“Review of Strategic Planning”
Agenda item 3 is the Scottish Executive's "Review of Strategic Planning". I welcome the Deputy Minister for Transport and Planning, Lewis Macdonald. He is accompanied by Jim Mackinnon, the Scottish Executive's chief planner, and John Gunstone, head of branch 1 of the Scottish Executive development department planning division.
The minister may wish to say a few introductory words. I understand that Jim Mackinnon will deliver a substantial presentation on the review and that we will then be able to ask questions.
Thank you, convener. I echo your opening comments on yesterday's events. We share those thoughts and sympathies.
As you said, I will ask Jim Mackinnon to make a presentation on the details of our strategic planning review, but it is worth setting in context how the review came to be under way.
Members will be aware of the document that was issued in January 1999 immediately prior to devolution. The Scottish Office issued a consultation paper on land use planning under a Scottish Parliament to lay the way for planning under devolution. It did not put forward specific proposals, but posed some general questions and attracted a significant number of responses—around 130. There was little consensus on the way ahead, but there was a general view that the planning system as a whole worked well, although some components needed to work better.
On that basis, Sarah Boyack, in her first stint as the minister with responsibility for planning, announced a programme of work in November 1999. She also announced that we would listen to worked-up proposals for change. We received many comments from the profession and from elsewhere providing ideas but not detailed proposals.
In November, when Sam Galbraith became the minister with responsibility for planning, he quickly made an announcement about the review of strategic planning, which was the logical development of what had gone before. In announcing the Executive's intention to undertake a review, he made clear the fact that the status quo would not be an option everywhere and that the Executive would want to address important and difficult issues, such as who should prepare development plans.
The committee expressed an interest in the review from those early stages, so I was delighted to be able to invite members to attend the seminar in May, which was one of the key points in the pre-consultation stage. As well as consulting the committee, we have consulted planners, business and environmental interests and others who we anticipated would have a view. The review was launched in June, at the Royal Town Planning Institute's UK conference in Glasgow, at which I spoke. At that time, we received a clear message that the way in which we had involved people and consulted during the early stages had been encouraging.
The review will have some controversial aspects, which we will probably discuss following Jim Mackinnon's presentation. Nonetheless, there is a general view that a radical review of strategic planning was appropriate and that the proposals that we have implemented have laid the basis for such a review.
I invite Jim Mackinnon to present the review in detail.
Jim Mackinnon (Scottish Executive Development Department):
This morning, I shall do three things: first, I shall record the strengths and weaknesses of the current system; secondly, I shall identify the issues that arose in the discussions that we had with a wide range of interest groups, to which Mr Macdonald referred; thirdly, I shall outline our proposals for change—and the committee should remember that they are just proposals in a consultation document.
Scotland has a long and proud tradition of regional planning, from the great Clyde valley plan of the late 1940s, through the programme for development and growth in central Scotland in the 1960s and the great studies of the 1970s, to the structural plans. However, there is a feeling that we have fallen behind in the theory and practice of regional planning. If there were a world cup of planning, we might not qualify for the finals.
When we approached the work, we were keen not to throw the baby out with the bath water. The planning system has many strengths, which we wanted to identify so that they could provide the basis for developing our thinking. It emerged that there was widespread support for the establishment of a statutory basis for the planning system. A statutory basis was regarded as important in providing a degree of confidence and appropriate, as the planning system affects people's properties.
People believed that ministerial approval of structure plans would enhance the plans' status. Because we are able to separate strategic plans from local plans, ministers are disengaged from detailed local decisions, although the planning system has had a long-standing involvement in such decisions and there have been opportunities for public involvement. People can relate to strategic planning in some areas, for example Ayrshire—although not others—but they find it difficult to relate to some of the issues.
There are weaknesses in the system, such as delays. It can take four to five years to approve a local plan and the plans are not always up to date. For example, a structure plan for Lothian region was submitted in 1994, based on a housing land audit from 1992, yet the project is scheduled to run until 2006, in spite of the fact that the area is the fastest growing area for development in Scotland. As a result, there is a feeling that plans are not sufficiently responsive to development—that they react rather than lead.
The development industry says that there is inadequate provision for development. Members might say, "They would say that, wouldn't they?" but there are examples of places where inadequate provision may be the case. Land supply here seems quite tight, with a firm green belt, and some of the sites that are perceived to be available for development in the west of Scotland have substantial difficulties. There is also a feeling that plans are insufficiently clear about what will and will not be allowed and that there is a tenuous relationship between the strategy and what it will mean for the man in the street.
