Official Report 302KB pdf
Welcome to the ninth meeting in 2008 of the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee. We have a fairly full agenda, on which item 1 is the continuation of our inquiry into tourism. We are examining the target of a 50 per cent growth in revenue by 2015.
I will be brief, as I am conscious of time.
The issue of Scottish tourists in Scotland concerns me slightly. According to recent figures, the market is worth between £830 million and £900 million a year, which is probably about 20 per cent of the total tourism figure. One point stood out, however. In 2005, 21.7 million tourism nights were spent by Scottish tourists in Scotland, but in 2006—the most recent year for which I could get figures—that figure was down to 18.8 million, which means that there was a drop of 3 million tourism nights in the course of a year. We are promoting ourselves successfully abroad, but how can we re-engage with Scottish tourists?
Marketing Scotland to Scots is a high priority, although I admit that, hitherto, the industry—not just VisitScotland—has not regarded it as such.
I am encouraged by your comments about TICs, and about day visits.
The idea needs to be supported with a wider marketing campaign. To be honest, we are not in a position to do that today. We do not want to talk too much about structures, as Peter Lederer said, but as you know we have recently undergone a restructuring and that integration of the network is not yet complete. One of the things that have not been done yet is having all our TIC staff trained about the whole of Scotland. We have superb staff in our network, who would put anyone to shame on "Mastermind" with a specialist subject of things to do in their local area. However, we need to get people better trained to talk about places outwith their local area.
Recently, a number of members of the committee visited Iceland and saw some of the good things that are happening there. Clearly, the scale of the operation is different, but Iceland has a travellers day, on which Icelanders are encouraged to be tourists in their own country. Across the country a co-ordinated approach is taken, which involves people being given free admission to attractions and so on. That sounds interesting from a city point of view, but could it also be done countrywide? Scotland has different local holidays and local ways of organising things. Would that allow for a national day that encouraged people to be visitors in Scotland?
Absolutely. We might think of having several national days. We do not have to have a single national day for the whole country. Recently, Historic Scotland held its free open day at its attractions. That has been a successful initiative and it is a good example for us. I would welcome more initiatives of that kind, especially if they allowed people to see behind the scenes of tourism and not just front of house. It would help us if people appreciated what lies behind tourism attractions and facilities.
Can you change your marketing? You said, rightly, that there has been a change in the exchange rate between the euro and the pound. That must give us opportunities. How are you taking advantage of those? Are you marketing Scotland heavily in Europe, or in the euro zone?
We never make drastic shifts, but we will make adjustments, especially on a tactical basis. There are different layers—the brand, strategy, and tactical marketing. We see a long-term future in the United States market, which will be our biggest overseas market well into the future, even compared with Europe, China and India. It is important never to be seen to desert a market. As I am sure everyone knows, marketing is not a one-off thing. We do not go in, spend a lot of money, make a big splash, and come out again. Marketing is an investment that is made over time.
Mr Lederer, do you want to comment on that, and to answer the previous question as well?
As I travel round the country, I ask people a specific question. If I am in Aberdeen, I ask, "When was the last time you were in Dumfries and Galloway?" or, "When was the last time you were in the Borders?" It is amazing how often I hear, "It was 25 years ago," or, "I've never been there."
The year of homecoming will be a huge opportunity, but during our inquiry we have heard criticism that there is a lack of investment. How do you respond to that criticism?
Investment is a very big topic. One of the keys to future growth of tourism is definitely investment and having a national investment plan, which should centre on capital investment in the industry. You might also be referring to marketing investment, to which I will return, if I may.
Marilyn Livingstone asked specifically about the homecoming.
I beg your pardon—I am going off the subject. There will be direct investment of £5 million in homecoming over the next two years through EventScotland—that is £2.5 million a year. It will support primarily themed, rolling and signature events programmes. The figure is quite modest for the kind of ambition that we have.
My question is on the same issue, but it also focuses on changing travel patterns from abroad and the need to package for the rise of the two-to-three-day traveller. We got that impression when we went to Keflavik airport in Iceland, which has the same dimensions as Glasgow airport.
That touches on capital investment, but I will not return to that point, because I have said something on it.
Those points apply to the Scottish traveller, too. If the choices are all on tap, it is easy for them.
I apologise to Marilyn Livingstone for cutting her off. She had a question on the year of homecoming, so we will return to that.
Philip Riddle said that the budget for the year of homecoming is modest. The year of homecoming is important, so should the committee make the case for a larger budget? I am trying to tease out whether the criticisms are correct. That is an important question.
