Local Government and Regeneration Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Official Report 510KB pdf

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Planning

Item 1 is a round-table evidence session on planning issues. We have the opportunity to consider two super-affirmative instruments on planning—the Public Services Reform (Planning) (Pre-application consultation) (Scotland) Order 2012 and the Public Services Reform (Planning) (Local Review Procedure) (Scotland) Order 2012. In addition, we will consider changes to planning fees and the national planning framework 2. I intend to structure the discussion by splitting it between those three areas.

We will kick off with everyone introducing themselves. I am the MSP for Dundee City West and I am the committee’s convener.

I am the member for Aberdeen Central and I am the deputy convener.

I am an assistant chief planner at the Scottish Government and I deal with modernising planning.

I am an assistant chief planner at the Scottish Government and I lead on national spatial planning.

I am the MSP for Motherwell and Wishaw.

I am the national director of the Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland.

I am the member for Glasgow Cathcart.

I am the chief executive of Planning Aid for Scotland.

I am an MSP for Central Scotland.

I am the director of policy at Scottish Renewables.

I am the head of planning at Homes for Scotland, which represents the home building industry.

I am a policy manager at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

I am the MSP for the Kirkcaldy constituency.

Good morning. I am the head of planning at Glasgow City Council, but I am here to represent Heads of Planning Scotland.

Good morning. I am the planning director with James Barr Ltd and I represent the Confederation of British Industry Scotland.

Good morning. I am an MSP for the Glasgow region.

Good morning. I am the chair of Planning Democracy.

I am the head of planning for RSPB Scotland and I am here to represent Scottish Environment LINK, which is the umbrella organisation for environment non-governmental organisations in Scotland.

To kick off, I ask folk to give us their thoughts on the proposal to remove the requirement for the pre-application process. Some folk might think that that is a good idea and some might have concerns. It would be good to hear folk’s thoughts. I ask John McNairney to kick off.

The Public Services Reform (Planning) (Pre-application consultation) (Scotland) Order 2012 is one of two orders that we are consulting on under the public services reform legislation. The Planning etc (Scotland) Act 2006 introduced a new requirement for pre-application consultation. That additional stage is a 12-week process that allows applicants for national and major developments to engage with the community before the planning process formally commences. Those provisions are in section 35A of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997.

However, an unintended consequence of the change is that the requirement for pre-application consultation also applies to applications that are made under section 42 of the 1997 act, which is designed to allow applicants who have already received planning permission to make an alteration to the conditions applied to that consent. In practice, that can mean that applicants who have a major planning consent and who are concerned about the terms of relatively minor conditions—such as landscaping, arrangements for deliveries or hours of operation—not only have to go back through the planning process, as they would have done normally, but now have to engage in the 12-week period of pre-application consultation.

We have consulted on a number of options for addressing the matter. Our view was that the requirement for pre-application consultation is not really proportionate. It tends to add delay, raise expectations and increase demands on the community as well as the applicant. Our proposal is to remove the requirement only as it relates to applications for changes to a planning condition attached to an existing consent. The developer would still need to go through the process, and views could still be given during the normal planning application process.

COSLA leaders considered the issue at their first meeting last Friday and agreed that the current approach, in relation to section 42, is disproportionate and has the consequences that John McNairney outlined. They would welcome an amendment to the legislation, although they were fairly relaxed about whether the amendment should refer to a period of up to 12 weeks.

Does anyone have any concerns about the proposals?

How material could the change in conditions be? Would it be to the extent that it could impinge on the original principle of the planning application?

Conditions can vary and may well be significant. If there was to be a fundamental change to a planning permission, authorities would generally seek a new planning application. The conditions tend to be more to do with the detail of how a permission should be implemented and applied, so the range of conditions is very wide. Conditions could relate to the scale of development or the sort of detailed provisions that I mentioned, such as finishing materials.

Most commonly, conditions tend not to be about major issues such as the principle or impact of the development. That said, where there is a condition that those who have made representations might consider significant, they would not lose the opportunity to comment on the application—they would still be able to make representations to the planning authority, which would consider the application only in relation to the conditions that had been applied. It would still have to take a view, and it would still take representations into account when making a determination. The opportunity to comment is not lost; all that is lost is the additional phase at the start of the process, which we feel is not proportionate and is an unintended consequence of the 2006 act.

Many of the submissions suggested that the front-end consultation irons out a lot of the problems—if people are unhappy about things, it smoothes the way. If a change is so material, I hope that there will be some kind of trigger to tell people that perhaps they should consult on it—although I imagine that that will happen in only a very limited number of cases.

I would be interested to hear what the rest of the panel thinks. Are the necessary checks and balances in place in what the Government is proposing, should there be a material change to conditions?

Planning Aid for Scotland has supported the proposed amendments because the 12-week period is arbitrary and does not necessarily make for good consultation or engagement with the public. We want that to be better—you alluded to that. Engagement is always very important, but whether that starts in week 3 or week 12 it is often onerous for the community to get involved to any depth. We would welcome a shorter timescale. Also, at the moment, one public meeting is asked for but that is far too few to engage the public and bring them into the process.

Materiality has been mentioned. Any council would take the view that, if a condition or a change was substantial enough to change the nature of the application, the application would collapse and a new application would be required, which would be subject to the 12-week consultation period.

We have found that section 42 can lead to some confusion in residents’ minds. Even if the change is only to a minor item, there must still be a public event and the 12-week consultation period. The public then start to ask why they are turning up for such events and participating in the consultation when only a small element of the application is changing. It is a material consideration to look at the change, and if the change is substantial there will be a new application.

