Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Official Report 511KB pdf

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Transport and Land Use Planning Policies Inquiry

We will crack on with agenda item 2, an evidence session in our inquiry into transport and land use planning policies. I apologise to our witnesses for the item starting a wee bit later than expected. We will hear from representatives of planning and transport organisations. I welcome Paul Finch, committee member for north-east Scotland in the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, and Petra Biberbach, chief executive of Planning Aid for Scotland. I thank you both for joining us and ask whether you want to make any brief opening remarks before we begin the questions.

I have a brief statement just to introduce myself, if that is okay. My name is Paul Finch and I am a transport planner, representing north-east Scotland on the Scottish committee of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, as well as being an associate director for engineering consultants AECOM. I have been a planner for 15 years and have worked on transport policy development for Scottish local authorities from Shetland, through the north-east, and down to Ayrshire. I have also undertaken policy research for the Scottish Government, which has included evaluation and review of road traffic reduction targets and work on the impacts of national maximum parking standards and on an integrated approach to transport and land use planning applications.

Planning Aid for Scotland is a national charity that is registered in Scotland. We are primarily here to provide services to all people seeking to engage more effectively in the planning system and related activities—the environment and sustainable development being one. We receive funding from the Scottish Government, local authorities, various charities and our members and sponsors. We have around 250 planning aid volunteers, who are members of the Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland. They give their time free to assist communities across Scotland to engage in the planning system.

I will begin the questioning by talking about national planning guidance, which for a good number of years—perhaps the past decade or more—has taken a position against the creation of out-of-town facilities that can be accessed only by car. We have had a range of views in previous evidence sessions about whether that emphasis has been strong enough and whether guidance is weak in that area. We have seen that, over the period, such facilities have been given planning permission and have gone ahead. Why is planning permission still being granted for such facilities, and what needs to be done to change that?

You can probably think of a range of examples. I believe that there has been sufficiently strong guidance in the national planning frameworks, the structure plans and the development plans. However, ultimately, the incentives and pressures within local authorities to achieve economic development have outweighed some of that guidance, given the commercial realities, the pressures for development and the need for economic opportunities in some potentially deprived areas of Scotland.

That is an important issue, as it demonstrates a lack of joined-up thinking and a lack of awareness. In the past, we have talked about planning being an expression of society’s values, and the out-of-town shopping centres of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s were, to some extent, an expression of what people wanted at the time. Elected members, especially in local government, want to deliver what they perceive that their communities want. However, we are now moving into an era in which we need to take sustainable development and the challenges around climate change much more seriously, and that requires that we talk to elected members and communities to create a shift not only in the responsibilities of individuals, but in the leadership of elected members in local government.

I was going to come on to leadership. We have again heard calls for clear political leadership to ensure greater integration of transport and planning policies to achieve some of the things that Petra Biberbach has mentioned. Is it everyone’s job to provide that leadership? If so, is that really leadership? Or is there a particular level of government that ought to be driving on that?

I believe that the challenges that we face require all of us to take responsibility. We do not have time to look at particular institutions or Governments, although they can perhaps provide the infrastructure and the carrots, as somebody mentioned earlier. It is up to each of us to find out about the changes that we can make, and it is important that we make those changes.

The leadership will be closely integrated with and will reflect society’s wants, demands and desires at a particular stage because of the democratic system in which we live. Although we can have strong Government guidance—perhaps referral mechanisms, et cetera—at the end of the day, the planning system needs to take society with it. The needs and wants of society must go along with the direction in which we are going.

The needs and wants of society and local government will come into play. However, as was mentioned earlier, commercial pressures are also a way in which those needs and wants are expressed—it is not just about what is in a local plan or how each individual application is considered; there will be commercial pressures. What needs to happen? Is there a way of getting in among that and changing the commercial incentives and pressures to ensure that more appropriate and sustainable decisions are made?

On the general point, Denmark and Austria are among the most successful countries in Europe in terms of their gross domestic products, which are way above GDP in the UK, although those countries have much more stringent environmental legislation and rules. Therefore, it is wrong to say that commercial concerns are detrimental to the whole sustainability agenda. Good Governments are in a win-win position.



