As far as Highland Council is concerned, working in partnership with the park authority would be an acceptable compromise. Highland Council has a tremendous track record in partnership working on the community planning, health and the joint future agendas. I do not foresee any problem whatever and I think that we will have a very successful partnership with the national park authority.
As Allan Garvie said, the local plan issue in Aberdeenshire is well advanced; in fact, it is really brand new. In Highland, we are not so far advanced, and the plan for Badenoch and Strathspey is about to be reviewed. I believe that there will be a tremendous opportunity at an early stage for the national park authority and Highland Council to revise the current local plan. Highland Council has 60 per cent of the area of the park and the local plan structure is very important for the people living in the park—the people to whom we should give consideration. Consultation on the local plan is immense; everybody is consulted and that is where we get our working pattern.
Highland Council basically supports the proposals. At this stage, I do not foresee different arrangements being needed. We are all finding that time is catching up on us. Six months or a year down the road, different arrangements could be considered for the park as a whole, but at the moment I do not think that that is necessary.
Graham U'ren (Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland):
The Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland is really uncomfortable about the proposal to split planning powers. Let me explain right away that, two years ago, during early consideration of the National Parks (Scotland) Bill, we prepared a paper for the committee specifically on the subject of splitting powers, regardless of where the powers ended up. As I recall, the committee supported our view that, to ensure an effective and useful planning service, it is far preferable, as a matter of principle, to ensure that local development control and planning issues are kept together.
That is a different issue from splitting planning between the local and the strategic. We have had experience of working under a two-tier local government system, and now we have experience of a two-tier planning system, where there has to be co-operation for strategic development planning. Nevertheless, that concept is quite correct; strategic and local issues have to be dealt with regardless of the administrative geography. However, the planning function operates first and foremost through the planning authority of first resort—the one that everybody goes to. It is there that local plans must reflect the cascading policies from national and strategic levels. All planning applications must be submitted and there is a comprehensive right to use all the powers of the planning acts.
With regard to the full range of powers, the orders that we are dealing with today refer only to three parts of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997. I forget how many parts there are, but there are at least 12. Among the other parts of the act that the national park authority will not have access to are parts that are regularly used in relation to the local planning function, which the national park authority will have. Not only will that inhibit the park's ability to implement its local plan through proactive means—not just through determining planning applications—there is silence on the issue of who is responsible for picking up a blight notice, for example. If the local plan makes a provision that blights property and no move is made by any authority to activate the local plan and allow the property to be purchased, provisions for compensation exist, but the property owner has no redress under the arrangements that are proposed.
That is a small example, but the institute is concerned about the splitting of development control from local planning, which is one of the main reasons why we think the national park should have comprehensive planning powers, as the experiences in England have confirmed. The key statement in England has not been simply that the national park bodies should have those powers, but that policy and implementation should be in the hands of one authority. More than anything else, that principle is the issue of concern.
My other point is about resources. Although planning powers provide a resource to carry out the job, the issue of resources also relates to establishing a critical mass of planning staff, not just in terms of quantity, but in terms of the range of skills that are available. In the recent past, some planning authorities in Scotland split their planning service between two departments. That is not as draconian as splitting the service between two authorities, but after experience of that move, a number of planning authorities reversed the arrangements and returned to a consolidated planning service.
In places where there is no planning service in local government, such as Northern Ireland, the system does not receive the added benefit that the planning discipline brings to the authority. I am a member of the Heritage Lottery Fund committee for Scotland, which deals with the townscape heritage initiative. That initiative is led throughout Scotland by planning authorities, not because that is a statutory duty but because those authorities have the skills through their planning services to lead on the initiative. In Northern Ireland, the local authorities are hamstrung because they do not have the appropriate skills to implement the townscape heritage initiative effectively. My point is that it is important for the delivery of planning under any circumstances to have not only the powers, but a consolidated critical mass of planning service.
For those reasons, our institute is unhappy about the proposed split. Our view is that, given the circumstances in the Cairngorms, the alternative is to give the national park authority full planning powers. We are not concerned about the strategic planning arrangements, which can exist separately for the reasons that I stated. It is possible that, under future arrangements, there will be no structure plan for the national park and that the strategic planning context will be provided by national planning guidelines and a national framework. Attention should be paid to that issue when the proposed planning bill, which was mentioned earlier, is considered.