First, we had to address issues arising from the series of national planning policy guidelines. People liked the robustness of those documents, which ensured, for example, a consistent approach to aspects of retailing such as out-of-town shopping. They also liked our new transparent procedures for preparing NPPGs.
There were concerns about the extent to which development plans followed through on or added to the guidance. Because of a lack of clarity on the matter, people also felt that a context document on Scotland's place was required to sit alongside the framework for economic development in Scotland and the social justice action plan. We felt that any talk about a central belt strategy would simply degenerate into a discussion about Edinburgh and Glasgow and ignore the wider issues about development in Scotland. If people started to perceive that the Parliament and the Executive were concerned only with the cities, what kind of message would the preparation of a central belt strategy send out?
That leads me on to the rural dimension. Because development is small-scale and incremental in most of rural Scotland, the question was whether the two tiers of a development plan—a structure plan and a local plan—were really required. Many elected members in local communities were a bit confused by the two-tiered approach, particularly when so many stages were involved.
Although people welcomed the involvement of Scottish ministers, concerns remained. First, people felt that the process took too long; for example, approving a structure plan might take up to a year. There were also question marks about the transparency of the procedures and the added value offered by the system. We have become involved in making quite minor modifications to structure plans, partly because the plans have been read more and more as conveyancing documents instead of as statements of vision and strategy.
Concerns about increasing legal scrutiny of plans came through strongly in our discussions. The committee is probably familiar with the human rights issues that are currently bound up with planning. In a House of Lords judgment, Lord Hoffmann said that the Human Rights Act 1998 was meant to strengthen the rule of law, not to introduce rule by lawyers. People are concerned that there is too much detailed legal scrutiny of plans and that debates about vision and strategy increasingly take place in courtrooms. Local communities are intimidated by the presence of lawyers and see the situation as a refusal to allow their engagement in the process; it also lengthens the process.
People also feel that there is consultation overload at many stages of the planning process and are fairly uncertain about the links with other plans and strategies. The purpose of the plan is to set a long-term direction for development, growth and conservation. Other plans can nest within it.
Finally, people are concerned about the content of plans and the advent of criteria-based policies. Such policies mean that, instead of allowing housing to be built wherever, decision makers stipulate that applications for housing in the countryside will be considered against certain criteria. The applicant has no indication of how the decision makers will act.
As a result of all those concerns, we drew up a number of key principles, two of which I will mention. The first relates to diversity. We must recognise that, as there is tremendous variety in Scotland's geography, a one-size-fits-all approach is inappropriate. Secondly, it is important that plans focus only on what they can deliver, although they should also take account of other factors.
After considering the matter from a national perspective, we propose that the documents should simply be termed policy instead of national planning policy guidelines. Development plans do not need to accept national policy, but if councils seek to develop or alter policy through their plans, they should say so instead of slightly adjusting the wording and making it uncertain whether they accept national policy. Perhaps that requires us to separate analysis more clearly from policy. That said, we are absolutely committed to maintaining our transparent and inclusive approach to the production of national guidelines.
I have mentioned a context document that might examine how Scotland as a place might develop. The quotation on the slide is from a firm of consultants that advised one of the devolved Administrations. Of course, it is just blether, and is not the sort of route that we want to go down. The next slide shows its graphic equivalent, which I am afraid is no more than high-class graffiti masquerading as analysis.
It is easy to lampoon some of the diagrams, but important thinking underlies them. The Danish diagram, for example, examines the future development pattern in Denmark. The intention was to examine the impact on Copenhagen and the rest of Denmark of boundaries in the east coming down. The result was the Øresund bridge link between Copenhagen and Malmö, which has huge implications at local, regional, national and international levels.
Closer to home, colleagues in Ireland have embarked on a spatial strategy. The situation in Ireland is different from the situation here. It is expected that Ireland will have one million more people by 2020. Eighty per cent of that population growth is likely to be in Dublin. That is incredible growth. There are huge disparities between the level of development in Dublin and that in the rest of Ireland and the Irish Government is concerned that those disparities will grow. However, it also wants to promote Dublin as a European city, although it is small in European terms. There are huge tensions in Irish development plans and big issues about what market economy levers there are for directing development to one area as opposed to another.
We are keen to have something distinctively Scottish in our strategic plan that reflects Scottish circumstances and the institutional landscape of Scotland and examines how Scotland might develop sustainably over the next 20 years. Such a plan would investigate issues ranging from settlement patterns to population and household change, in which there are dramatic variations within Scotland—for example, between east and west. Then we would begin to assess strategic priorities for transport and other infrastructure investment that could, for example, include telecommunications, which Mr Macdonald will talk about shortly.