Let us take Denmark as an example—I am not necessarily talking here as a representative of Planning Aid for Scotland, but as an interested party through having my own business in Germany. In Denmark, there is research and development alongside the development of the renewable energy infrastructure. That creates jobs, and knowledge is imported and exported to other countries, which is helpful. We should be much more proactively engaged. We do not yet have end-user demand for such products, and that is missing.

I will put on my Planning Aid for Scotland hat again. As long as we do not stir appetites and demand among people for better and more sustainable options, we will not get there. We must do much more.

I will give members a brief example. A large community group was recently awarded a grant under the climate challenge fund to turn a sports field into allotments. However, the planning system was left out of the wonderful process. As members know, sportscotland has the right to object to changes of use of sports or playing fields. The situation was lamentable. The group came to us and we have tried to help it to achieve the change of use, but that is hard work. A joined-up approach and creating demand from the bottom up are still much needed.

16:45

You have placed a lot of emphasis on persuasion and engagement, but you have also cited countries that take a much stronger approach to legislation and regulation. Do you acknowledge that both approaches are necessary?

The approaches have to dovetail. There is the bottom-up approach; the other approach involves giving a carrot or incentive and ensuring that businesses can change. If the market works through demand and supply and there is no demand, supply will not be created.

Finally, what about the architecture of the various organisations and bodies out there in transport and planning at the local, regional and national levels? Is the structure working? Does it need to be thought about or revised? Are changes necessary?

There is certainly a lot of interest in the regional transport partnerships and how they relate or do not relate to the new strategic development plan areas. It seems that those things have a similar raison d’être: to take a regional, cross-boundary overview of the key issues, which are often cross-boundary movements to particular centres for work or access. However, the two boundaries seem to be slightly askew in some cases.

We are lucky in the north-east of Scotland because the north east of Scotland transport partnership, the regional economic forum and the strategic development plan team are co-located in the same building and they all work with the same information. There is great integration, and that is a good way forward, but perhaps there are not the same opportunities in other areas because of disjointed boundaries. Perhaps Tayside is one example in that context. A large proportion of people in north Fife go to Dundee, but the regional transport boundary does not cover that area. Obviously, there are ways of overcoming that, which come down to personalities, but the issue is slightly interesting to me. A potentially important issue is the regional transport strategies becoming more closely aligned with the strategic development plans. An opportunity is being missed in that respect.

To take things down a level of government, there are often opportunities in local authorities to improve integration. Opportunities can be taken even in the design of different services in councils to improve them.

After carrying out a very short trawl, we found that only 13 of the 34 local planning authorities in the 32 local authorities had planning and transport in one department. A lot more could be done for the sake of integration.

On the other hand, I think that the planning reforms have been good news in allowing many people to get involved much earlier—and quite rightly so. After all, people should be consulted and should participate in any process that affects their area, and there are statutory mechanisms in that respect. However, local transport plans are not in the same league and you will often find that it is up to individual local authorities whether they want to engage the public in such strategies. Members of the public might be asked to engage in their local development plan—as I say, quite rightly so—whereas elsewhere there is the community planning partnership, the local transport plan and everything else. You can understand why people might be slightly miffed that there is no joined-up thinking.

One way forward might be to have some expression of a spatial plan to tackle all these issues and allow the people on the ground to get involved at the earliest opportunity. Indeed, while we are talking about changing the system, I suggest that we also make community councils statutory consultees in the development plan process and not simply involve them in the development management side of things.

Local transport strategies follow a very different regulatory and policy path from local development plans and, at the moment, they are not being universally adopted or kept up to date in Scotland. Unlike local development plans, they are not statutory documents. There is a real mismatch in that respect—for another thing, the timescales are different—and there might be opportunities to bring the two plans closer together. Getting these things right at the source might be useful.

Good afternoon. What is your view on the ability of current land use and transport planning structures and systems to encourage adequate transport provision for remote and rural island communities, including modes such as ferries and air services?