The arrangements that we suggest do not mean that we do not recognise an alternative to national park authorities having planning powers. The enabling provisions in the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000 are correct because future candidate national parks in relatively remote parts of Scotland might fall entirely within one authority area. We cannot see the wisdom of having a separate planning authority in that situation. However, from the planning service point of view, we do not see any difference between the situation in the Cairngorms and that which prevails in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park.
Robin Pellew (National Trust for Scotland):
The National Trust for Scotland wants the park to work, which is why it is with considerable sadness that we advocate rejection of the plans that have been introduced by the Executive. I emphasise that our involvement in the park is local, through the Mar Lodge estate, which will constitute just under 10 per cent of the park area. We want the pioneering developments in land management, public education and access that we are putting in place on that estate to be rolled out in the rest of the park. Our involvement is also national, in that we are a national organisation that operates on behalf of the people of Scotland. We also have an international dimension.
We do not support the proposed split arrangements for development and implementation. We are concerned about a possible lack of consistency because four or five local authorities will be involved, each with its own structure plan, and the development of the local park plan will inevitably be based on or assimilate the input of the local authority structure plans. Therefore, the park plan might not necessarily be for the benefit of the Cairngorms because it will also have to assimilate many external considerations. We are also concerned about a lack of clarity in how the current arrangements will work. We would welcome further clarification—for example, through a protocol—so that many of the unanswered questions, which we have to take on trust, could be answered.
We are primarily against the split arrangement, however, because tensions will inevitably be created when one body is responsible for developing the park plan and several other bodies—the local authorities—are responsible for the plan's implementation through their structure plans. When policy and implementation are separated tensions are bound to be created that could spill over into conflict if contentious planning applications have to be called in. We envisage the things getting to the stage—as happened in England in national parks with split arrangements—where being at loggerheads creates a stalemate. That would put off developers who were interested in developing tourist facilities and the local communities would consequently suffer. What is proposed will almost inevitably lead to such a conclusion.
We think that the key to making the park work is to decide how best to reconcile the interests of the local communities—in terms of social and economic development from the inward investment from tourism that park status will generate—with our desire to protect the landscape and the natural heritage. We think that such reconciliation would best be achieved by having a single authority responsible for all planning and development control.
We also think that it is important that local people are highly involved and that there is greater local accountability. We envisage the national park authority, with its five plus 10 plus 10 structure, having a predominance of local people drawn from within or adjacent to the park area. Therefore, authority that was delegated to that body for development control would involve more local accountability. Indeed, we see accountability almost as a tier structure, in which most local accountability would come from the national park authority.
The second tier would come from development control being retained by the local authority so that, for example, people from as far away as Thurso, Ullapool, Elgin and Forfar could make decisions about what happens in the park. The third tier would be the minister calling in manifestations of failure in contentious issues for decisions to be made behind closed doors. That would represent a total abrogation of local involvement and local accountability. Therefore, we think that giving full authority for planning and development control to the national park authority would increase local involvement and accountability.
However, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs reviewed the whole system of planning in a report in July 2002, which examined different options for how best to achieve the reconciliation function within the national parks. I will read two sentences from the report:
"We are not convinced that such an arrangement would deliver consistent decision-making and support integrated management of Parks. It would also mean Park authorities being seen as a negative influence in planning."
That is because of the calling in of applications. The report adds:
"In the absence of authoritative evidence to the contrary, responsibility for both local planning policy and development control should remain with National Park Authorities".
That is based upon 50 years' experience of running national parks south of the border. It was done in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs and we have heard no explanation for why it should not be done effectively in the Cairngorms.
Thank you for your remarks on those general questions. Several members are now bursting to ask questions.
I have one question of clarification. Is it the view of the councils that the Sandford principle is embedded in the national parks legislation?
I had the experience of working for Lord Sandford when I spent a year at the Department of the Environment. He announced the principle that when conservation versus development inside a national park becomes an issue, conservation will win. That is the basic issue and I am not convinced that the principle is as clear as it should be in the act. It certainly could be re-emphasised in the designation order.
I ask my questions having been on a planning committee of a council and a development control committee. They work in interesting ways.
I will start with conflict; we are discussing whether the orders will resolve conflict and tension. What do the witnesses think about the local plan process being the responsibility of the national planning authority and the development control process being the responsibility of the council? I am sure that you will have seen the conflict and tension that already exists within local authorities between those two functions. Will the tensions be exacerbated by the proposed process in respect of who is responsible for what?