That is helpful.

The requirement for the pre-application consultation applies only to major applications. How much of a problem is there in practice?

We do not have any major concerns, but we always encourage developers and planning authorities to ensure that the key issues are considered up front when the original application is submitted. As has been discussed, if major changes are necessary we expect the planning authority to require a new application. We do not have any major concerns about the specific proposal.

We do not have any statistics or hard evidence from our members on the quantum of the problem, but we hear repeatedly that the section 42 applications have proved to be a frequent nuisance to our members. As has been said, the vast majority of those applications relate to very minor issues. It is not uncommon for developers to seek to change relatively minor aspects of their proposals, and the need for some of those changes becomes evident only at the construction stage or the detailed design stage. Little changes are quite common and there is no reason to go back through the process for them. However, as has rightly been said, where they become material changes to conditions the planning authority has the option to seek a new application, and our members accept that. For instance, if we sought to change a condition that relates to a scheme’s affordable housing contribution, that would be a material change and we would expect to have to submit a new application for that reason.

We must bear in mind the question of proportionality and the wider economic impact on my members. Another three to six-month delay in a project could ultimately make the difference between that project’s proving viable and its proving not viable. It could lead to a decision not to proceed with the project, to customers going elsewhere and, in extreme cases, to the investment that we were going to bring to an area going somewhere else. There is a wider economic context that we need to bear in mind. The whole planning system is about promoting sustainable economic growth, and we are looking for a system in the round that recognises the importance of promoting growth in Scotland.

10:00

Mr Melville mentioned minor change. It is the definition of “minor” that is the difficulty, because what a developer views as a minor change might be viewed as a major change by the community. If I may give an example of the environmental aspect, in a patch that I used to represent on the council what was seen as a minor change in relation to trees has created huge difficulties. Can Mr MacDonald indicate what Heads of Planning will do to create some uniformity in the definition of what is minor and what is not?

That is an interesting question. The courts sometimes end up making those decisions. There are a range of areas in which consideration is given to materiality and what is significant change. I stress that, if section 42 is amended and people do not have to go through the 12-week consultation period, the application will still be notifiable to neighbours—it may also be advertised—and it will go through the due process of the required consultation. People will still go through a consultation process to deal with a condition, although that process will not be over a 12-week period. Due process will still be there, as the consultation will still take place: neighbours will be notified and they will be able to make representations.

I accept that a condition might be quite a big issue for some people but not for others. If we tried to design a legislative framework that took account of every possible impact of every condition, the procedure would be difficult to implement. We have tried to ensure that we keep the process simple and easy to understand.

As Alistair MacDonald said, the planning process is still there, so neighbours will still be notified and will still have the opportunity to make their views known if they feel that a condition about a tree or a landscaping arrangement is significant and affects their interests directly.

As there are no other thoughts on the two super-affirmative instruments, we will move on to planning fees.

The proposal is that we should be able to increase planning fees to £100,000. It would be good if someone from the Government could kick off by outlining the arguments for the proposal that has been brought forward, and we will take the discussion from there.

The issue of resources for planning, specifically in relation to the costs of processing planning applications, has been a live one for about a decade. The Government has carried out two pieces of research, in 2005 and 2009, to ascertain what the costs are and whether authorities receive sufficient revenue to cover their costs. Subsequent to that research, we have worked with Heads of Planning Scotland in workshops and in pilots to tease out the exact current position.

I think that it is safe to say that it has been generally accepted that the gap between income and costs is increasing. A recent Audit Scotland report suggested that that gap was becoming unsustainable. We are keen to design, and are consulting on, a new framework for fees that we think more accurately reflects the costs that planning authorities incur in processing applications.

It is also fair to say that the work that we have done indicates that there is no precise processing fee that can be charged uniformly throughout the country for an application for a single dwelling house, for example, or a supermarket. The work that my colleagues carried out with pilot authorities suggested that the costs associated with processing a single application for a house ranged from £400 to £4,000, with an average of about £1,300, in comparison with the current fee of £319. I highlight that the framework that we propose is intended to deliver a more proportionate level of fee. In some cases, the increase will be significant. Indeed, the increase in the cap from £16,000 to £100,000 seems very significant. However, when it is compared with the level of fee in other parts of the United Kingdom, where the cap is £250,000, it may be considered less significant. Some fees will come down, but the fees for most developments—including most medium-scale developments—are likely to increase.

The other significant point is that a link is proposed between the level of fee and the performance of planning authorities. We have yet to develop and consult on how that link might pan out and be implemented, but ministers are clear that there is an inextricable link between an increased fee and more effective performance. In turn, performance will be subject to a framework from Heads of Planning, which will measure it in a more holistic way.

Those are the main things that I would highlight by way of introduction.

Do other panel members have any thoughts?

From a renewable energy perspective, we agree with the need for better resourcing of the planning system, and we fully recognise that fees are an important part of that.

One of our key concerns is proportionality, and we would like further consideration to be given to the maximum fee. Renewable energy projects go through two systems: the system under the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 and—for larger projects, as members will know—the system under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989, which involves the Scottish Government’s energy consents unit.

The two systems have different fee structures. As members will know, section 36 fees are also out for consultation, but at present there is quite a large disparity between the maximum fees in each system. There is a much smaller fee under the 1989 act for what are effectively larger projects.

For that reason, we would like a clear link between the level of fee and the quality and speed of the decision-making process. That approach would need to be brought into line with the cost of processing different types of application, especially given that the scale of projects varies significantly across different renewable energy technologies.