From my work in Shetland, I am totally convinced of and indeed can demonstrate the absolute necessity of strong, viable, frequent and affordable ferry links and air services. However, in some of the more remote areas, land use planning policy is more relaxed, which can give rise to other issues with regard to developing and sustaining sustainable transport. If communities are more scattered or if development patterns are not necessarily controlled to enable more walking and cycling within individual settlements, tensions can arise.

How relaxed is the “more relaxed” planning policy in these areas?

In Shetland, an alternative approach has been taken in the planning context. One might say that it is less rigorous—or perhaps that the boundaries are less firmly defined. In Shetland, there are more community-based planning processes, which might be more appropriate to the land use on the islands but, again, just because of the way in which the houses and communities are dispersed, tensions might arise if you are seeking to encourage more people to walk or cycle.

As a Highlands and Islands member, I have to say that there is an awful lot of emphasis on large urban centres in this kind of planning. However, it is important that we understand how the rule-makers’ urban thinking affects people in far-flung areas. Is sufficient attention given in transport and land use planning to reducing the need to travel, through the development of easily accessible local shops or allotments, for example?

If transport and land use are going to contribute to the achievement of carbon change targets, they must be focused not on moving people further and faster but on ensuring that people move less and at a slower pace. If we are to go down that road, it is essential that services and opportunities are not simply centralised for the benefit of providers but, increasingly, are decentralised for the benefit of communities and are made more accessible to them.

Indeed. How, then, do we organise a supermarket society so that we get local shops?

It is right to focus on transport, but I would not necessarily say that just because an area is excluded from that sort of society it is in any sense or shape disadvantaged. I have visited Shetland and Orkney many times and have found that communities there have an enormous sense of self-help and a different type of entrepreneurship. To give a particularly pertinent example, I know—although I wish to make no assertions—that an awful lot of glass bottles were previously imported to and exported from Shetland at considerable cost. However, some very creative people—some builders, I think—decided to grind the glass to create building material, which reduced the need to import other material. That proved to be very successful. Similar examples can be seen elsewhere. Rather than say that people should not move around, I think that the distances involved can create sustainable solutions.

Of course another disincentive was the landfill situation, but if such waste can be put to better use by being kept on Shetland, that is fine. However, my question is about travel and planning. Other than through more local delivery of services, how might travel reduction become a feature of the systems that we are trying to set up?

Is your focus on islands and ferries?

Not necessarily, as the issue also applies to rural communities and towns. We know that people in certain kinds of communities are disadvantaged because if they want choice, they need to travel a considerable distance. Other than by making things more locally accessible, how might travel reduction become a feature of the systems that we are trying to set up?

Bearing in mind the particular and different needs of island communities, I think that island communities can do, and have done, an awful lot themselves. For travel reduction, we need to create an environment that encourages people to walk and cycle irrespective of distance. For example, situating a housing development a mile and a half from Kirkwall centre might be difficult to sustain. We want young people to walk and cycle wherever they live, be that on the mainland or on the islands.

There is a tension with economic development prerogatives or realities in some remote islands, where people choose to travel further to gain economic employment opportunities. That is very hard to overcome without some degree of relocation of origin for those trips. For example, following the closure of the salmon processing factory on Whalsay due to the rise in salmon prices, the lack of other employment opportunities probably means that more people are putting pressure on the ferry networks and are travelling greater distances to take advantage of fish processing opportunities in Lerwick. It is difficult to see how, without some sort of compromise, travel reduction can be squared with maintaining a vibrant healthy community on Whalsay. We might need to start looking back at the original reason for populating those islands, which were previously self-contained fishing communities. However, it would be difficult to go back to that. There is a real tension on that issue.

There is, indeed. However, I had better move on to my next question.

Are local and national economic development priorities compatible with the development of sustainable settlements and transport networks?

17:00

I will again provide a couple of examples from the north-east of Scotland. In the last local structure plan review in Aberdeenshire, in order to meet the housing allocation targets by a means that at that stage was thought to be as sustainable as possible, the settlement of Kintore on the outskirts of Aberdeen was significantly expanded—I think that it doubled or tripled in size. That resulted in significant traffic growth on the A96 into Aberdeen, and only now are Transport Scotland and Nestrans beginning to think about a new station at Kintore, which could ameliorate some of the unsustainable car-use impact. In the forthcoming local plans in Aberdeenshire, we are seeing things the right way round: Laurencekirk, which has a new station, is now seen as a centre for growth in the next 10 years or thereabouts.