How do you envisage that the appeal mechanism—which is different from the call-in mechanism—will work? A developer may appeal against a particular proposal's being turned down by the development control committee of the council, but that would affect the structure plan that is set by the national park authority. How do you envisage that issue being resolved? Is the draft designation order strong enough in its direction on that point? Development control committees of councils are semi-judicial bodies. Does the order deal properly with the issue of the park authority in respect of its local planning process being a semi-judicial process in the same way as development control is in local authorities? That is another possible area of tension.
In the development control process, local authority members are required, under the code of conduct for members, not to give views on a development control application. Should the same requirement be applied to park authority members who will consider a local plan or structure plan?
I will need to hear what the answers are to those questions. I am trying to ensure that I ask questions and do not make statements. If I go any further, there is a danger that I will start to make statements.
As I explained, when responsibility is split into two parts so that the policy and the development of the plan lies with one body and responsibility for its implementation and execution is with another body, it makes life a damned sight more difficult than it would be if responsibility lay with one organisation.
I listened with interest to what Graham U'ren said. If we had a national park that was all within one local authority area, it would be perfectly reasonable for the whole caboodle to be retained by the local authority. However, we do not. Four, possibly five, authorities are involved and that is why the problem of consistency arises.
The appeal process will be extremely muddling. If I were a developer and a number of local authorities were involved, one of my primary considerations would be in which local authority area I would try to pitch my development, because there might be different criteria, different attitudes and different approaches to planning in different local authority areas instead of there being a single cohesive and integrated plan under the national park authority. If my plan were rejected, against whom would I appeal? Who would be the statutory authority: the national park authority, which may be saying no, or the local authority, which may be saying yes, or vice versa? It is extremely difficult to know. That is why we need clarification and some form of protocol.
We are making the process unnecessarily complicated. Models exist—potentially including Loch Lomond and the Trossachs—that show how a national park can work in a much simpler and more manageable way. For whatever reason, the process is being made unnecessarily difficult and complicated, and that is stacking the chances against the success of the park.
I am trying to get my head round all the complications that we seem to be throwing into the pot. I will give an example of the total applications determined. In Badenoch and Strathspey, there were 234 applications. The applications were made under the headings: householder, minor dwellings, minor business and industry, other minor developments, total minor applications, major dwellings—which means 10 or more houses—and major business and industry. There were 12 applications under the heading of major developments. Of those 234 applications, 164 were dealt with under delegated powers.
I am trying to get my head round where Mr Pellew is coming from with the complaint about mixing and matching. If the local plans and structure plans are in place, surely the figures are evidence enough that many applications are of a minor nature. Most major applications in the area would be put out to consultees anyway.
The vast majority of applications will be routine and straightforward, and the contentious ones will not necessarily be the ones involving big developments—the major tourism developments, and so on. The issue is how a decision on the siting of a development—which may be small or involve a tree preservation order—will be made in the context of the wider brief, which is to reconcile the development with the protection of the landscape and the natural heritage. The criteria are slightly different.
In England, full planning and development control is retained by the national park authorities. They delegate to the local authorities the routine, run-of-the-mill applications and a protocol is developed between the NPAs and the local authorities for that devolved responsibility. The national park authorities address only the contentious applications, which concern not necessarily large developments, but developments whose positioning in the park has to be taken into account as well as the landscape. The number of applications in relation to large developments is comparatively small, but contentious applications, because they involve issues that may seem trivial, are made quite frequently.
I assume that, if full authority remained with the national park authority, it would not have to make every decision on every TPO or conservatory extension at the back of every cottage. Such decisions would be made through devolved authority. Nonetheless, primary authority would remain with the NPA, not with the local authority.
At this stage of developing legislation, lines tend to get drawn in the sand. Some of today's most important statements have been made by local authority representatives who will have to make the arrangement work—whatever it is. A positive attitude is absolutely essential.
The philosophy behind the proposals in the Cairngorms has been very much about partnership. Partnership is a difficult issue for us to reflect in the statutory planning system. A planning committee will have to make resolutions wearing its statutory hat. However, when it comes to programmes and working together to align different agencies' objectives, partnership can be a very strong method indeed. The ethos of partnership will be absolutely essential in the national park. It is hoped that whatever planning arrangements are eventually made will convey that.
Retaining split powers means that protocols and policies will be essential. That might lead us to think increasingly about putting more in the legislation, especially in the statutory instrument, and about examining the minutiae of the consequences and how to deal with situations. We will not get a workable solution unless there is a voluntary agreement on what is needed to make the arrangement work.