What would VisitScotland do if there was more money than the modest budget that we heard about earlier?
We had about 180 applications for funding for local events, but we were able to accommodate fewer than a third of them. There were many good events, so that was a slight pity. We would have liked to have helped more events. We would not fund whole events—it would be joint funding. That was a bit of a gap that it would have been nice to fill.
On the projects that you supported, do they have a wide geographical spread throughout Scotland?
Yes—they are absolutely fantastic. There are different types of events, too. We are conscious that the year of homecoming must embrace sport through to culture, ancestry and food and drink. The response has been great.
How much money would have been needed to fund the 180 projects?
I could not honestly tell you. I would have to double-check the number, but that was the order of magnitude. There were 180 applications and we accepted fewer than one third. I suppose that you could extrapolate. The awards were of up to £50,000, so if every application was for the full award, that gives you some idea of the total.
One of the events that did not get funding was the Inverness highland games, which had asked for the fairly modest sum of £20,000 for marketing. Some world events are being held in Inverness and it would have been good to do extra marketing.
My memory is not bad, then.
Is there any way of retrieving the situation? Can we pump things up a wee bit? My feeling is that the homecoming is not really on the radar. People in Scotland do not seem to be all that aware of what will be happening. There is a danger that it might be a bit of a damp squib if we do not manage to rack things up a wee bit.
We are conscious that we need to rack it up but, to be fair, we have not yet launched the programme. There have been high levels of awareness of the idea in certain areas, but not across Scotland. That awareness is difficult to maintain and build upon if there is no programme. People are anxious to say, "We have heard about homecoming Scotland, but what is it?"
I am looking for a ballpark figure. Of the 180 applications, approximately how many good-quality ones were you not able to fund?
I think that the 180 applicants had already passed certain criteria before they were considered. Almost all the events had potential. I do not honestly know; I estimate 120 of the total, but I would have to come back to you if you want me to be more precise.
I suggest that you write to us to furnish us with those details. If possible, could you also pick up on Gavin Brown's first question about the disparity in numbers? Why is that happening, and what is being done to reflect the change in value and bed nights?
I have just come back from Ireland, where I heard presentations from your counterparts, who are focusing on history, and military history. What scope is there for co-operation with them on genealogy? We have the records and a substantial part of Ireland's population, particularly in the north, is Ulster or Presbyterian Scots. What opportunities would there be as part of the homecoming or north-south agreements for such co-operation?
Undoubtedly, there is scope for that. In a broader sense, the most potential that we have realised in the short term is with golf. For markets further afield, a joint golf trip from the United States to Scotland and Ireland is possible. In fact, I have known people to travel in rigid inflatable boats from Ballycastle to Scotland and back again just to play golf and have the Scottish and Irish experience in a couple of days. Such activity has proved to be fruitful.
It might be argued that, if people's records—and history—are here, we might be the greater beneficiaries of such co-operation. Your Irish counterpart has confirmed that not a lot of thought has been given to the idea, but he was certainly interested in it.
Mr Lederer has not spoken for a while, so I will address my question to him.
Given that it accounts for 90 per cent of our business, the UK market always has been and always will be our prime focus. We should never forget that England provides the bulk of our business. The board is kept constantly aware of how that important relationship is progressing and of how we are attacking that market.
Interestingly, although UK visitor numbers in 2007 were slightly down, the value had increased. That is very important and, indeed, heartening. It is perhaps too early to read too much into such figures, but I would like to think that getting more value is a sign that our market position is moving up. It would be fantastic if we could help it to increase.
Of course, it could also indicate that prices are going up.
That is a possibility. However, price rises in Scotland tend to be less than those in England, which means that, for those coming to Scotland, the differential is better still.
Mr Lederer said that people in the north-east and north-west of England have access to cheaper destinations. I am not saying that we should turn Scotland into a cheap destination, but we need to ensure that it represents value for money. People in the industry have told the committee about how they cross-sell with each other. However, it struck me that, instead of discussing how they could help each other out and telling each other what was happening in their area—which brings us back to the point about people in TICs knowing what is happening on their patch—they were simply charging each other high commission rates.
We have more or less covered that issue. We are trying to mobilise more resources and have made everyone aware that we could usefully do with some more money in this area. We are certainly not saying—and certainly do not believe—that it will be a huge flop with the current budget. It could be made a lot better if we could mobilise not just public money but resources from a wider net. After all, the success of an event such as homecoming requires national engagement, which often means that people should not expect everything to be subsidised and that they should have to put their hands in their pockets. Although we have been pretty clear that we could do better with more, the events programme, which is now coming together, is going to be exceptionally good and our existing marketing, with the added layer of homecoming, will be effective. Undoubtedly, however, we can make it better.