Those two examples show how guidance or structure plans 10 years or so ago perhaps did not take full account of the opportunities, but they are doing so now. There is a significant time lag between the original thinking on the plans and when we actually see the houses, factories and shopping centres on the ground—it can be more than 10 years.

Of course, the question of whether many people will work in Laurencekirk and/or Kintore is also at the centre of the discussion. Is the implementation of national planning and transport policies by local authorities hampered by a lack of resources to tackle some of the problems? We have talked about the difficulties of local delivery. Are local authorities in a position to help—in this case to match national planning and transport policies to the aims that we have?

We perhaps need a reality check. Local planning authorities throughout Scotland are under considerable constraints. One large local authority is losing 25 per cent of its planning professionals at a time when a new planning performance system is being implemented. That means that an awful lot more is being demanded of the planners who are left behind.

To some extent, we all need to start thinking again about whether, in the next few years, we can deliver on the hugely ambitious 42 per cent target, considering the reality in local planning authorities and where local planners are situated in local government hierarchy. In our opinion, local planners hold the key, alongside their transport colleagues, to delivering the sentiments of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009. The challenges that are posed are real, so we cannot just ask, “Can we do it?”; we must try to find a way of doing it with diminishing resources.

Are you talking about people who are being laid off—deliberate reductions—or people moving from planning into other spheres?

In the current economic climate, planning applications have gone down and people are being laid off. Of the 100 or so young planning graduates, only a handful found jobs. We were lucky to employ some of them under the futures fund, but a serious crisis is hitting us at a time when, under Stern, it is recognised that the planning profession holds the key to delivering sustainable development. The situation really concerns us.

On the upside for an organisation such as Planning Aid, we have an unprecedented number of volunteers, who want to volunteer to keep up their continuing professional development. That is great news for us, as we can go out and work with communities. However, there is a real crisis at hand.

My questions are for Planning Aid. Some may have been answered in some ways, but I would like to develop the points a wee bit.

Do you think that the current system of transport and land use planning is understandable to the general public? If not, what can be done to improve awareness of the systems that are in place and to make them easier for people to understand and participate in?

I am very pleased that you asked that question because we are a long way from having a universal knowledge of planning. All of us in planning are passionate about that. In our opinion, planning is one of the critical public services where people can shape the environment. I know that you have engaged with many professionals, but you should go out and ask members of the public whether they know about planning—and they will look at you with blank faces.

We have teamed up with some major retailers over the past few months and have spoken to people in shopping malls. We are taking planning to them. We feel that it is really important first to raise awareness, then to give the information and then to try to demonstrate to people that planning is a very positive and enabling force. At present, people who come across the planning process see it as something very negative that stops things happening. Most recently, we have been taking planning to schools. With planners and teachers, we hope to launch that work as part of the active citizenship subject in the curriculum in Scottish primary schools. It will be endorsed by Learning and Teaching Scotland.

You spoke about Denmark earlier. Are you aware that some Scandinavian countries have very good participation? My experience, both in the voluntary sector and as a full-time politician, is that people become involved in planning when it is too late. Awareness of planning and participation in future plans seem to be lost. What is Planning Aid for Scotland doing in that regard?

Although I mentioned looking at other countries, there is always a danger in importing something that is seen as good elsewhere. I know that the committee has travelled to Scandinavian countries, and we know of examples elsewhere. The fact is that there is a different culture in those countries. In many of the Scandinavian countries there is a trust in the professionals and in the politicians because the structures are very different. At the same time, there is a real willingness and appetite among people here, once they learn about how planning works, to get engaged. We find that up and down the country. We have to make sure that everybody, and not just single interest groups, has the same knowledge and information and can get the necessary confidence.