I point the finger not at legislation, but at central Government guidance and the work behind the scenes to make whatever situation there is succeed. We should learn from the experience of regional and district councils and the call-in arrangements before 1996. I believe that tensions are inevitable from time to time, but if we learn from that and examine closely the ethos of the national park authority and what it is intended to do, we may find that the tensions are not as severe as originally anticipated. That will require much work, which is made more difficult by the very purpose of small developments. I do not believe that the call-in issue is relevant only to the very rare large developments; there is a tension between strategic and local in land use, infrastructure, patterns of development and so on.
We are talking about the national park's statutory objectives with regard to protecting the national heritage resource and the landscape. We all know that their quality can be eroded incrementally by poor attention to detail. Therefore, the protocols for split powers are quite a big issue. Call-in powers in relation to the detail of design policies and landscape protection policies in the national park plan will have to be considered very carefully.
I will pick up a couple of points that have not yet been covered. On the code of conduct for elected members, if the provisions persist, the local council or its area committee will have to be consulted formally on an application that has been agreed to be appropriate by the national park authority. If there are members of the national park authority on the area committee, I imagine that they would not express a view. That will have to be codified. The time for the committee to have all the information will be when all the information is ready to be reported by the officers of the national park authority. That is when the members nominated by the national park authority to the area committee will give their view. There must be a point at which they do not give their view at local level in the council committees. That will have to be written into the script. I am convinced it will, because it is possible that new information will appear from other sources held by the national park authority, and quite properly so. A new code will have to be written to cover that.
Appeals have not been mentioned. Clearly, they will depend on the reasons for refusal, if the determination came from the national park authority. Specialist officers from constituent councils may well be called on to provide evidence, if that evidence has been used to formulate the report and the reasons for refusal. In such situations, I would expect a team effort from the councils and the national park authority where there is unity of purpose.
I ask Bruce Crawford to make his supplementary questions brief, as a host of members want to contribute.
If the national park authority took one view and the council took another, what effect would that have on the appeal process? Given that there would be two different processes, is there potential for an increased number of judicial reviews?
As long as all parties with a legitimate interest have the necessary access, the reporters will deal with the different points of view and statutory roles. Certain parties will look for inconsistencies between the positions of the authorities, but the system of reporters should deal with such problems adequately.
When Bruce Crawford referred to the appeal process, I thought that he might refer to the issue of appeals against the decision to call in, which is a throwback to previous days. Ministers would have to make the decision in the first instance, so the provision will have to be included in the procedure and covered by the protocol. It is another complication.
I have a question for Councillor Park. The committee has heard negative views of the draft orders from Robin Pellew and Graham U'ren. They are not in favour of partnership working and have highlighted the associated difficulties. They believe that the national park authority should have total planning control. However, the idea of partnership working did not come out of the blue; Highland Council, which, presumably for good reason, is keen to see partnership working, suggested it. Will you elaborate on why the councils are so keen for a park authority that is different from the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority?
I am more in love with Cairngorms national park than anyone else. It is unique to Britain, if not the world, so why should it follow a model that is successful in England or at Loch Lomond? The difference between Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park and the Cairngorms national park is that Cairngorms national park is like an upside-down bowl with everything situated around its edge; Loch Lomond national park is the other way around.
Highland Council sees no problem with partnership working. It may be proved wrong. In its consultation processes, the council takes on board the views of local people who live in the park, not the views of people elsewhere in the world, and local people have expressed a preference for partnership working. They were greatly concerned with finalising planning permission before national park status was established because they feared that the gates might be closed and further development restricted.
I have no problem with partnership working. The Highland Council and, I am sure, Aberdeenshire Council have tremendous professional teams and so are well placed for successful partnership working.
I have three questions, two of which are to one side and might be more appropriately dealt with by the Rural Development Committee. They are from the Ramblers Association. First, will the failure to include in the designation order powers to set up a park ranger service have an impact on the policing of the planning powers of the various bodies? I do not imagine that there will be such an impact, but I want the witnesses to confirm that. Secondly, does the vexed question of the southern boundary raise any problems for joint working on planning?