The fundamental issue comes down to the scaling of the fees, which is where our second key concern comes in. At present, the proposed method for scaling fees is based on site area, but we would prefer it to be based on the proposed installed capacity of renewable energy projects. The system under section 36 of the 1989 act is based on installed megawatt capacity. Larger projects tend to be more complex, so it makes much more sense to set an increased fee for those projects.

When the fees are based on site area they can vary substantially across different technologies and different types of project, which means that relatively simple projects could pay higher fees. We would like that issue to be considered further.

Your submission states that that situation could lead to developers trying to cram as much as possible into a small area. That issue has been raised in respect of wind farms by some residents, who would like the proximity to any dwelling house to be increased. That would address the problem around the periphery.

Do you have a view on that? It is more to do with aesthetic concerns and issues such as noise that go with living near wind farms. It also addresses your point about developers cramming things in if the fees go up.

The distance from dwellings is a separate issue and involves a different part of the planning process. We support what the system allows for at the moment: it depends on the project, and every project must be assessed on its own merits. Noise is one issue that definitely comes into play.

With regard to site area, Margaret Mitchell is right to say that, while a large project may not necessarily be large in terms of installed capacity, it might take up a large area. We are talking about not just wind farms, but hydro and biomass plants, which involve very different types of technology.

A developer might try to keep a site area small, when we could get much more efficient energy from that project. The significance of the issue could increase unless we find a more efficient system that uses a per-megawatt basis.

The Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland welcomes the proposed new fee structure. However, it is important to realise that the planning service’s customers are not just planning applicants; the broader public are customers, as well. It is all about how their environment—where they live—is affected by any planning proposal.

We accept that full cost recovery is a good thing, but it should focus more on the development management side of planning, which is the bit that assesses planning applications. The other bits, such as development planning and enforcement, must still be funded from the public purse, as they are public services. That is an important point to make.

I will mention some other aspects of the fee structure that we think are important. We have talked about some of the methodologies that have been put in place to establish what the fee structure should be for a full cost recovery approach. We believe that there is probably a wider need for local authorities, COSLA and the Scottish Government to try to agree a consistent and coherent methodology that best assesses the costs, which is a point that was made in the Audit Scotland report of September last year. That would give us a clear idea of what planning could cost. I admit that that would not be easy; it would be difficult but it is something that we should try to establish.

The other key point is that the institute is about the promotion of the art and science of town planning for the benefit of the public. We are always there to try to make sure that planning works effectively and as best it can. Therefore, we need to bear in mind that if we have an uplift in planning fees, they should be ring fenced and only used to support planning functions and to help improve the planning service. If we do not do that, the uplift will not have an impact on achieving the change that we are trying to achieve.

Laura Hoskins might have a slightly different view on ring fencing.

COSLA leaders considered the issue at their meeting on Friday. They welcomed the review of fees, but expressed concern that the £100,000 threshold was maybe not sufficient, given the higher threshold elsewhere in the UK. They also wished to comment that although we are talking about an increase in fees across the board, some other applications have come from outwith the planning system, through the new permitted development rights. Councils still have a responsibility to respond to members of the public who think that they may need to make an application and require reassurance that they do not. As has been said, the planning system is not just about processing applications; it is also about ensuring that the local development planning framework is in place to deal with such issues.

We have particular concerns about linking fees to planning performance, given that the planning performance framework, which was developed by HOPS, has been adopted only recently; in fact, it was launched by the minister alongside the planning consultation. We would appreciate it if that was allowed to bed down. We require further clarification on how the link between performance and fees would operate and whether it would lead to a two-tier system in authorities.

We do not welcome the proposal to ring fence fees for development management. As you will know, part of the proposal for the fees regime is to include things such as advertising costs within the cost of a householder application. At the moment, those things are collected separately. In a local authority, advertising is not always run by the development management section or the planning service; it could be run by a corporate communications team. COSLA would not support the idea of involvement in the internal financial management of a local authority. However, we welcome the review. As Mr McNairney said, in the past COSLA and HOPS have submitted different examples as evidence to assist the Scottish Government in coming up with its proposals.

If fees are ring fenced, is there a danger that moneys that often come from other areas of a council’s general revenue budget may not go to planning?

10:15

COSLA’s general principle is that we do not agree with ring fencing and that it should be up to individual councils to determine how their resources are allocated in response to local needs.

I know COSLA’s position very well, but do you think that, if ring fencing were enforced in this area, other resource that might come into planning from elsewhere would not do so?

That is certainly not a matter that was raised by leaders when they considered the subject last Friday.

Before Kevin Stewart moves on to his next question, I will bring in Aedan Smith.

Thanks. I support a lot of what the RTPI has said about fees. We are customers of the planning service just as much as applicants are. The planning system is designed to operate in the long-term public interest, so our member organisations and their members are very interested in how it operates. In that regard, well-resourced local planning authorities are key. We often come across planning authorities that are extremely hard pressed as far as resources are concerned. Anything that increases their ability to assess the environmental effects of development proposals, in particular, is important for us.

In that regard, we have some concerns about the potential link with the planning performance framework and the potential penalisation of poorly performing planning authorities. We have a worry about a planning authority that is struggling as it is being financially penalised. How will it get out of that hole of poor performance if it is already being hit financially? That is a real concern for us.

I have had a look through the planning performance framework that Heads of Planning Scotland has prepared. In principle, it is quite a good framework, but my worry is that our member organisations have not had much involvement in its creation so, at the moment, there is a bit of a hole in it from the point of view of assessing the sustainability aspects of planning performance. That would need to be addressed if the framework were to be adopted more widely. In principle, that sort of performance framework could work quite effectively.