We are targeting particular communities in regeneration areas because planning is also about empowerment. If you have an empowerment agenda and you get into civil engagement, planning can play a very big role. This brings us back to the convener’s earlier question about responsibilities. This is important: if people feel empowered, they also feel that they have responsibilities. I hope that that answers the point.

It does, thank you.

Do you think that recent changes to planning legislation will improve the quality and location of development in Scotland, particularly the integration of new development with existing transport systems?

There is a real push by ministers in Scotland towards master planning, which links new development and transport infrastructure right at the start. We are looking at that together and it is to be welcomed. We also require retrofitting to make sure that we are creating more shared spaces where people, including children, who walk and cycle feel that they are on a par with people who use cars. In fact, that should be higher on the agenda so that people really feel that they can safely walk and cycle, while the car also has its place. What is coming out from Government is welcome but a lot more can be done.

When we take evidence the issue of communication always comes up. People seem to be doing things in isolation and not talking to one another. Research into the operation of Scottish planning policy 17 indicates that poor links between national and local government and between transport and planning staff hampers the implementation of national planning policies. How might those barriers be overcome? How do we get people and departments, or folks in Government or local authorities, to speak to one another?

Scotland is a very small country but we have silos that seem to have worked quite well. One of the difficulties relates to what I said earlier about planning professionals being put centre stage—and not alongside waste or, if they are lucky, the environment—in local government and the corporate structure so as to link it all together.





There is more and more willingness. The recent planning reforms require a culture change, and that culture change requires a new way of working. There is a new way of thinking and engaging among the professionals. With fewer resources, we will have to do more and do it better, so talking to one another will help.

I sense that there is an appetite for that. The number of people and community groups that are involved in the sustainable development agenda, especially through allotments, for instance, is extremely positive—people are starting to take a huge amount of interest.

What opportunities need to be provided for local communities to contribute to discussions on the location of new developments and the required transport provision? The question takes us back to participation. How do we pool information on local people’s feelings about transport needs? What needs to be done to ensure that planning is not top-down and that there is participation?

The new planning system is plan led and has moved to a five-year cycle in most areas, which is helpful to continuous engagement. There is a move away from consultation to participation and the expression of that through the main issues report.

Planning Aid has just launched a new mentoring service, in which we help local community groups through all the stages of a project that they propose, be it a small wind farm or a change of use for a community facility. Through that, we can help people to understand how the planning process works. The community group itself can become a developer and, perhaps, engage in pre-application consultation. That is self-help and we hope that, in the longer term, it will help to ensure that the public is better informed. Participation is key.

I suggest that moving the regional transport strategy and the local transport strategy—even though that is voluntary—into the same time cycles as development plans would provide an opportunity. It would mean that we would not finish consultation on the future of transport and then be on to the development plan. Perhaps it is utopian to hope that we could run the two in parallel, but taking them at the same time would provide opportunities. If we could do that, there would be wonderful reductions in effort and efficiencies could be gained.

Is there an opportunity for local people to participate in transport planning and transport partnerships?

The transport planners try incredibly hard to ensure that such participation is effective, but they have varying degrees of success.

So it is not yet happening generally.

I suggest that it is happening, but I also suggest that it could be improved.

Perhaps I have missed it.

I have some questions for Mr Finch. What impact does the lack of local or central Government control over public transport provision have on effective integration of land use planning and transport provision?

As you know, the majority of public transport—I am talking about the buses—is commercial. We find that, although cognisance can be taken of the main corridors at the development plan stage, there are often pre-application negotiations with public transport providers when planning gets down to the level of the individual site. However, unless some sort of detriment to public transport services can be demonstrated, there is not always an obligation on the developer to make a contribution so that the public transport provider can improve services. Therefore, such integration is sometimes successful and sometimes unsuccessful—perhaps because the local transport provider tries to serve the development but inconveniences his service or incurs a net loss, meaning that he has to pull out after a short period.

I guess that the question is whether a more centralised, publicly provided system would provide better integration. It probably would, but would such a system provide, in every case, a better public transport service for the majority of users? Perhaps it would—but perhaps it would not.

17:15

Do national and local planning and transport bodies pay sufficient regard to the needs of the freight and logistics sectors? If not, what needs to change?