Thirdly, given that developers are a bit like water, in that they tend to find the weakest point in a system, I am concerned that cross-boundary working will open up the possibility of developers exploiting—or creating confusion among—the different approaches to planning policy. As there are 32 different agencies in the local authority system in Scotland, we do not have to look far to discover areas in which local authorities compete with one another for significant economic and housing developments. How will that competition be prevented when there are often strong economic drivers for development? One local authority's policy might favour development in a way in which another local authority's policy does not. How do we ensure that local authorities work together?
I do not believe that a joint approach is impossible, but for transparency, clarity and consistency, we must discuss how approaches will work in different local authority areas and how to ensure that one local authority's policy position, which might have a slightly lower or higher threshold than another's, is not used by developers to play that local authority off against the other. As Bruce Crawford mentioned, the situation might lead to increased use by developers of judicial review and the court system to secure developments in cases in which they might not be able to do so if a single authority were involved.
It is not necessary for the witnesses to respond to the first of Angus MacKay's questions, which was about park rangers. We want to concentrate on the planning issues.
I would like to respond to the first question. We want the Cairngorms national park authority to have the power to appoint rangers. We deliberately reorganised the Aberdeenshire Council ranger service on the assumption that a co-ordinated arrangement would be forthcoming through the national park plan that would bring together the existing arrangements and provide a welcome, particularly for visitors. I would like that power to be reinstated.
Paragraph 8 of my submission refers to the fact that a special protection area and a special area of conservation straddle Aberdeenshire's Council's boundary with an adjoining authority. If we take the view that the Scottish Executive should define those areas scientifically, as advised by the European Commission, so that only scientific evidence can be taken into account when the zones are decided, the national park boundary should include those areas entirely. That opens up the discussion about Perth and Kinross.
The planning process is about partnership working, not only between councils, but between developers. In our area, we have a group called the north east housing planning alliance, which considers housing assessments and works with the development industry in discussing draft policies and mechanisms. That is one way in which we can ensure that policies have a degree of credibility. The answer is not only inter-authority working, but working with other bodies.
I draw members' attention to our written submission, which points out that it is important that a protocol on planning powers be introduced early on.
On the park ranger issue, I was disappointed by the designation order's decision that local authorities should retain ranger services. It is important that the park authority has its own rangers, particularly for dealing with issues such as education, responsible public access to the countryside and land management. We run a ranger service at Mar Lodge and we would like our ranger service to be a national park ranger service and not a local authority one within the national park. There is a fundamental difference between the two. I would hope that we could either change the ranger service to a national park one or rapidly evolve towards that.
The problem of the southern boundary involves serious planning considerations. We are concerned about the lack of consistency in how the Executive applied the sub-units, which were evaluated by Scottish Natural Heritage, as the recorder. Low-scoring areas have been included in the park, but high-scoring areas on the southern boundary have been excluded. We are also concerned about the Executive's lack of explanation. It is manifestly clear that the criteria that were used are not in the enabling act. Therefore, what criteria were used?
On the planning issues, it is obvious that there will be problems of consistency and so on, because four or five local authorities will be involved. However, the more important issue is zoning within the national park in relation to visitor management, development pressure and so on. Bringing in the north Perthshire hills would help with that. On visitor management, for example, the natural point of access to the park for the majority of visitors will be in the south, coming up on the A9 or the A93. That is the natural gateway to the park, but it is outside the park.
Many people who climb the hills within the park—and we assume that the park will bring in more visitors—do not come in cars because they want to start at one side of the park and walk to the other. For example, someone could walk from Dalwhinnie across to Deeside by going up over Glen Tilt and down Glen Feshie or whatever. Those people want to be dropped off at one place and picked up at another. Therefore, a public transport system is needed that benefits visitors and the local community. The obvious way of doing that is to have a bus service that trundles around the outside edge of the park. In which case—
Can I draw us back to the planning issues?
Sorry?
We want to stick primarily to the planning issues.
Yes, I am coming back to that. I am just making the point that a lot of public transport will be outside the park's boundary because the transport is in Perthshire. Our primary concern is that excluding the Perthshire area will have a great impact on the handling of zoning and visitor management and will pull the core of the park, which is the Cairngorm mountains, down towards the park's southern border. For example, one could apply for world heritage site designation for the Cairngorms area, but there is no obvious natural buffer zone around that central area. The Perthshire hills could have been the southern part of such a buffer zone, but that area is not within the park.
There are also implications for development pressure and affordable housing. If each local authority has its own targets and plans for development, how will those be reconciled within the park plan? Such issues are highly relevant to the question of the incorporation of the buffer zone of the Perthshire hills along the southern boundary.