We recognise that there are strategic places in Scotland that are important to the national interest—for example, the west side of Edinburgh, which is experiencing unprecedented development pressures. One of its main assets is its accessibility, but there are concerns about the implications of development at Edinburgh Park and of growth at Edinburgh airport. We are beginning, perhaps, to identify areas where we might have to consider a co-ordinated approach to planning, development and infrastructure.
The east side of Glasgow is another strategic Scottish location, because the M74 will extend to there. An east end regeneration route is, I think, also being discussed. The M74 extension will alter the geography of Scotland. The east side of Glasgow may have been inaccessible, but it will become hugely accessible. The area has concentrations of poverty and vacant and derelict land. We need to make arrangements now to deliver the sustainable development of the area.
Scotland's rural areas are also undergoing tremendous change. We should perhaps think about the spatial consequences of change in the rural economy.
We have thrown those ideas out for discussion. They concern the content of a national planning framework and the process involved. However, we are trying to create not a national plan, blueprint or end-state document, but a framework. We feel that MSPs should be involved in the discussion, either through the work of the Transport and the Environment Committee or through a wider debate in Parliament.
I mentioned the involvement of lawyers and the perception that sometimes policy has been re-invented by the 32 local councils in Scotland and by 200 or 300 local plans. Minor differences in the wording of policies are amplified and people get into tremendous debate at inquiries.
We feel that we could take a limited number of subjects, such as policies on the green belt or on natural or built heritage, and work with local authorities and others to devise model policies that could be incorporated in development plans. The result would be a consistent approach throughout Scotland that would not undermine the right of councils to develop their own policies on issues such as housing in the countryside or design that reflects local circumstances.
I come now to the statutory system. We propose that structure plans should not have to cover all of Scotland and that we should concentrate on the four city regions, which are the four largest cities in Scotland and their hinterlands. We have not specified the composition of those areas, but we have sought views. We envisage the establishment of joint committees similar to those in the west of Scotland, with a dedicated team to take the work forward. They would not try to corral everything within the plan, but would focus on a limited range of issues: employment, housing and transport.
The environment is key to such plans. Important environmental issues, such as natural heritage, flooding and protection of the coast, would have to be incorporated in the structure plan, which would provide policies to ensure the conservation or enhancement of environmental resources.
We are keen that the plans become site-specific. In the old days, structure plans were drawn up by regional councils. They are now drawn up by people working together, so we know where the sites are. There is merit in engaging people in the debate, in providing a higher degree of certainty and in specifying at strategic level sites that will be available for development—not the small sites, but the big, chunky areas of development.
We want the plans to be action oriented. If land is to be released for development or is to be a priority area for conservation, we want to know what we can expect to happen in the next year or two, what land acquisition needs to take place and what decontamination work or infrastructure is required. To respond to concerns about the examination process, we would make a public examination mandatory. Rather than taking the form of an adversarial inquiry, it would be a discussion moderated by a reporter. Rather than approving plans, as we do at the moment, we would seek to issue a certificate of conformity with national policy. That way, we could turn plans round in a matter of months, rather than in a period of up to a year.
The key point is what constitutes a strategic issue. Throughout Scotland, there are lots of issues that are controversial, but that does not make them strategic; it is a question of scale and of cross-boundary issues. For example, Dundee is expected to lose 18,000 people by 2016 and there are proposals for greenfield developments of 4,000 houses around Dundee, which represents housing for 10,000 to 12,000 people. Dundee has done some impressive regeneration work, but there is concern that that could be undermined by greenfield land releases around the city. That is the sort of key issue that we use to define areas for strategic development plans.
Some areas are uncomfortable with such definitions. For example, colleagues in Ayrshire are unhappy that Ayrshire has not been included, because the area has a good track record in drawing up structure plans. However, there are relatively few issues that cross boundaries in Ayrshire. The housing market areas are much more local. Ardrossan, Saltcoats and Stevenston form one housing market area, with Patna and Delmellington, and Ayr and Troon, forming separate housing market areas. Relatively few issues cross boundaries. Ninety-six per cent of retail expenditure in Ayrshire is contained within Ayrshire and 88 per cent of that is contained within local catchment areas. People in Kilmarnock shop in Kilmarnock and people in Ayr shop in Ayr. I know that colleagues in Ayrshire are unhappy about our definition of what is strategic, but we feel that it is to do with scale and with cross-boundary issues.