The board and I certainly hope that the year of homecoming, which is not just a one-year event, will change thinking and that, when people see how it works, they will want to keep it going. By those means, we can engage a lot of people and bring them to Scotland.
With regard to maximising marketing benefits, on our very interesting trip to Iceland, we were talked through the elements that were felt to be critical to the very dramatic increase in tourist numbers there over the past 10 years. I was struck in particular by the engagement between the tourism organisations and airlines and by the very close relationship between the activity of airlines and that of Iceland's marketing organisation. For example, a marketing campaign on the London underground proved to be the single biggest contributor to the growth in trips to Iceland.
The answer to practically all your questions is yes. We have benefited significantly from the route development fund. The phenomenal growth of low-cost airlines has had significant effects on tourism. However, in the UK, its biggest effect has been to encourage people to leave the country. In Scotland, we managed to battle against that and achieve net gains primarily through the route development fund, which helped more than 100 new routes, 86 of which were international.
I presume that VisitScotland as the marketing organisation and the airlines that provide the services already have a coherent marketing strategy for existing direct routes.
Very much so. We have close relationships with the airlines. It would be nice if we had a national airline, but that is a big investment. Iceland has benefited from having a national airline, Dubai benefits from having Emirates and Dublin benefits from having Ryanair. It is definitely an advantage to have an airline that uses one's country as a hub, but the relationships can be very good without going that far. We have extremely good relationships with Ryanair, easyJet, Continental Airlines and Emirates, with which we do joint marketing. In particular, we take joint tactical approaches: we go in at the brand level and create awareness of Scotland as a great place to come to, and the airline tags on, "And you can get there for £50 return tomorrow." That combination works effectively.
When rail travellers get to Scotland, an issue that arises is how our ticketing and timetables are organised and how easy it is for them to tour Scotland, rather than just make a return journey from one city to another. Is that part of your discussion with the rail industry about ticketing and integration?
It is, in trying to link things up. Did I mention a national tourism plan? We would like to take a more macro view so that we can tie in infrastructure developments with improved access to the country and improved distribution of visitors around the country.
On the same theme of joint marketing, I would like to ask about golf tourism. As you know, we have some big projects in the north-east. One or two have progressed to the point where they will definitely happen and, of course, there is another even larger one on which we await developments with interest. In respect of such developments—Gleneagles is, in some respects, in the same market—what is the outlook for joint marketing of, for example, golf tourism to attract visitors from new markets in eastern and central Europe? Does VisitScotland have a lead role or do you look to the resort owners and developers to take the lead?
It is both. To put the situation in context, the industry outspends any money that VisitScotland spends by a significant margin. Business is responsible for marketing its own product and is also responsible for exploring the opportunities to join up. Connoisseur Scotland, for example, joins up 20 businesses around Scotland to work together and cross-sell. The more that happens, the better.
I will start with the position of transportation groups. I wish that I could be as optimistic as the witnesses are about the railways. Until the end of this year, we will have appalling delays on the west coast main line that will be concentrated during leisure travel time, at weekends. One can often spend up to seven hours on what ought to be a four-and-a-half-hour journey, which is not encouraging.
We are always trying to bang it home that our focus is on the customer's point of view. For years, one of my criticisms of Scotland has been not about costs, but that it is difficult and complicated to buy. We are not alone in that—many countries have the same issue, but many others get it right. We need to join things up. We must think about a customer in London who wants to go to Scotland. We need to consider what the information is like and how easy it is to buy tickets and get around. The easier we make it for the customer, the more likely we are to win that customer and separate them from more of their money. The more complicated and difficult it is, the more sales opportunities we lose.
I have a follow-up question. We have heard a lot of evidence during the inquiry about the growth of direct marketing organisations, with the one in Glasgow being held up as the great example of how they work wonderfully well. I want to tease out your views on that. There are such organisations for Loch Ness and Glasgow, with plans for others. Are they in competition with you? Do you want to control them and, if so, how do you do that? Alternatively, do you have an advisory role?
The Glasgow City Marketing Bureau is first and foremost a convention bureau. Tourism marketing for Glasgow is done by VisitScotland, except for business tourism marketing. Glasgow is an exceptional case because of the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre and Glasgow City Council's involvement with it. The bureau is successful and we work hand in hand. There is a good partnership model in Glasgow that works well. Looking further afield, I think that David Whitton is talking about destination marketing organisations which, in general, we are not in favour of. However, we are in favour of destination management organisations and there is a significant difference.