I will comment briefly on each of the three points. It is true that, in the context of a statutory planning system, the issue of a ranger service has no consequences. So far, I have talked about planning being concerned primarily with the statutory planning system. However, as planning professionals, we are extremely concerned about a framework for decision making that has an impact on land use and on change in the environment. That framework is strongly related to certain aspects of management, such as providing a ranger service.
Therefore, we found it strange that the power to provide a ranger service was specifically removed from the national park. There is not even provision for the possibility of the national park having a concurrent power with a local authority, which would have enabled us to use the park plan and the partnership arrangements to work out who was going to play which role. The designation order specifically retains other concurrent planning powers that leave considerable doubt about who will take enforcement action in particular cases. However, it was decided that for ranger services, for which there is total discretion and no statutorily determined responsibilities, the park would have no responsibility. When the decision is considered that way, it looks rather odd. There would be no harm at all in the order retaining the powers for the park authority to have a ranger service, to contribute to a service or to agree with the local authority how a ranger service is to be provided.
On the southern boundary, I am a little unsure as to the consequences for planning per se, other than possible consequences if planning considerations are not taken into account. However, in the wider scheme of things, we do not know what the future holds.
A crucial issue is the prospect, or otherwise, for the designation of the Cairngorms as a world heritage site. In my experience, in a place such as New Lanark, which is built heritage rather than natural heritage, how the setting, buffer zone and fringe areas are managed is absolutely fundamental. Not only must that work be done; it must be shown to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation that a scheme is in place to do it effectively. That is fundamental to the chances of success in world heritage site inscription. The worry is that omitting any part of the Cairngorm massif might prejudice the position.
The experience in America has been mentioned from a management point of view and, more particularly, from the point of view of the national park management, as it might have a bearing on planning. One of my members, who has just returned from America, told me that there is a clear difference between those parks that have an adequate, protected buffer area at the entrance, and those that do not, where the visitor pressure is immediately felt in the core, sensitive area.
On the point about consistency of planning policy, the national park authority has the power to make planning policy, which should ensure that the policy is consistent round the park. From the implementation standpoint, there is always the chance that interpretation of those policies will vary round the park.
On behalf of the planning profession, I must admit that our performance in preparing and keeping statutory development plans up to date is not good. The real worry is that, when the park plan becomes out of date, the scope for inconsistency becomes even greater. However, we hope that a planning bill and the resources that the Executive gives local authorities for planning will help us to keep our plans up to date and relevant.
Some of the questions that Helen Eadie, John Scott and Nora Radcliffe had intended to ask have probably been at least partly covered. If they want to ask supplementary questions related to those areas or if they want to discuss other points, they can do so.
I want to raise the issue of the elected versus the non-elected members of the national planning authority. Although Robin Pellew said that decisions would be devolved or delegated, it was not clear how that would be done. Would decisions be delegated to local development committees? That is a concern. In my opinion, local authority members must be involved in decision making. I ask the witnesses to clarify that point and to comment generally on non-elected members serving on bodies that make planning decisions.
I hope that non-elected members appointed by the minister would bring extra knowledge, possibly from outside the area, that may help the determining committee. They could be considered a blessing in one respect because they would bring an outside perspective, rather than one from round the hill. However, there is a risk, as Helen Eadie rightly implies.
The second question concerned delegation, and to whom that delegation would be made. I interpreted that question to refer to delegation to an officer as an authorised part of a delegation scheme on certain categories of development. The procedure for minor developments that attract no major objections is well established in local authorities and helps to speed up the process. Whether that would persist for applications that may be called in for a national park authority—which may not happen often—has not yet been thought through. However, that would be the normal procedure.
My next question concerns the anxiety that would be prompted if the development control committee were taken out of the equation altogether. I have been a member of a planning committee, so I know about delegation, but I would be concerned if we went down the route suggested by Robin Pellew. He said that there would be delegation within the planning authority, but would that delegation be to officers or a development committee in a local authority?
That would depend on the nature of the protocol that was agreed. Matters that have been investigated by the national park authority and that are thought not to raise significant implications could be returned for local decision making. However, they would have to be assessed before that happened.
On the composition of the national park authority, I should point out with a rueful smile that there is a mistake in the draft order. Article 5, which details the constitution of the authority, says that there will be 25 members but lists only 20. If the committee wanted to score a few points, it could point out that article 5(3) should say that 10, rather than five, members of the authority are to be appointed by ministers.