Outwith the cities, there will be single-tier development plans. That will not mean that the documents cannot have a strategic statement at the beginning, as the plan for Inverness and the inner Moray firth has. We would ask local authorities to draw up a scheme for how they would prepare development plans in their areas. The approval process would be much like the approval process for strategic development plans, but the local plans would concentrate on the small-scale sites and on key development control policies. Again, we want those plans to be action oriented, and we will be looking for greater use of supplementary guidance. We are looking not for things that have to go through the panoply of statutory procedures, but for documents that involve the public and which take a lighter touch. Policies on hot food shops or on design, for example, could then be implemented more quickly.
There are some specialist issues. For example, there is a 1999 national planning guideline on opencast coal and we now have up-to-date coverage of structure plan policies. Views on opencasting remain polarised—the industry says that the regime in Scotland is too tough but local communities feel quite the reverse. We feel that there is no point in reopening the debate in the short term, but we will consider it again in the medium term. Aggregates are another important issue. Research into the industry is under way and will inform what we do in future.
Waste is another big issue. There is great concern about the relationship between structure plans, local plans and area waste strategies. We propose that area waste strategies should be prepared and that underlying subject plans should then be developed. The area waste strategy should indicate what facilities are required. It should then be the job of the development plan, which would be a statutory plan, to identify how those facilities will be delivered.
Thank you for that useful presentation to kick off our discussions.
I welcome Murray Tosh to the meeting. He is a former member of the committee and retains an interest in our work, so I am happy that he has come along today.
Thank you for the presentation, which was comprehensive and took us through the issue. I wish to ask about structure plans that are prepared by local authorities in consultation with communities and other interested bodies, and which are subsequently modified by ministers. Concerns have been expressed to me about a lack of transparency in that part of the process. Concern has also been expressed that ministers have not conducted rigorous consultation on changes that are to be implemented. How do you respond to that? How do you expect the new system to address those concerns?
We are examining some fundamental changes in the relationship between the strategic plans as prepared by local authorities, and how we deal with them from the ministerial point of view. There are two fundamental changes. First, we would no longer require to approve in the way we do at present the detailed content of the structure plan. Instead, we would need to confirm that the strategic plan conformed with national policy. That is a slightly different process, because there are, on a range of matters, national planning policies that we would not expect every strategic plan to mirror faithfully. However, we would expect them to conform in broad terms. In other words, we would modify how we related to plans as they came forward.
Secondly, a difficulty of late with a number of structure plans has been that the panoply of examination in public by Scottish ministers has, in effect, fallen into disuse. That is partly because such examinations tended to become legal adversarial events. If I am not mistaken, it is 18 years since there was an examination in public. We have ceased to have those examinations because of what they tended to become. Instead, we are considering a public process for automatic examination—but not by ministers, as such—of plans as they come forward.
I have a supplementary question. Jim Mackinnon talked about a more casual approach to the examination of plans that avoids strippit-breekit lawyers earning two grand a day and the community standing up against them with the information that they have gained from a website or elsewhere. How would an informal approach prevent that from happening? Will not people turn up in a different guise and contribute to the process and act on behalf of the interests that they have always acted on behalf of? How would your approach take the tension out of that relationship, and how would it balance the power?
It is a serious challenge to find a way in which to do that. It might partly be achieved by the way the reporters whom we appoint conduct the process. Fundamental to the change that we are trying to achieve will be a change in the directions that we give to moderators of discussions, so that they are moderators of discussions, rather than the referees of stand-up fights, which is what they tend often to be. We recognise that merely changing the directions to reporters will not break years of habit, but it will be an important starting point that recognises the kind of problems that the convener describes and the changes that we must make. The way we proceed will be informed by experience.
On the same point, I call Adam Ingram, followed by Murray Tosh.
My question is not on that point.
We will hear Murray Tosh first.
I wish to address the role of ministers in approving plans. One of the strengths of the existing system is that once a plan has been through the ministerial process and it has been modified and issued, councils know that they are likely to be supported in the decisions that they take. The development industry also knows the probable outcome of applications. If ministers stand back to the degree that it appears is intended, will that mean that local authorities will be less certain about the outcome of some of the most difficult planning applications? Is there a risk that you might destabilise some of what works in the system?
That is certainly not the intention. Jim Mackinnon will comment on the way in which we have tried to address that.
The situation is not at all as Mr Tosh suggests. The law is that decisions shall be taken in line with the development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. We are not proposing any changes to that fundamental principle. Local authorities will have to take the statutory development plan into account very carefully.
We are trying to ensure that there is a more open process, as Mr Macdonald described, through a public examination that gives greater legitimacy to plans. That would mean that we were endorsing plans as being in line with national policy. It is difficult to generalise from specific cases. The status of the development plan would not be undermined by the changes that we will introduce.
The other side is that we expect that some of the proposals that we have for the future nature of the plan will address some of the uncertainties in the current system, because part of the intention is that the plans will be more site-specific.
