Public Petitions Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Official Report 375KB pdf

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New Petitions

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Compulsory Purchase (Derelict Properties) (PE1326)

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the eighth meeting of the Public Petitions Committee in 2010. All mobile phones and electronic devices should be switched off in case they interfere with our broadcasting system. We have received apologies from Anne McLaughlin and we welcome to the meeting her substitute, Bill Wilson. I refer members to his declaration in the register of members’ interests. We also have apologies from our deputy convener, John Farquhar Munro. I spoke to him today. Hopefully he will make a recovery and be back with us in due course.

Item 1 is consideration of two new petitions. The first is PE1326, by Moyra Beattie, who calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to investigate and review the compulsory purchase powers of local authorities to deal with derelict properties and land. I welcome to the meeting Moyra and Michael Beattie, and their constituency member of the Scottish Parliament, Karen Gillon. I invite Moyra Beattie to make opening comments, for which there is a time limit of three minutes.

Thank you. The petition was lodged following a situation in Carnwath that has lasted for more than a decade. It was perceived by the villagers to be a local issue, but after discussion with our MSP, Karen Gillon, we decided to use the Public Petitions Committee because other communities in Scotland are similarly affected.

The effects that derelict properties have on a community that we have observed, which are no doubt mirrored elsewhere, are that there is a potential drop in property values, voluntary groups become disheartened or, indeed, disband, tourism and the potential revenue from it are discouraged, the image of the community is tarnished, youth vandalism occurs, and eventually communities feel powerless and fearful. From the briefing on compulsory purchase and planning, it appears that authorities can acquire land for redevelopment, but if the powers are not being used, it is in the public interest to scrutinise the available legislation and to review policies to make them more effective.

It appears that there could be an issue with the time span—or the lack of one—in the planning process. The issue of funding for local authorities has been raised, but if land or property remains undeveloped, there is a loss of council tax revenue and vandalism creates continual costs for the police, fire and other public services.

I ask the committee to review the planning and compulsory purchase legislation with a view to including land or property that has been allowed to become derelict, and to including a definitive time span to prevent deterioration of communities over decades.

The planning briefing that I have here refers to article 8 of the European convention on human rights, which states:

“Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.”

With the derelict properties, the villagers in Carnwath, in our area, certainly do not have that. Thank you.

I invite questions from committee members. I know that the local constituency member will be keen to make some observations, and Michael Beattie should feel free to come in as well.

I cannot help but observe that if we were able to tax derelict land, people would pretty quickly start putting buildings on it or putting it to use for the community. Have you sought support for the petition from others in a similar situation who have the same concerns as you?

Locally, we had a paper petition and we hosted an e-petition which, with hindsight, I should probably have run for a bit longer. One person from the USA signed it—I do not know whether it was a tourist who saw the situation and said, “Dreadful”; “Dreadful” is the only word for it. We spoke to an MSP who had had a similar situation in his constituency, which took 10 years to resolve. Similar problems have arisen from Ayrshire to Inverness.

We all know that many people throughout Scotland have properties or pieces of land that are lying derelict and unused. The communities in which they lie are essentially being robbed of whatever that property or land can offer them. I feel strongly that the petition needs to be taken forward in a much larger way. It would be a good start in finding out how big the problem is. I think that we will find that it is enormous.

In our experience, when people have contacted their local councillors they have had some feedback from the council, after which the matter seems to die down then, 18 months later, another problem arises. As individuals, people feel powerless. They get a letter from the council but there does not seem to be much willingness to go further.

I am sympathetic to the petitioners. I have a couple of questions, though. Will you outline to the committee the deficiencies in councils’ compulsory purchase powers? Is it simply about timescales? Is it to do with finances? Are there other deficiencies? If those deficiencies were addressed, would that deal with the problem of property and land being left derelict?

One of the primary issues about planning legislation is that it is too vague. There are only two categories—A and B—and they are both quite unclear. The legislation dates back to the slum properties of the 1950s and 1960s. However, this is 2010, so perhaps we need to look again at the categories to include the types of site that we are talking about.

The timescale is an issue. There does not seem to be any timescale, so planning permission can take three, four or five years. With one property, we are into the 11th year. How much more deterioration does there have to be? A time limit should be imposed.

So, do you see reform of planning law as being vital in that regard?

Yes.

Perhaps the local member would want to say what she feels would be a good way of proceeding in order to address those apparent demerits in the present planning system.

I had indicated to John Wilson that he could come in next.

My apologies, convener.

I was beginning to wonder who was chairing the meeting.

I fully support the petition, but other questions must be asked in relation to local authorities’ powers and the powers that, quite rightly, exist to allow local authorities to step in and compulsorily purchase land or a property where they see fit. The difficulty for many local authorities—it might be in some local authority responses—is the cost of doing that. I am well aware of the situation, particularly in a town centre in my constituency, where an effectively derelict building has been left for more than 30 years. The council feels that it is powerless to intervene at the moment, because the building is the subject of a legal ownership dispute between family members. The building is in the middle of the main street and the local authority is frustrated because it cannot do anything. When it tries to do something, it is hit with a reminder of the legal dispute.