We are covered from the Parliament's view because the Scottish Parliament information centre briefing makes that clear.
Okay.
Delegation would work if the national park authority retained authority for development control, but delegated casework, particularly for routine planning applications, through the usual local authority system. The local authorities would then make decisions in line with local authority structure plans or local plans and according to a protocol negotiated between the national park authority and local authorities. The NPA would retain the right to make decisions on major or contentious issues—that definition would have to be incorporated in the protocol—or on applications that are out of line with the local park plan. That would significantly cut down the volume of the caseload that the national park authority would have to deal with, because the bulk of the routine work would continue to be dealt with by the local authority as normal, which we discussed in the context of Highland Council's statement.
There are two different issues—delegation from one authority to another and the role of elected members. As I said earlier, although all the national parks in England have full planning powers, the broad authority, which is not a national park but is within the national parks regime, delegates planning control decisions to the local authorities concerned. That is largely because it is a small area and authority without the critical mass to run the service. Therefore, such a system already works, and protocols and mechanisms can be put in place as described.
Wherever the decisions are made, we should examine the principles in the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Designation, Transitional and Consequential Provisions (Scotland) Order 2002 (SSI 2002/201), which makes it plain that planning decisions will be made by a committee involving a majority of elected members. I cannot remember all the definitions, but that means both elected local authority councillors and elected national park members. The role of non-elected members on any planning committee will always be a minority one. That principle has been accepted for one park and should probably be adopted for others. There has been a lot of satisfactory debate about that.
Let us look over the horizon to the day, which we all want to see, when the national park has world heritage status. Can you confirm that to achieve that, the park has to have its own planning authority? As Robin Pellew just said, do we not also need significant buffer zones by the boundaries?
I suppose that I put my head on the block on that one. It is difficult for me to say with absolute certainty that that is the case, because that is for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and its advisory committees to decide. In recent years, it has been just as keen on the management planning arrangements as on the intrinsic merit of the areas as prerequisites for inscription. My experience has been that those arrangements do not involve split powers, but a consistency of policy framework and a rigour in implementation.
Is that something that, in your view, only a national park authority could give?
Yes.
John Scott is concerned with national parks and world heritage. I am a great believer in one step at a time. If the national parks are established and properly managed, world heritage status will follow. The situation will be reviewed in five to seven years, and that will be the time to consider world heritage status. We must get the national parks right first.
I do not disagree with Sandy Park, but Parliament must have a vision for the future and not just be concerned with the nuts and bolts. The committee wants to take a long-term view.
The world heritage designation is likely to be based on the geological and earth features of the central Cairngorm mountains. The primary issue, therefore, is to consider land management and in particular the management of grazing pressure from the deer, which will be fundamental to the role of the national park authority.
As part of the process of assessment for nominated sites, there would need to be reassurance, as Graham U'ren stated, not just on the quality of the intrinsic features, but on the integrated management. Integrated management means an effective body that can reconcile the park's social and economic pressures with protecting its significant features, and the assessors would look to the national park authority for that management. To have integrated management and development control would be a great assistance. The lack of it would not necessarily preclude listing, but would make it more problematic.
Similarly, because of visitor management pressures, assessors would look for an adequate buffer zone around the nominated area, and, again, the absence of the southern boundary would make assessment more difficult; it would not preclude it, but would make it more problematic.
Sandy Park is right to say that the national park must be in place before world heritage listing is sought, but it must be established in such a way that does not obfuscate the logical progress towards world heritage listing.
The committee is considering the planning aspects of the national park, and some serious concerns have been expressed. In planning terms, the proposed revised boundary creates problems. Members have heard the implications of that for world heritage listing, and I want to ask a brutal question. The committee has been presented with a take-it-or-leave-it draft designation order. The local authority representatives have tried gallantly to show how it could be made to work through measures that sound quite extensive and demanding. Would it be better to agree the order and try to make it work, or should the committee review the order and produce something that would work better? That approach would, of course, cause a short delay, but that would be worth while if the committee produced an order that worked well from day one.
This has been extensively discussed by my council, which includes people who have a lot of expertise in national park establishment and management.
Provided there were some form of independent monitoring and audit of the way in which the proposed split planning structure would work, it would be worth proceeding. However, if the structure were combined with the illogicality and inconsistency of the way in which the boundary has been drawn, it would be worth sending the proposal back to the Executive for a rethink. That was the view of my council after a thorough debate. If only one of those factors was present, it would be worth proceeding, but the combination of both factors outweighs the value of proceeding.