One of our fundamental concerns about the current system is that the structure plan can indicate, for example, an area of search for a new housing development. At that stage, there is an argument about whether the site is appropriate. Thereafter, when we come to the local plan, we have that argument again. When we come to the planning application, we might have the argument for a third time. If we can telescope that process—not remove anybody's rights to provide input, but have the debate about the sites at the first stage—we can remove some of the uncertainty that follows from the current system.
I attended a community council on Monday and listened to its problems. Mr Mackinnon talked about structure plans and "big, chunky" bits. In the case of the periphery of Edinburgh, a lot of damage can be done by small areas of development, such as permission for a housing development where once there was an office block or a small factory that provided local jobs. If such land is rescheduled from providing jobs to providing housing, we compound some of the problems that are beginning to build up on the roads into Edinburgh. How would the system that you are talking about address such serious problems?
I will also talk about Currie. The main road in Currie clogs up more as housing is built on either side of it. If there are no local jobs that people can walk or cycle to, the problem gets bigger and bigger.
Part of our plan is to streamline the process and to try to reach a position in which we no longer have plans that are out of date, or which take a long time to feed through the system in, for example, rural west Edinburgh. We are trying to avoid that difficulty by removing unnecessary stages from the process.
West Edinburgh is a good example, because it is an area of rapid change, as Jim Mackinnon described. To try to ensure that the plans there remain up to date, we would consider a two-yearly review, to which the action plans that had been laid out at the beginning would be subject. For communities and developers, that would provide a degree of certainty that would reflect change in areas that are changing as rapidly, such as Currie.
I was interested that, at the outset of your presentation, you made the point clearly that we are not discussing a national plan. In spite of the "European Spatial Development Perspective" and the moves that other countries are making towards such national plans, we are not going down that route, which was advocated in "Pathfinders to the Parliament".
Why are we not going down that route? Scotland is a relatively small country. Is not it sensible to consider development of land use in a national context when one or two major projects, such as nuclear power stations, are coming forward? Why are we not considering a national plan?
We recognise the appropriateness of a national framework document, but it should be kept at the national level. We regard as right the fundamental principle that local planning decisions should be taken at as local a level as possible. That is part of the argument. I ask Jim Mackinnon—if he will assure us that he will not decry any of our European friends and allies—to expand on the arguments against some of the models that have been used elsewhere.
Mr Ingram mentioned the "European Spatial Development Perspective". The line that we have always taken on that, in line with other member states of the European Union, is that it is a perspective and therefore not prescriptive. The idea of a national plan implies a degree of prescription that is perhaps unwarranted, given the difficulties of looking to the longer term. We recognise that there is some merit in considering Scotland as a place and in considering how it is likely to develop during the next 20 years.
Mr Ingram was right—a number of member states have national planning frameworks. For example, in Ireland it is called the national spatial strategy and in Denmark it is called Denmark 2020. Most of the frameworks of which I am aware do not use the word plan, because that word implies a degree of control from the centre that we do not want to encourage. Many western European countries, as Mr Ingram said, regard the framework documents as a useful instrument of governance. Colleagues who deal with European structural funds can see the value of that sort of document in dealing with negotiations with Brussels on the future of the structural funds. The frameworks have other potential benefits.
The difference between a plan and a framework is a matter of emphasis. The idea is to consider Scotland as a place and how it might be developed. We can then examine what key infrastructural projects might be required to deliver those developments in the next 20 years.
I assume that the framework is designed to fit in with the economic development framework, which follows logically.
Yes.
Absolutely. The framework for economic development in Scotland has been a sister document in some ways to the development of the review of strategic planning; we recognise the economic framework's relevance. We should try to keep planning decisions as local as we can but, subject to that, we are open to discussion about what the nature of the framework document should be and what should be in or out. The framework will be Scotland-wide, so input from the Scottish Parliament will be relevant.
Would the framework contain national strategic objectives? Do the other frameworks that we talked about contain national strategic objectives that we are working towards?
That is the intention. If we began work on a national planning framework, we would have to be clear at the outset what that framework was trying to achieve, and what it was not trying to achieve. Therefore, setting objectives is important.
I remind members who have pagers or mobile phones that there is—as they can probably gather—sensitive sound equipment in the room.
Notwithstanding the minister's comments about consultation fatigue, will the new guidelines do something to address the huge number of petitions that have come to the committee and in which, by and large, the public seem to feel that they are not adequately consulted?
Are you interested in some of the policy areas that we have described as separate challenges, or were you concerned with issues across the board?
My question was general.