Craig McLaren has a comment to make.

It is on the points that Laura Hoskins and Aedan Smith made about performance and continuous improvement. We think that a link to improved performance is fine, but we need to ensure that a continuous improvement framework underpins that and helps planning authorities to improve their performance.

We agree with what Aedan Smith said about the proposal to withdraw funding—it would be counterproductive. A school or a hospital would not have funding withdrawn; it would be helped to improve its performance. We think that there is a need to use the planning performance framework, which we have welcomed as an extremely useful tool, but that it should not be used in a blunt way. It should be used as a means of putting in place some kind of national performance and continuous improvement framework that brings together all the different players in the planning field.

The planning performance framework should apply not just to local authorities, but to key agencies and Government. A key point that we would make about planning is that a lot of the discussion on fees focuses on local authorities, but although they are important players in the planning process, their performance depends on people making good planning applications that they can deal with and progress; it depends on everyone working together to create a much better approach to planning. With any continuous improvement programme, we would want to bring together different sectors in a much more collaborative way so that they get a better idea of one another’s perspectives on where they think that they are doing well, where they think that they are performing badly and what solutions they can come up with to make things work more effectively.

I am very interested in performance but, in some respects, I am more interested in hearing what discussions there have been at COSLA level on benchmarking. We often find—I disagree slightly with Craig McLaren on this—that money is thrown at something and still there is no improvement, so I think that penalties may work in some cases. I do not think that we can be overly uniform in that regard.

My key point is about the benchmarking of authorities. We hear all the time that some authorities perform extremely well with very little resource, while others perform particularly badly—according to developers and others—with a huge amount of resource. In that context, what consideration has been given to the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers benchmarking project?

There seems to be an assumption of poor performance. The debate seems to be based on the assumption that planning authorities are not performing well when, in fact, the statistics and the material that the Scottish Government publishes quarterly show that performance is very good. Part of our concern is that the thrust of the proposal is that performance is not good. We are talking about penalties for poor performance without specifying the definition of that.

On the SOLACE benchmarking project, I am afraid that there is nobody here from SOLACE and I would not like to speak on its behalf.

It is a joint project between SOLACE and COSLA.

Yes, I know, but I have not been involved in it so it would not be appropriate for me to comment on it. Our perspective is that performance is not a major problem. We appreciate that the issue is how to resource assistance for poorly performing authorities. In the past, the Improvement Service development programme was a tool at our disposal, but it will no longer be available.

Alex Mitchell has been waiting to speak for some time.

The CBI has no objection in principle to the increase in fees, but we have concerns. It is certainly not in our members’ interests to have an underfunded planning function, particularly given that function’s direct link to economic development. Having heard the discussion, I want to make it clear that, as I understand it, the consultation document is purely to do with the funding of the development management system. The context is the fees that relate to that particular function. Some organisations seem to think that the wider planning system is part and parcel of the proposal to increase fees. Unless I have picked it up wrongly, the consultation is purely about appropriately funding the development management function through planning application fees. That is an important point that everybody needs to consider.

We have two general concerns regarding the increase in fees, the first of which is about the level of fees and how they relate to the components of development. The second is about the timing and phasing of fees and how that might affect economic performance in the current situation. Applicants and developers should be allowed to absorb fees in a consistent way as they go through the system, rather than potentially being hit with one large increase in fees.

Overall, we are on side with the aim of considering how to fund the system properly by increasing fees. However, more work must be done on how the increases are arrived at. We must ensure that the increases in each sector are appropriately targeted at the particular applications that generate time and cost for the development management function.

Much of the discussion has been about the fee structure. Before any revised scheme comes into force, do we need a detailed study of the costs that are associated with planning applications?

We heard from John McNairney that a limited exercise has been undertaken. I think he said that the cost of a planning application for a dwelling house ranged from £1,500 to £4,000. However, the proposed fee is £800. To me, that immediately shows a discord between what the evidence shows and what is proposed. If, as I think John McNairney said, the average cost is £1,500, surely that is the fee that should be charged for a planning application for a dwelling house. The exercise was based on five authorities. Given that there are more than 30 authorities in the country, we take the view that a more detailed survey is required across the board to allow the fees to be calculated. I do not see a difficulty with considering the fees for each individual sector, such as the residential, retail and industrial sectors.

Planning Aid agrees with raising the fees. That is important because planning departments are underresourced. We would welcome an increase in fees. Although we do not stipulate that the money should be ring fenced, we make a caveat that greater funding should be provided for development plan making. That is one area in which the public have a role in shaping and doing much more of the front loading. If, as COSLA suggested, we leave it to fancier advertisements or nicer colours, that does not go far enough in trying to bring more of the public with us. Generally, the public are outside the planning system and need to be brought in much more and much earlier.

Planning departments’ engagement activity varies greatly. Some local authorities think that enough is being done if leaflets are dropped off; other local authorities, such as Glasgow, make far more effort to engage the public. We need to think about how we are engaging with the public at the earliest opportunity.

Will John McNairney confirm whether the policy intention was to use the fees specifically for development management? Alternatively, as Craig McLaren suggested, was there some indication that money might go into more general resourcing and planning issues, as Homes for Scotland has suggested?

An issue that we have not yet considered, but which Clare Symonds raised concerns about in her submission, is enforcement. Craig McLaren’s submission noted that the number of planners had decreased significantly. Those issues seem to be related, so Clare Symonds might want to comment on them.