The other factor is the cost of compulsory purchase of either land or property. How should a local authority find the resources for compulsory purchase, whether it be of small properties or, in some cases in town centres and surrounding areas, of quite large properties that have been lying derelict for a long time? The costs of stepping in to purchase such properties could be quite prohibitive.

According to the legislation, the local authority can buy land, but does not necessarily have to develop it. It can find a buyer to carry out the development, so it seems that, in the long term, it would be cheaper for a council to buy a property and see the area being developed so that it would bring in council tax, business and tourism, rather than watch it deteriorate year in and year out, which will discourage all those activities.

I accept that response, but I could also argue that if a developer was interested in a piece of land and did not want to pay the market price for it, they could approach a local authority to ask it to take out a compulsory purchase order. The local authority could carry out the compulsory purchase and then sell the land on to the developer at a reduced rate. Could we not find ourselves in such a scenario? Local authorities are being urged by certain developers to use their compulsory purchase order powers and to hand the land over to developers at a reduced rate rather than get the full market value that someone might want for the land that they own.

Could not the legislation be altered so that that would never happen?

I am just raising the point that there are issues. When a local authority uses its compulsory purchase powers then immediately sells the land on, there should be no costs to the local authority. However, in some cases the reality is that the local authority could be seen to intervene in, or to circumvent, the natural market for properties or land by the use of compulsory purchase orders.

Do you have a comment, Karen?

Thank you, convener. All members around the table will, at one time or another, have tried to do something about areas of derelict land that have been left by whomever to run into a state of disrepair, but have come up against various barriers. John Wilson is right in some respects in that the legislation could bring us up against situations in which a developer encouraged the local authority to buy land and then to sell it back to the developer.

The petition encourages us to think slightly outside the box and not within the parameters within which we currently work. Those parameters do not work. If they did, the communities that I represent would not be in the situation in which properties have lain derelict for 11 years or longer and I have to try to get someone somewhere to do something about it.

As it stands, the current legislation says that the local authority can compulsorily purchase land that

“is suitable for and is required in order to secure the carrying out of development, redevelopment or improvement”.

Those are planning terms that have specific meanings.









For some of the sites in my constituency, “improvement” would mean simply knocking down the derelict building, clearing the site and leaving vacant land. That is not the case in some of the urban sites. However, in a rural community, one building in the state that some are in is a huge blight and devalues how people feel about the community. We talk about regeneration and about making young people feel valued and part of society, but then all of a sudden, when they look out their front doors, they see a building that everybody—to their mind, the adult community—is allowing to go to ruin. When young people go in it, because there is nowhere else for them to go, they get into trouble, and the building gets vandalised and becomes more and more run down, so that the generation that is coming up has only ever known a building that has been wrecked and a community that has not been able to regenerate itself.

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This petition is asking us, as a Parliament, to say, “Right. Okay. We know the current system is not working.” I have taken part in a rural housing inquiry and have seen that there are issues around lack of access to housing and lack of available land. Some gap sites and derelict sites would be ideal for social housing or sheltered housing. However, because of the way the legislation is framed, developers can hold local authorities to ransom by saying that if they do not get planning permission for 12 private flats they will do nothing with the site and the council can do nothing to stop them. Because of the financial situation that councils find themselves in, that is probably true and because the legislation is sufficiently vague, going to court would be a big risk, so councils do not take that step.

This petition is encouraging Parliament to say that there is a problem and to think outside the box about it. We should ask what we can do collectively with our colleagues in local authorities, the Scottish Government and communities to regenerate rural and urban communities and to create benefits at a time when there are limited financial resources and, in many cases, limited availability of land but definitely a need for play areas and open spaces. We talk about recreational opportunities, but we have no open spaces. There are opportunities here, if we think about the matter properly. I think that that is what the petition is asking us to do. It is not trying to find a solution; it is asking us as a Parliament to think.

I think that there is broad support in the committee for exploring such issues. We know that the petitioners have probably raised these matters at a local level for a considerable time. I think that all of us know places in our parliamentary areas that are blighted by derelict buildings, which can have a dominant effect on the immediate neighbourhood. That situation applies to parts of the area that I represent where a dominant building has been left derelict. We need to deal with such situations. Karen Gillon’s last point—about engaging with local authorities and others about how to use spaces until proper development can take place—is important. For example, part of my constituency—I am sure that other members have had the same experience—has been landscaped and developed for social use with the agreement of the private developer as much as through the support of public agencies. A wee bit more imagination can make a real difference in that regard.

Perhaps we should try to identify ways in which to take the petition forward. I invite comments from members on how best we could do that.

I think that a convincing case has been made by the petitioners for the petition to be taken forward. The committee should consider writing to the Scottish Government to ask whether it will investigate and review the compulsory purchase powers of local authorities to deal with derelict land and buildings, as the petitioners have asked. We can also ask the Scottish Government what powers local authorities have in relation to the issues that are raised in the petition and whether they need more. It seems to me that a strong case can be made that more needs to be done to create a level playing field so that local authorities are not at the mercy of developers, which seems to be the case in some circumstances. On that basis, perhaps we can also ask the Scottish Government whether there is scope to apply a sort of Crichel Down rules system to compel owners of surplus land to sell it on to local authorities rather than allow it to become derelict. We should ask the Scottish Government and local authorities what their views are on those matters.