In general, it is important that the review of strategic planning is part of a continuing review. The review might not be the ideal place to address some of the issues of community participation, but we are alive to those issues. As a parallel process, we will be introducing proposals later this year that will lead to a consultation on how to improve public participation in the system at every level, but in particular at community level.
Jim Mackinnon mentioned some of the big issues such as opencast coal mining and I know that the committee has received a couple of petitions on that. As has been described, those are national issues and a national examination of them will be required. National planning policies are in place and the usual ways for communities to comment on them will continue.
The system does not seem to be adequate at the moment, given the number of petitions that are coming in.
That is part of the reason why we are considering participation. However, no matter how modernised, streamlined and effective the planning system is, one will sometimes be faced with the challenge of squaring circles and finding the best solutions when different priorities and different national policies are not 100 per cent in agreement. The Executive is keen to remain committed to the principle that, as far as possible, such decisions should be taken at as local a level as possible.
I want to talk about the rural dimension and about how—in, for example, Highland Council's area, which is vast—the strategic statement will fit with local plans. I was chair of a community council for several years and planning was ever the most contentious issue that cropped up. No one ever seemed to adhere to the local plan; councillors and officials disagreed about where developments should be and no one knew exactly which way things would jump. Recently, several high-profile applications for landfill sites have been made, which the whole community gets up in arms about. The way in which we go about planning seems to be wrong.
There has, in the past, been a certain lack of flexibility. In one famous case, plans said that no one was allowed to build a house in a certain area unless the person was a farmer's child who was still working on the father's farm and who was now married and needed a house. It was then discovered that people in that position could not get a mortgage because they would not be able to sell the house to somebody who was not a farmer's child working on the father's farm. All sorts of anomalies creep into plans, which can become nonsense.
I notice that local people are now being consulted about what they want, but how will all the various interests be weighted? How much weight will the views of local people have when those views are set against the views of officialdom—the professional planners and elected representatives, who sometimes do not represent terribly well the people whom they are supposed to represent?
As did John Scott's question, Maureen Macmillan's raises wider issues on how we can make the planning system more effective in reflecting community concerns and development needs. The particular development needs in the Highlands and Islands are well recognised.
The strategic planning review reduces the burden on planning departments in terms of the preparation of development plans. I hope that that will be helpful. In some cases, it might assist in sharpening the focus on the plans that are required. On the Highlands, a consultation might reveal a general view that strategic planning should be confined to the four larger cities and not to the fifth city—Inverness. In that case, the requirement for a structure plan in the Highlands would be removed, which might allow Highland Council, as the planning authority, to focus more on the coherence of local development plans and on introducing local development plans that met some of the concerns that Maureen Macmillan mentioned.
The weighting of views and interests in the planning process is subject to continuing review, but responsibility for it lies with the planning authority. The Executive's role is to create a framework within which planning authorities can carry out that task, and to create a policy framework through the national planning policy. As Jim Mackinnon suggested, part of the intention of redefining certain issues as policy—rather than merely as policy guidelines—is to make the different roles clearer and to help local authorities to deal with issues appropriately.
The review makes it clear that ministers do not think that the specialist issues—waste and minerals issues—are appropriately handled by the strategic development plans in the city regions or the local plans outwith those areas. I could not work out from the documentation who will do the essential planning for waste and minerals. Who will zone land for landfill sites or for recycling and reprocessing facilities such as incinerators? Who will do the development control when planning applications are made?
On minerals, who will be responsible for the search in the broad areas that are designated for opencast coal mining? Who will recommend that work on sites should go ahead? Who will do the development control work when applications are lodged? That was not clear from the consultation paper.
Those comments are helpful. I have heard such comments from other sources too. The basic idea is that local councils will be responsible for preparing subject plans on waste and—possibly—minerals, although we have not reached a view on that. Councils would take decisions on planning applications and would be responsible for beginning to target areas of search. They would be in the lead, but as Maureen Macmillan said, waste disposal sites are not terribly popular with local communities.
On dealing with waste through the area waste strategy, we could say, "We've done waste minimisation and waste recycling, but what are the consequences of the proportion of waste that cannot be dealt with in that way in the short to medium term?" If there is no capacity in landfill sites, how will we deal with that? We cannot leave stuff to pile up on the streets.
Planning authorities have a clear task and the firm intention is that control over that task should rest with them. One reason why we suggested that opencast coal mining should come out of strategic development plans is that it is a specialist subject that raises emotive issues. A debate could be sought on the development of the greater Edinburgh area, but that debate might instead focus on concerns about opencast coal mining. We felt that the issues were sufficiently distinctive to merit separate treatment. There is no question but that local authorities would take decisions on such cases.