I am here to talk specifically about enforcement. At our conference the other day, people were quite concerned about the lack of enforcement of planning conditions. I do not know what the reasons for that are, but I assume that they involve the underresourcing of the planning system. We would welcome any input into that department.

The planning fee is intended to support the processing of planning applications, which is a major part of development management. It is not intended to go wider than that. Elsewhere, the resourcing of the planning service is really a matter for the local authority. Although the fees are not intended to resource development management in its entirety—including enforcement and other activity—they are specifically intended to address all the costs that are associated with processing planning applications.

That clarifies our understanding of the consultation document. However, it also makes the discussion about ring fencing almost irrelevant. In theory, there should be no surplus if the fees are directly related to the cost of the development management. There should be a cost and there should be an income, and the two should almost match. The notion of ring fencing surplus money to use for other functions should not apply.

The discussion about the methodology of the calculations and the issue of which element of planning the fees are supposed to relate to highlights our members’ concern about the fact that we are still not clear how the figures have been arrived at.

To give a crude, back-of-an-envelope example, a £100,000 maximum fee would equate to a 425-house development, which in the scheme of things is not a huge development—it is significant, but not huge; it is certainly not of the scale of a sustainable new community. Taking a generous view of what planning officers’ time costs, £100,000 equates to about 1,000 man hours or 26 man weeks, and I really do not think that any planning authority devotes 26 man weeks to an application of that size. I do not think that it could afford to devote that amount of man—or woman—resource to a single application. On that simple basis, there seems to be a disconnect between the scale of the fee and the cost of the service.

The issue of penalties for poorly performing authorities has been raised. I would like to turn that round and talk more about incentivising authorities to improve their performance. That is very much the way in which fees and payments would be dealt with in the private sector. If one of my members were employing a consultant, the contracts would include an incentive to deliver the performance measures on time and on budget, and there would be a facility to withhold some of that payment if that was not achieved. For example, the milestones that might be set out in the processing agreement for a planning application could become the triggers for the incentives and fees to be paid. It may be more constructive to turn it round from a negative view of penalties and to look at how to incentivise people.

10:30

I agree with much of what Aedan Smith and Blair Melville have said about performance, and we welcome the planning performance framework. However, processing agreements are also there as a way of managing expectations and they are an important tool for managing performance. Processing agreements are used by some authorities but not by others for certain projects, and we would like to see much more common use being made of them.

I endorse what has been said about processing agreements. We hope that they will be used widely in enterprise areas and more commonly for major applications.

I want to make a point about the kind of simplistic analysis of what a maximum fee entails. It goes way beyond one planner working at his desk. The suggestion is that one fee will cover all the relevant costs for the authority, which may include extensive pre-application consultations with the developer and others, including agencies. It will also cover the assessment of highly technical studies, which is a cost to the development industry but also, occasionally, a cost to the planning authority, which might have to procure its own technical expertise. The fee should also include post-determination activity, including any legal and other agreements.

The one fee is intended to be a simpler mechanism for resourcing the authority. I do not think that it would be fair to attribute the entire processing costs to an individual officer’s time. Others may want to comment on that.

I support John McNairney’s point on the danger of oversimplifying what is covered by a fee. The issue is complex and we should not work out the figures on the back of an envelope.

I want to return to Kevin Stewart’s important point about throwing money at improvement and not getting much from it. Laura Hoskins referred to the planning development programme that we have had for the past two or three years, which has gone some way to help improve performance. The programme has had some impact, but it could improve. However, the real danger is that the planning and development programme will come to an end in March 2013, so there will not be a continuous improvement programme to support planners to improve over time.

One of the issues about the effectiveness of the planning development programme is that it has, in essence, focused on individuals who have gained a skill, knowledge or expertise but have often gone back to an organisation in which they have perhaps not been allowed to use that expertise, given the culture of the organisation. In future, we need to do something that works with both individuals and organisations to help them to improve together. I think that that could have a greater impact in the end.

My other point is about the idea of the sunset clause, which could mean that planning authorities would lose the uplift in planning fees. There is no clear way in which we can measure whether an authority is performing well or poorly, and it would be really difficult to draw a line between authorities and say that one has passed and the other has failed. The planning performance framework was not put in place to do that and it is not designed to do that. Our worry is that an arbitrary decision would be taken on when the uplift would not be given to local authorities. Clarity is needed on that, but I think that it will be very difficult to achieve.

I want to pick up on Craig McLaren’s point before I forget it. The Improvement Service has been a valuable tool. We have found that most authorities have bought into it, and that it has led to a degree of high-level training for staff across the country. In fact, yesterday I addressed a group of younger planners who are being trained on a leadership course that is specifically targeted at planning. Again, it is about the planning performance framework linking into training and into leadership in planning authorities. The Improvement Service supports that. Glasgow City Council is buying into it, and I had four members of staff there yesterday. I believe that succession planning is important in the planning authorities to bring performance through.

If that changes come 2013, when the funding goes, individual authorities will be left to look at their own resources for that. I think that we need a national umbrella organisation to consider that training programme, although others may think differently. We have seen a change taking place over the past couple of years.

Laura Hoskins is right to say that performance has been improving over the past few years. In fact, the recently published Audit Scotland report on planning was quite positive about planning. It noted certain elements that required to be changed, but it was positive about the outcomes and could see changes in performance.