The down side is that if the proposal were sent back to the Executive, it might be a long time before it came back again. However, the National Trust for Scotland believes that, given that we have been waiting for 15 or 20 years, it is worth waiting a little longer if it means that we get it right. If we rush in with an artificial time scale, we might get it wrong and end up having to spend a long time trying to rectify what could have been done before the park was established.
Some people, particularly Aberdeenshire Council, have pointed out that the time scale calls for nomination by the local authorities before the local authority elections. If nomination were postponed until after the elections—so that the people who were nominated had been re-elected—more time would be allowed for the designation order to be reconsidered and come back before this committee, the Rural Development Committee and the rest of Parliament. There would still be time for it to be considered before Parliament is dissolved prior to the Scottish Parliament elections. That would be possible inside the 40-day lodging period if the establishment of the national park authority were delayed until after the local elections on 1 May.
The question is the right one, but it is difficult to answer.
We have always held the view that the national park authority would be the right body to have planning powers and that, perhaps, the park area should be larger. However, it is important to remember the huge public expectation that has been built up. Despite the fact that lines have been drawn in the sand, there has been a great deal of co-operation and a constructive approach. The worry about a delay in the process is that a lot of good will would be undermined unless it could be seen that that delay would definitely result in a better product. Discussions such as the one that we have had today have to go a bit further before we can say that the establishment of the park should be put off.
We should remember that there is an alternative: a decision could be made to go ahead with the designation of the park and to put in hand an immediate review of the outstanding issues. There is nothing wrong with coming back to an amendment order before the review period of five years that we suggested. It is important that the status of the Cairngorms national park is established as a priority and that something is done by way of administering that area under the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000. We recognise that there is a dilemma and we will offer our advice and resources to help manage whatever system there will be. I am afraid to say that the politicians are sitting on the other side of the table.
I am not empowered to answer that question on behalf of my council, because we did not consider the issue. However, we have drawn attention to the need for ministers to consider the new councillors who will be elected to the new local authority after 1 May as the relevant people for the board of the national park authority, in order to have continuity and to maintain links with the community.
I have already indicated that developing a protocol is not straightforward. It is quite a tall order to get things up and running by 1 September, given all the documentation that will start to flow from various councils to the national park authority and back again. One might think that 1 September is a long way away; however, it will take time to spare staff from their existing work loads to allow them to devote time to the Cairngorms issues. I cannot emphasise that enough. We want to do the job properly.
I agree with Allan Garvie about the short time scale and the importance of 1 May.
I also agree with Graham U'ren. The public perception is that the national park is going ahead, and boundaries and other such issues could be addressed in a very early review. Even Highland Council has concerns about boundaries cutting small forests, villages and communities in half. I have no problems with addressing such issues at a very early stage of the national park's development and a procedure—or the protocol—should be in place to ensure that that happens.
If members have no other questions, I thank our witnesses for their evidence—
I would like to make one or two brief points. The South Downs national park designation order was drafted recently. Members might be surprised to learn that that area has many things in common with the Cairngorms. It faces pressure from, for example: a high-density human population, with many people commuting to Brighton, London and so on; intensive agriculture; a major need for landscape restoration and so on.
The people involved in the development of the order gave careful consideration to the kind of planning arrangements that could cope with the volume, scale and intensity of this type of planning and development requirement. Indeed, they considered a series of options that ranged from the extreme of leaving planning in the hands of the local authority, to that of leaving it in the hands of the national park authority. In the proposed model, the national park authority will be primarily responsible for planning and development control, although some aspects will be delegated to local authorities. That model is based on the long experience of national parks in England, which includes the 1992 Edwards committee review. Despite the fact that the three local authorities involved in the south downs park object to the proposal and would like to retain development control, real leadership is being given in the development of a national park in a highly pressured and contentious area.
I also want to make a plug for a motion about the Cairngorms national park that was lodged yesterday by Keith Raffan. I will not read out the text of the motion, which relates to the revision of the boundary. However, committee members can sign up to it—
I must interrupt you, Mr Pellew. I do not want to open a debate about Keith Raffan's motion. I am sure that members will consider their views on it when the time comes.
I draw this item to a close. I thank all four witnesses for their evidence, which will help members in their consideration of the draft orders.
Meeting continued in private until 13:38.