At local authority level, there are quite low levels of understanding of the requirements of the freight and logistics sectors, but I am pleased to say that in each regional transport partnership, there is, typically, at least one officer who has a good degree of knowledge of the relevant requirements and aspirations. Planning for freight in the public sector is a reasonably young discipline. I think that it was in around 2000 that guidance first came in, with the local transport strategies, that said that planning for freight would be a good idea, so people are still getting up to speed.

However, there are initiatives such as the Scottish Government’s freight best practice scheme, which is helping to spread the word on the relevant requirements and helping local authorities to think about the issue. We are getting there, but although local authorities and RTPs have wonderful models on and know an awful lot about the movement of cars and other vehicles, when it comes to information on freight movements, they are at a real disadvantage. We are trying to build up knowledge and expertise on what the key freight movements are and how the public sector can meaningfully influence that. We are talking about a highly dynamic commercial industry, which in many instances can probably look after itself quite well, thank you, without too much public sector intervention. We will see.

Cathy Peattie has a supplementary.

I am interested to know what discussion takes place on planning for freight because although I am a strong supporter of freight, I live in and represent a town in which there is a junction through which a heavy articulated lorry from the freight depot or the petrochemical industry passes every minute. It is not particularly pleasant to be in the area at 5 o’clock in the evening or early in the morning.

I am interested in the planning that takes place. I welcome the idea of increased freight, but I want to know what discussion takes place to stop heavy lorries from a depot going right through a town. How can that be stopped in the future or put right for local communities? It is not particularly pleasant to have a heavy lorry going past your house every minute.

No, it is not. I can imagine the detrimental environmental impact that that must have on the local residents. As well as affecting safety and amenity, it must cause intimidation.

There are tools that are available to help control the impact of heavy goods vehicles. Routing advice can be provided and restrictions can be applied through traffic orders. Such opportunities might have been taken—indeed, they are probably still being taken—to control the impact of the freight movements that you mentioned.

I do not know the specifics of your area—I am guessing where it might be, but I do not know specifically—but when it comes to the location of a freight depot, that might be a difficult issue to overcome permanently, unless there is alternative road provision or the depot is relocated. Engagement with the freight operator, perhaps through the Road Haulage Association, might provide opportunities to limit movements at particular times, but there are no clear ways of overcoming the issue—it would have to tackled on a case-by-case basis.

Increasingly, freight depots are located in strategic locations, and the planning guidance reflects that, so a proposal for a freight depot that would involve lots of HGV movements on the outskirts of a town or village where there was no clear alternative route that would avoid an impact on the town or village centre would not necessarily be approved.

I guess that that is what I wanted to hear. I know that planners, the local authority and hauliers in the area are working together. I am not criticising the planners, but it seemed to be quite normal to give approval to a proposal to have a freight depot outside a large town. I was interested to find out what is happening to try to avoid such situations arising in future.

Should transport planners pay due regard to the needs of walkers and cyclists when they consider the transport elements of new developments? If not, how could that situation be improved?

The guidance that we have ensures that all developments are linked into the walking and cycling network, as appropriate. Typically, that is as far as planners can make the developers go.

A really important issue is the wider underinvestment in the pedestrian and cycling network, which needs to be addressed and overcome before all the incremental developments that might place through new development make a difference. Otherwise, we will end up with a rack of cycle sheds outside a new business development and nice new pavements that take people to the local distributor road. Ultimately, it then becomes the local authority’s responsibility to make sense of those and start joining them up into a coherent network. The guidance and the way that it is applied to specific individual developments is good, but it is important to get the bigger picture and the wider networks in place before we see much cumulative impact.

Can I add to that?

I am still trying to figure out whether Mr Finch’s answer was a yes or a no, but please intervene and help us if you can.

We have opportunities now under the new SPP and the combined SPP, and then of course there are initiatives around designed streets. A hierarchy is now emerging where planners, including transport planners, are required to look at walking and cycling as part of the drive for sustainable development over and above public transport. Planners have to take that into account now.