John McNairney talked about one planner dealing with a major application, but that does not happen—a team is involved. Senior managers can be involved, and I am sometimes involved in detailed discussions at the pre-application stage of a major application. That sets the scene and flows it through the organisation. I will give you an example. The planning fee for the replacement for the Southern general hospital in Glasgow was about £14,500 and the building warrant fee was £600,000. Our lead-in time for the planning application was probably six to nine months, with personnel involved in detailed discussions before the application was submitted. The processing of the application was an intense period involving transport planners, architects and landscape architects—a small team that sat with the design team that was taking the project forward. Post consent, all the conditions had to be ratified and a great deal of work went into that.

We are about to set up another team for the extension to the Buchanan Galleries in the city centre, and the lead-in time for that application is six to nine months. We did the same for the St Enoch shopping centre. That is a big resource for any local authority to commit to a project—it is not just one person. It could involve me, one of my managers, a senior planner, a transport planner and an architect all advising the team on how to take the application through the process. That is where the time is committed. Over the past few years, we have also been absorbing advertising costs and neighbour notification costs. In certain authorities that have been pilot authorities for Historic Scotland and listed building applications, we have been absorbing the costs for that and for local review bodies. I have never seen the cost that the Government has saved from the number of appeals that no longer go to the Government, but it must be substantial given the appeals process that local authorities now have to deal with.

HOPS welcomes the changes and understands that the Government wants to see improved performance; that is why the planning performance framework exists. It is flexible enough to take on the point that Aedan Smith makes. Most local authorities will take it as a baseline and will have their own ways of tweaking it to improve their performance. I suspect that it will also pick up Government agencies that are perhaps not giving the required information timeously. It may even feature major applications that have not picked up the information that is required. That will be fed back to the Government and we would expect the Government to take it on board when it looks at potential sunset clauses or whatever in terms of how performance is judged. That gives us a much more rounded approach to judging a local authority.

Okay. Thanks for that. We need to move on to national planning framework 2. Perhaps somebody from the Government can set the scene.

Thank you, convener. I can do that. The national planning framework is a key document that sets out the Scottish Government’s aspirations for the long-term development of Scotland, including clear priorities for the improvement of national infrastructure. Since the second national planning framework was published in 2009, we have reported annually in June to your predecessor committee, the Local Government and Communities Committee. About a month ago, we contacted the clerks to remind them that June was fast approaching and it was drawn to my attention that this round-table meeting had already been arranged and that it might be the most efficient use of time and resources if we dealt with the national planning framework here today.

We attached a one-page note to the letter that John McNairney sent to the committee on 18 May, which sets out where we are. In his statement to Parliament on 28 March, the Minister for Local Government and Planning announced that we will start work on the revision of the national planning framework in the autumn. That will start with the publication of the statutory participation statement.

We believe that much of the spatial strategy that is set out in NPF2 remains relevant. However, the revision process provides an opportunity to revisit key elements of the strategy, including the suite of 14 infrastructure projects that were identified as national developments in NPF2.

We envisage that NPF3 will take forward the spatial aspects of the Government’s economic strategy, and will reflect in particular its strategic priorities of infrastructure, development and place, and the transition to a low-carbon economy. We envisage that the strategy that is set out in NPF3 will place a strong emphasis on supporting economic recovery and sustainable economic growth.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring effective stakeholder engagement in drawing up NPF3, and where new national developments are proposed, we will seek early engagement with communities, which could be effective.

Our paper draws attention to the fact that we published a monitoring report for NPF2, on the same day as Derek Mackay made his statement, which sets out how policy has developed since NPF2 was published in 2009. It highlights a number of amendments to the text of the monitoring report that we intend to make as a result of stakeholders drawing our attention to some factual inaccuracies that unfortunately crept into the draft that was published in March.

You mentioned a number of strengths that you would carry forward from NPF2 to NPF3. Are there any others that should be carried forward? Conversely, are there any obvious weaknesses in NPF2 that could be dealt with in NPF3?

A strong theme in NPF2 was the role of the planning system in helping to deliver on Scotland’s considerable renewable energy potential. The current scale and pace of renewable energy development is evidence—it is recognised by industry—that there is a supportive planning policy framework in place in Scotland that is assisting progress.

We are about a third of the way towards the 2020 targets—which are very ambitious—that the Government has set, but we still have two thirds of the way to go, so I envisage that the renewable energy theme will remain very strong in NPF3. That will involve addressing the shift towards offshore renewables—for example, the key developments at ports that are needed to support the offshore renewables industry. Active applications are already coming in from around our coast in that regard, so I would envisage that being a strong theme as we move forward.

Are there any main weaknesses that would need to be addressed in NPF3?

Any weaknesses may be around process rather than policy. Overall, the policy framework has proved to be reasonably robust. As far as our monitoring indicates, we are making good progress on many of the national developments, and some of them, such as the port at Cairnryan, have already been completed.

I know that concerns were expressed in Parliament about the effectiveness of our engagement with the public and with communities on some national developments, so we will want to consider that further. As I said, we will publish a participation statement in the autumn. That statement will be drafted over the summer, so now is an excellent time for organisations that have views on how we might consult more effectively to make those views known. We are aware of some of them, but we will be pleased to hear any further views in that regard.

Those of you who are familiar with the process will know that the participation statement is a working and evolving document. If there are things in the initially published statement that people do not like, there is scope for us to adjust the participation process as we move through it.

10:45

As Planning Democracy is a fairly new organisation, I will outline what we do. We are a voluntary organisation that is made up of community councillors, community advocates, planners and individuals who have been affected by the planning system. Our vision is for an equitable, inclusive, fair and transparent planning system in which people are empowered to shape planning decisions through a process of robust debate. We were established in 2009. Since then, we have been conducting research on the way in which the newly reformed planning system is working for the public, how easy it is for people to use and the problems that they face.