That is reassuring to a degree. You have clarified the matter. However, I return to the point that the consultation paper recommends that those issues should be dealt with separately from the plan. In that case, the approach to waste and minerals would not be plan led, might not be strategic and might be entirely reactive. I understand why you would not want a discussion about the structure plan for the greater Edinburgh region to be contaminated by a dispute about refuse disposal, but the issue is strategic. It is best that it is approached strategically rather than reactively. I am concerned that Jim Mackinnon suggested that the councils would continue to do the work but that the strategic thinking would be done separately. Will he assure us that the work will be done strategically?
Lewis Macdonald talked about the national economic framework and planning. Where do the area waste plans fit in? That is critical to our discussion.
As members know, the area waste plans are part of a national strategy. Murray Tosh rightly highlighted a matter on which we will look for relevant responses to the consultation, because the objective is clear. We do not want the strategic planning process to be skewed by one or two issues that are determined on a Scotland-wide—or wider—basis.
Some aggregate planning is done on a UK basis. We are looking for ways of doing that while maintaining the integrity of the strategic planning process and the link to the community for development plans and planning applications, and recognising that they fall into a slightly different category from some of the wider issues. We want strategic plans to focus on some of the big issues that impact on both the economy and the environment in a region including housing, employment and transport—which clearly affect both urban and rural communities.
On Mr Tosh's question, I add that this is not about the authorities simply reacting, but about partnership with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and adjoining councils. Just because there is a waste subject plan, it does not just have to be local; it is inevitable that it will contain a strategic, forward-looking component.
This is a difficult subject and I do not pretend otherwise, but it would not be just a matter of planning reacting; it is about developing a coherent, cohesive working relationship with the area waste strategies and setting out a land-use strategy for dealing with the issues surrounding waste and aggregates.
I am aware that Adam Ingram wants to speak, but I want to pursue this point. Does it not boil down to the hard bits, in that difficult decisions concerning local communities are being left out? The Executive will, in a sense, sit back and watch without any strategic overview across Scotland. There are many ways to solve the questions of waste or land availability for housing, for example. What if a council simply decides that it will not have a landfill site when it has to have one? Who will determine the process in such a situation?
That is a very important line of inquiry. Clearly, we do not envisage a position in which local authorities abdicate that responsibility. In consulting on the national framework, we are laying ourselves open to suggestions along precisely the lines that you describe. We recognise that some areas of policy are of a national character and we want the framework document to be light in touch while perhaps being able to accommodate some of the hard issues—as you described—surrounding landfill, aggregates and so on, which are strategic in character but which are not central to the overall land-use planning strategies that we would expect to develop in a city or region.
I wish to develop a different point, about your proposals on the sub-national level. Jim Mackinnon mentioned strong opposition in Ayrshire to the Executive's proposals. There are three Ayrshire people sitting at this table, who I guess will all be singing from the same hymn sheet.
I want to explore the reasoning behind the proposals. We in Ayrshire think that we are fairly well self-contained. One of the key things that we require to do is connect up the areas of need in the county, such as areas of high unemployment, with the areas of opportunity—those areas that provide jobs and development opportunities. It seems to us that a structure plan on an Ayrshire level is much needed. Why should Ayrshire, or any other part of the country that uses landfill for containment—Fife is another example—not have the opportunity to develop strategic plans?
That will be one of the big issues on which we expect to get a range of views from the consultation. On the way to the meeting, Jim Mackinnon and I were conscious of the fact that Ayrshire is well represented on the committee, but, as Mr Ingram says, other areas may make similar cases.
We do not want to deny authorities opportunities to develop strategic thinking; we want to remove the obligation on authorities to invest time, energy and resources in a level of planning that may not be appropriate. Our initial view—the view on which we are consulting—is that Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee and their hinterlands, which may be quite substantial, are areas where strategic issues cross the boundaries of local authorities and can be effectively addressed only by local authorities in those four regions coming together through joint committees to reach a view on the strategic requirements.
We are by no means set against arguments from Fife, Ayrshire or other places that make the case that they too face strategic demands, but in assessing cases it is important to examine the hard evidence. For example, this year's census will produce up-to-date evidence about travel-to-work areas, shopping areas and where people go to school, work, and places of entertainment. That information will be part of what we judge in coming to a final view.
In some ways, the structure planning areas that we have are an inheritance from regional councils that no longer exist. The current 17 areas are somewhere between the regional councils that we had and the local authorities that have succeeded them. Some of those areas work better than others as strategic units—some work very well—but the fact that an area used to be a strategic unit under a different local government system does not mean that it should automatically continue to be one now.