I am clear that there is guidance and that there is a hierarchy, but my question was whether transport planners pay them due regard.

Increasingly, yes.

Yes, but we must not forget the role of the elected members in all this. An officer might design something appropriate, but the elected members’ role is also important. They need to understand the future requirements, and there is a huge requirement for training for elected members so that they are aware of the rise in the importance of sustainable development and the climate change challenges that surround decision making.

I have an example. In Aberdeen, a high-quality cycle path has been designed that goes from Kingswells and Westhill almost to the edge of Aberdeen. That is where it gets interesting, because that is where the planners face difficult choices about road space allocation, the removal of parking and so on.

The will is increasingly there, but there are difficult constraints against taking it to the level that transport planners and other planners would like to achieve.

I would like to press you a bit further on that—

I thought that you might.

It seems to me that you are being a bit too forgiving in your answers. We are talking about not just high-quality cycle paths, although we recognise the value of those, but normal streets, roads and pavements—the whole built environment where people walk and cycle. Most people are walkers, even if they are also drivers for part of the time, but developments are still taking place in which the car park is far more important, both to the developer and in the local authority’s planning decision, than whether people can get there on foot or on a bike. We are still not seeing enough emphasis on that—or am I wrong?

A transition is occurring, and we need to be realistic. Some of the things that are being built at the moment were designed quite a few years ago, and some of the decisions that were made a few years ago might not be made now. However, if the local community—the people on the ground—were asked to become much more involved, we would get much more of the kind of environment that everyone wants to live in. We are not planning with people at the forefront of our minds, which is one of the difficulties. People want to walk and they want safe routes where their children can cycle. They want to be able to walk to the shops. Of course everyone would like to be able to cycle—people do not necessarily want to go to the gym, and cycling is one of the best ways of getting fit and dealing with obesity. We do not even have to talk about the health aspect because we know about all those connections.







If we continue to design things in the abstract and fail to bring people in right from the start, in five or 10 years’ time we will still have places that are not fit for people. We need to make a complete shift by designing with people in mind right from the start, instead of putting the professionals first. When we talk about transportation, we are talking not just about roads but about the whole hierarchy of transportation.

Do planners and transport engineers receive sufficient training in each other’s disciplines, so that they can understand each other’s work and have a cross-cutting way of working, rather than the silo mentality that has been mentioned?

Lamentably, so far they do not get enough understanding of each other’s work; the planning schools will tell you that. Equally, they do not get enough information about how to speak to members of the public, instead of hiding behind jargon and exclusive language. We used to criticise doctors for doing that. There is a lot to be done, both to open up the simple concept of doing the best for the people who live in an area and to join up the different disciplines—transport professionals, planners, and architects and designers—and increase interaction between them, as happens in many other countries.

From a transport point of view, there is an appreciation of how the development process works, but often there is not enough early or proactive engagement at the right time or in the right places. There is some good practice at the moment, but it could be developed and improved.

Speaking of good practice, are there examples of effective joint working between planners and transport providers?

Yes, in most of the master plan areas. In the new sustainable community initiatives that we have been piloting, planners and transportation people are coming together. We must not leave those as exemplars—joint working must be extended to the whole of Scotland. It can be done, but at the moment there are only some examples—it is not the norm.

How do we move the situation forward, so that joint working is not restricted to exemplars and becomes the norm?

The politicians must send a clear signal that it is welcomed. Local government should talk to the various bodies that embrace the professions. We should also go to the planning schools. A seamless approach is required. There are already ideas for fostering greater dialogue between planning professionals and architects, so that they know about each other. The Scottish Government, through Jim Mackinnon, is actively involved in that work, which we can strengthen and widen to include energy use, in particular, and transportation.

Up in the north-east, as part of the development plan process, there has been a lot of joint working between planners and transport engineers and professionals on future infrastructure requirements for services. When sites come forward, FIRS groups look at the infrastructure that is required not just on those sites but in the surrounding areas, so there are opportunities to put in place what is required.

That brings us to the end of our set questions. Thank you for taking the time to give evidence to us as part of this inquiry. We apologise for keeping you a bit later than we intended.