Our written submission includes a four-page summarised version of our policy paper, with our manifesto for change at the end. A much longer version is available on our website that details the background to our thinking and the 13 case studies that we have considered. We have also had detailed conversations with 12 people from throughout Scotland. The case studies and discussions provide a powerful account of a voice that has not been heard sufficiently in debates about how well the planning system is performing. We feel that our work fills an important gap in the discussions on reform and culture change.

We are new kids on the block, so to speak, and we recognise that, in this forum, there are a group of regulars from the planning policy community who often speak in such forums. However, we have an important perspective to add to the mix. Some of our message is close to what others are saying, such as on the national performance framework and on certainty in development plans, which we would welcome, but some of our message is not so close to what others round the table are saying. However, we all want a planning system that works effectively for the greater good.

In April, we held a conference called “Planning: the People’s Perspective”, which was oversubscribed and was attended by more than 80 people from throughout Scotland. We feel that we have a mandate to take forward the clear message from the conference delegates and from the people to whom we have spoken that the planning system is not working for the public. One quote that I promised that I would take to the politicians came from a planner who has worked in the system for 16 years, who said:

“Politicians are responsible for what the planning system does, they must read the manifesto, consider the case studies and challenge the Government or the local planning authorities to meet the concerns expressed in a well researched and balanced document.”

I thank him for that.

I will move on, as I appreciate that I must hurry. We feel that the national planning framework is an important opportunity to explore an innovative approach to national planning. It is possible for the national planning framework to become a symbol of a new culture of active democracy. We urge the politicians to make a commitment to ensure that the national planning framework is the product of a genuine national conversation about the priorities for the future and to commit to exploring innovative forms of public engagement. We will talk to Graeme Purves about that much more.

It is important for the committee to know that we would like a commitment to ensure that people who are likely to be affected by the national developments—the 14 infrastructure projects or whatever new ones come up—are fully included in those deliberations. That means creating mechanisms through which bottom-up challenges can be successfully raised against the designation of national developments without unduly undermining the value and principle of having a national planning framework.

I will begin by saying some positive things about the fact that we have a national planning framework and a national spatial planning document for Scotland. It is good that Scotland has those, and we are ahead of the rest of the UK on that. It is useful to have something that gives a general guide on where development should happen and in what way, and on which sites need to be protected.

I will be interested to see how the third national planning framework links to other areas—Graeme Purves alluded to that earlier—particularly the marine environment, and how we connect to the marine spatial planning system that is evolving.

Over the past couple of years, we have developed a land use strategy for bits of the terrestrial environment that are not subject to the planning system. It is important that all those things link together to ensure that we have a real overview of all sorts of land use and marine use in Scotland.

While we are working up the next national planning framework, it is important to remember that although sustainable economic growth is important, the Government’s central purpose is broader than that and reflects quality-of-life indicators as well. It is about allowing all of Scotland to flourish through achieving sustainable economic growth.

Graeme Purves referred to some issues with NPF2, particularly relating to the process of identifying national infrastructure projects—the national developments. That is an area that needs particular attention this time round. There is the example of the proposal for a coal-fired power station at Hunterston. That is subject to a public inquiry, so I appreciate that people will find it difficult to comment on that. Although the project seems to be almost universally unpopular, it has become a national development in the national planning framework—obviously something has not worked properly there. Perhaps there was not enough scrutiny of the national developments element of the national planning framework before it went through.

Parliament gets 60 days to scrutinise the national planning framework. Last time around, the timing was particularly unfortunate in that the scrutiny period happened to coincide with the Christmas period, so it was a real rush for everybody, including the parliamentary committees, to scrutinise the NPF and get their comments back to Government. The lack of time for scrutiny probably partially contributed to the fact that the Hunterston national development got through.

There are some really good things in the Government’s submission to the committee on how it proposes to take forward NPF3. I am quite keen on the idea of having a main issues report for NPF3 that mirrors the process for local development plans. That is about getting the key issues out there early on and getting people’s views on them, which could work quite well. However, it is critical that we have detailed consultation on a proposed plan, so that things like the national developments can be scrutinised by the public and by the Parliament.

The first part of the conversation was about process and efficiency. This part is more about inclusivity. Planning Aid has some concerns. I suppose that we get our perspective from three sides. First, there is our advice service, where we deal with more than 800 cases a year. Members of the public, often in despair, ask for advice, which is given by our volunteer planners, all of whom are RTPI members.

The second part of the planning system that we experience is through the training that we provide throughout Scotland. Last year, we trained and engaged with more than 500 organisations. We are finding a different message there, which is very much about misunderstandings about what the planning system can and cannot do. We need to put more emphasis on the issue of the public’s expectations of the planning system.

The third part of our work is upskilling community groups, such as development trusts. Such groups have fantastic ideas, especially if we are moving into a sort of public asset transfer arrangement, but they get involved too late in the planning process. However, when they get involved, they see that the planning system is very much a lever—it is not just for the use of the big developers; community groups can use it too. We need to see much more of that, and we need to bring those three disparate areas together.

NPF3 is the most important framework so far, because it will have to address an ambitious agenda around zero waste. We are already seeing the fronts sharpening. We need a more mature dialogue. I would hate to think that all that we are doing is NPF3, with community engagement at the local level, when what we need to see is the vision for Scotland. As politicians, you have to provide the lead but, in addition, the public have to engage, not just at local level, but in a national debate. Without that, we will never get the kind of Scotland that many people would like to see.

Thank you very much for that.