I will take two more questions, both of which will be from our Ayrshire mafia members. I call Murray Tosh and then John Scott. I hope that your point is not about requiring passports to get into Ayrshire, Murray.
Just to show that we have wider perspectives too, convener, I have a question about paragraph 20 of the "Review of Strategic Planning", which, in justifying the creation of a Scotland overview, states that one of the priorities for action is attacking
"the spatial dimension of social justice."
That point is not returned to anywhere else in the document. I am aware that there is a lot of debate about some of the current structure plans. The Glasgow/Clyde valley plan has been praised for specifically addressing regeneration, while others, including the otherwise much-lauded Ayrshire plan, have been criticised for not tackling regeneration specifically or sufficiently. That is a big issue, which does not come through in the review paper. Do the witnesses—in particular, Jim Mackinnon—have an idea of where the Executive wants to take the strategic planning agenda in terms of the social justice agenda, for example with regard to tackling social inclusion partnerships and regeneration? Where does that fit in?
Mr Ingram put it well when he said that areas of need sit alongside areas of potential. This is about looking at the potential to develop more effective relationships, rather than seeking to develop a business park next to a deprived housing scheme but not providing opportunities for people to obtain the skills to work there or the transport to get there. That is the sort of issue that we are talking about. There is a social justice action plan and there is the question of how the planning system can contribute to the social justice agenda. It can do so in relation to gaining a better understanding of the areas of need and opportunity.
An example from the past is the problems that there were with Castlemilk, which is beside East Kilbride. There was little connectivity between the two—there was a buoyant new town next to one of the poorest areas in Scotland. There were jobs in East Kilbride, but they were not open to Castlemilk residents, even though they were so close.
Are you happy with the inconsistencies that inevitably will be thrown up across the country by your desire to devolve planning decisions to a more local level, albeit within the context of an overview?
We start with a planning system that has a local basis. We are trying to maintain that, while recognising the need to bring it up to date by reconsidering some of the strategic units and examining what role there is for a national framework document. We are aware of the difficulties that have been caused by inconsistencies in decisions or the application of policy. In some ways, that is an inevitable result of a system that is deliberately devolved as far as is reasonable to local level. We do not intend to change that, but as part of the wider process of modernising and reviewing the system as a whole—and not just strategic planning—we intend to provide support to planning authorities to enable them to learn from each other and improve their own practice.
The planning audit system that we have introduced over the past two or three years has begun to make an appreciable difference to the number of applications that are dealt with timeously and has improved consistency of decisions. In the planning system there will always be a balance between the local level, where we would like responsibility for most decisions to reside, and the national level, where there will continue to be an appeals process involving ministers and people acting on ministers' behalf. We want to do whatever we can to improve the quality of decisions and to remove unnecessary delays and obstructions from the planning system.
The review of strategic planning is partly designed to assist us to achieve those goals by reducing unnecessary burdens on planning authorities so that they can focus on their job. However, we are also proposing a panoply of changes that are designed to enable planning authorities to do their job as well as possible.
A few facts will clarify matters. Every year between 40,000 and 42,000 planning applications are determined in Scotland. The Scottish ministers are notified of about 300 of those, and every year we call in an average of 30 applications. That is a very clear demonstration of the way in which we allow local authorities to take planning decisions. Some of the cases in which we become involved are local cases about which we have concerns. For example, a local authority may be taking a planning decision on land that it owns. We then need to ask what account it has taken of local people's views.
I was interested by John Scott's suggestion that we are pushing decisions down to local authorities and standing back. One of the key planks of the argument that is being made by people in Ayrshire is that exactly the opposite is happening there and that we are trying to usurp power from the local authority.
I am just focusing on the philosophical problem.
We are big on philosophy.
I would now like to draw this part of the meeting to a close. Some of our witnesses are staying on, but Jim Mackinnon is not. I thank him for his contribution this morning, which has been most useful. His knowledge of parliamentary constituencies is most impressive; I wonder whether he knows the constituencies of all 129 members. However, that is another matter entirely.
We will take a break for five minutes.
Meeting adjourned.
On resuming—
I bring the meeting back to order. Before we move to agenda item 4, the minister would like to say something about consultation.
Before the adjournment I neglected to say that the consultation on strategic planning will run until the end of October. We are still receiving responses to it and look forward to receiving many more. When coming to conclusions, we will seek to make strategic planning consistent with other areas of policy that are being developed, such as the on-going cities review. We intend to commission an independent consultant to examine the responses to the consultation for us. That may relieve the committee of some of the burden of assessing them. However, I hope that the committee will take an interest in the process.
We will certainly keep an eye on what happens.