Despite my earlier questions, I am, as I said at the start, sympathetic towards the petition because real issues exist.

As well as the questions that Bill Butler wants to ask the Scottish Government, there is the issue of compulsory demolition orders that local authorities should apply to properties. I dealt with that issue directly a couple of years ago. The petitioner referred to buildings that are left derelict and become dangerous for people, particularly for children who use them as wildlife adventure grounds. We should ask the Scottish Government and local authorities what powers they have to step in to demolish buildings that have lain derelict for a number of years.

We should ask local authorities, the Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland and Planning Aid for Scotland how best to make resources available to return derelict land and properties to community use, and how we could apply penalties to developers who decide, for whatever reason, to bank land or to hold on to derelict land that they do not seem to want to use for the time being, although that land is an eyesore and a danger to residents and others in the area. We can find out whether penalties can be imposed on developers and landowners to ensure that land does not become a distraction and a visual impediment to the good development of other areas. It is about saying to developers that penalties will be imposed on them if they do not ensure that land that they do not use and do not intend to use is kept tidy and litter free.

Land should also be kept weed free; in particular, it should be kept free of some of the non-native invasive species that are now emerging on derelict sites. That is another hobby-horse of mine. Developers should have responsibility for maintaining such sites in good condition and not allowing them to fall into disrepair or become overgrown. It is about turning the tables on developers and landowners and saying, “You’ve got a responsibility here. You cannot walk away for 10 to 15 years.”

It would also be interesting to find out how the petition fits in with the community right-to-buy legislation. We should consider that and seek evidence from the community development associations body. I cannot remember the exact name of that body, but it represents communities that have taken advantage of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.

As committee members have no more comments or observations to make, I invite the petitioners or the constituency member to make final comments.

My husband made a point earlier about local people saying that there is nothing that they can do. Youngsters have been blamed for vandalism, but that would not have occurred if such situations had not existed. I feel strongly that we should not set an example to the youth of today by saying that it is okay to let such things happen under the planning system, while it is not okay for them to break windows or use properties for whatever purpose. I feel strongly that we are sending out the wrong message to the generations after mine.

I am tempted to say that, if we get this right, it could be the big society’s first-ever achievement. Let us see what happens in that respect.

We have heard a genuine concern. We know about the impact of derelict properties and that what could be potentially developed on sites has not been fully imagined. We support consideration of that.

We will endeavour to get responses to our inquiries. The responses will be in the system, and the petitioners can liaise with the clerks at any time. They have a constituency member who is keen to explore the issue, and she will use her knowledge and experience to tell them about how to continue to progress the petition.

I thank the petitioners for their time. I hope that being in front of us was not too daunting.

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Emergency Services (Rural Patients) (PE1327)

PE1327, by Maria Murray, on behalf of Asthma Support in Rural Scotland, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to promote and support the use of the grid reference identification project—GRIP—and to encourage general practitioners to invite vulnerable rural patients to take part in this initiative.

Do members have any comments?

I am extremely supportive of the petition. I first met Maria Murray and learned about ASIRUS shortly after I was elected to the Parliament in 2003. At the time, I thought that it was quite an exciting project that had the potential to roll out across Scotland and bring great benefits to patients in rural areas who are difficult for services to find.

This issue was first brought to people’s attention when the Scottish Ambulance Service had great difficulty locating a patient in rural Aberdeenshire. Subsequently, the GRIP system has helped the situation enormously.

Maria Murray has done a tremendous amount of work through ASIRUS. I know that the fire services are supportive of the GRIP system, certainly in the Grampian area, and that the Ambulance Service has also been supportive. However, she seems to have hit a bit of a brick wall when it comes to getting GPs to suggest patients who could be put on the register. The process is easy, once the patient is known about.

Initial resistance on the part of GPs was based on patient confidentiality, but that is not an issue, because patients give their permission to be included in the system. More recently, resistance has been to do with the fact that the system is not included in the GP contract. I am not sure whether that is the real reason or whether it is simply that GPs do not want to be involved, but I think that the issue should be followed up, because GRIP could benefit many people in remote parts of the country who have chronic and life-threatening illnesses.

The committee has a broad awareness of the issues. We should explore them with a variety of organisations and seek their views to see whether we can give broad support to the petition. Do we agree to do that? [Interruption.] The clerk has indicated, helpfully, that he would like us to specifically identify those organisations. I invite suggestions from members.

Having come across the hurdle that is presented by primary care, I think that it would be important to get a view from the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Remote Practitioners Association of Scotland. We should find out what their attitude is to the petition and whether they think that it should be included in the GP contract, if and when it is reviewed.

We should write to local health boards, local authorities, fire and rescue services, the Scottish Ambulance Service and the Scottish Government.

I think that that is to the satisfaction of the clerk.