I have a quick follow-up to what Petra Biberbach said before I make my own points. The planning profession is strongly committed to community engagement. It has been enshrined in what we do since 1967—in other words, for 45 years or so. Petra will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that 15 per cent of professional planners volunteer through Planning Aid for Scotland. I do not know of another profession whose members volunteer in that way. That is an important point to make.

I have a few general points to make about NPF3. In general, the NPF is a good thing. It is admired internationally, as well as across the UK. It is seen as leading the way. It provides the context for how we take things forward across Scotland, and it provides the context for strategic development plans and local development plans. I would like NPF3 to give a bit more spatial guidance and direction, particularly around stuff such as renewables, which Graeme Purves mentioned, as NPF2 might have been a missed opportunity to do that. I would also like it to give us much more certainty on what we do around infrastructure and linking resources to some of those things.

The concept of national developments in the NPF is sound and useful. We must remember that planning is often about making quite difficult decisions for the greater good. We need to bear it in mind that such developments can have an impact on the local community, so it is a good thing that we have discussion about them and that we agree them. I would welcome continued dialogue on that.

The idea of having some form of national dialogue on NPF3 is a good one. I also like the idea of a main issues report. One criticism of the last version of the NPF was that much of the discussion on it seemed to be about the process rather than the content. This time, we should focus on the content, because that is the important bit. We should consider how we can focus the dialogue and the debate on the content.

My final point is one that Aedan Smith made. We need to think about how we can make the NPF work more with the marine planning regime, because we are seeing more and more linkages between marine planning and spatial planning, around renewables, in particular, but in other areas as well. We need to join those things up.

I endorse what the previous speakers have said. We agree that there is a need for NPF3 to have a broader perspective and to link in with marine planning. To pick up on what Petra Biberbach said about zero waste, we know from local government’s experiences that waste management can be an extremely contentious issue. It is one on which we need to engage with the public. We would appreciate the opportunity to have early and continued involvement in the development of NPF3 with the Scottish Government.

I will pick up on those last two comments. I very much agree with the RTPI’s view of the NPF’s role as being to provide a context for what happens sub-nationally or regionally. We always felt that NPF1 and NPF2 were a little light on some of the sub-national issues, such as investment in infrastructure below the national project level. It is interesting that the NPF2 monitoring report sets out a lot of detail on what the Government has been doing across a range of agencies in investing in infrastructure, economic development projects and so on. The fact that it provides a lot of detail on the sub-national level is extremely helpful.

Like Craig McLaren, I would certainly like NPF3 to be a bit more explicit about what the priorities are at a regional spatial level as well as at the national level. That would be helpful for strategic development plans and for prioritising where scarce resources could be used to best effect for Scotland as a country.

Thanks for that. Graeme, would you like to pick up on some of those points?

Yes, thanks. I very much agree with Clare Symonds that the national planning framework should be the product of a national debate. We were very concerned that it should be. I have certainly always seen it as being about building a broad national consensus around a direction of travel.

11:00

There is no doubt that there are elements of the NPF that are controversial. In particular, one of the 14 national developments—the proposed power station at Hunterston—is intensely controversial. Along with Aedan Smith and Clare Symonds, I have sat for many hours in the Court of Session, so that has certainly been brought home to me. However, we must get it in perspective. Hunterston is certainly controversial and there is controversy about aspects of a couple of the other national developments, but there is a strong consensus on the great majority of them. Overall, our pioneering approach to national developments can therefore be counted broadly as a success, although there are lessons to be learned. Like Craig McLaren, I was somewhat disappointed that scrutiny in the Parliament focused so heavily on process rather than on the key issues of national strategy. That may partly be our fault, because we did not get the process quite right on engagement with communities. I hope that we can learn from that and improve our approach as we take forward NPF3.

I can assure Aedan Smith that there was no sinister motive behind the parliamentary scrutiny coming just after Christmas. I remember that we marked time for about three months because we had got a little ahead of the strategic transport review, so we found ourselves coming to the Parliament after Christmas, when we had hoped to come to it in the autumn.

I agree that it is important to address zero waste and to ensure that there are effective links with marine planning and with the land use strategy. Given the stage that we are at with the marine spatial plan, it might be challenging to draw all the documents together in a single document this time round, but we are certainly aware of the importance of achieving consistency and giving clear and consistent messages in all three documents. There might also be some legislative difficulties with, for example, bringing the land use strategy together with the NPF, because the statutory basis is somewhat different. For example, we enjoy somewhat more discretion over when we undertake revision of the NPF than do our counterparts who are responsible for the land use strategy, so there might be some practical difficulties.

Blair Melville raised an interesting point about investment below the national level. We considered the issue and have benchmarked our performance and compared ourselves with other small European countries that are embarking on similar national spatial planning exercises. For example, the Republic of Ireland’s national spatial plan goes down to a provincial level in Ireland, but we decided against adopting that approach because we feel that our experience in Scotland has been rather different from that in the Republic of Ireland. We feel that we have a strong tradition of strategic planning at the city region level, which in the case of Glasgow and the Clyde valley can be traced back to the aftermath of the second world war. We did not feel that it was appropriate for the national level plan to intrude on the strategic policy making that should be done at the city region level, particularly when there is already such expertise at that level in Scotland.

Thanks very much. That brings the evidence session to an end. I found the session very useful, as I am sure did other members. I hope that the panel also found it interesting to hear other folk’s views. The issues will come back to the committee at a later stage. You have certainly helped to set the scene for committee members, so I thank you all very much.

11:02 Meeting suspended.

11:27 On resuming—