I am glad that you mentioned that, because the term "DMO" gets thrown around a lot. The question is whether the M stands for management or marketing.
We are very much in favour of management. A booklet on destination management organisations, in their purest form and as we understand them, was launched by the minister in November. Along with the enterprise companies, we articulated clearly in that handbook what we thought destination management organisations should do.
I am sorry to interrupt, but why is destination management difficult?
Because it requires businesses to sit around, be very critical of each other and say, "Look, you're the one who's letting the side down: we need more development there." Then somebody else says, "Well, I don't want more development there because it might compete with me." Destination management needs the group to make hard business decisions and I do not underestimate the difficulty. However, people have to see the communal benefit. There are signs that that is starting to come through more, for example on Arran. There are also developments at Loch Ness and at Aviemore, where people are trying to look at destination management more holistically.
So you would try to persuade anybody who wanted to set up a destination marketing organisation not to bother because it would be competition for you.
We would not see it as competition; we just see it as potentially not cost effective unless they get the product right first. If they get the product right, fine, and if they are convinced that it is absolutely joined up and that they have the quality and the welcome, they should go ahead by all means. However, we can fulfil that role jointly. As I said, we have a fund that supports destination marketing so we are not against it, but we want to do that work jointly with locals when we believe that there is a good product to sell.
But Mr Riddle, why does one walk past the TIC in Fort William and not see anything about the
I believe that it is. What you describe is part of the promotion to get people to Fort William; such marketing is not necessarily an integral part of the promotion once people are in Fort William. When people are there, they want to know what lies behind the marketing. They go into the TIC and say, "Okay, we hear that you are the outdoor capital of Europe"—I like to try to be aspirational about it—
Yes, but do you know how difficult it is to find leaflets in that TIC about what is going on outdoors? They are tucked right round the back. All that I found when I walked in there last week was T-shirts advertising Scotland. Believe me, it was not a good experience. That is my perception of going to a part of Scotland that I thought was doing an awful lot. VisitScotland is heavily involved in that, for which I applaud the organisation, but there appears to be a disconnect between what happens nationally and what happens locally.
I am sure that you are not. I can only say that we will follow up the point on Fort William. If there is not sufficient information in Fort William about the choice of outdoor activities in the area, that is a failing. I do not think that that is a marketing issue in so far as, as you said, we capitalise on the branding of Fort William as the outdoor capital. We use that branding specifically and we were instrumental in creating a lot of what lies behind it. For example, we brought the mountain bike championships to the area over many years, and we built up the area.
If VisitScotland's view is that it does not want destination marketing organisations to spring up, there is a huge onus on it to be fair—and to be seen to be fair—to absolutely everyone, and to spend accordingly in particular geographical areas. Some people told us in evidence that they do not think that VisitScotland spends money to get people to visit their locality. Whether that is fair or unfair, that is their view. What happens when things break down—when those criticisms are made and people are not satisfied? If VisitScotland does not want destination marketing organisations to spring up in particular localities, does that not mean that VisitScotland.com has to be perfect?
We are not saying that we do not want DMOs or that we regard them as competition. We are just saying that, generally, they have not been cost effective. However, that is not true of the marketing of individual businesses.
That is kind of my point.
There is a limit to what we can do. Our role is to use our funding and marketing to leverage other marketing. The danger with destination marketing organisations is that, if they are not integrated and do not follow the same themes, they lose leverage. I am not saying that they are bad or wrong or that we should do away with them, but they lose leverage. We need to bring things together.
You talked about the distinction between destination marketing and destination management and how good destination management would develop the product and give you something to market. We talked earlier about joint marketing with airlines and resorts. Is there a means by which you can support businesses in a similar area and/or activity—for example, angling, sea angling, mountain biking or golf—to create good destination management or can only the businesses initiate such joint working to develop a product, the marketing of which you can support later? Perhaps the outdoor activities in Lochaber are a good example. Can VisitScotland lead the process or does it simply have to follow enterprising companies in sectors that are doing that?
This goes back to the convener's point. There are not many successful examples of geographic marketing, because the customer is thinking not of geography but of products—sea kayaking, golf or whatever. We have worked much harder in recent years on how we can help to develop the product that we can then take to market. We do a lot of work on that and mountain biking is a good example.
You said earlier that you do not really want to talk about structures. However, will you tell me how you have focused attention on the 2015 targets through your reorganisation?
The targets have been a key feature for the restructuring. First and foremost, there has been a realignment towards customers. We have built our structure around four customer groups, first and foremost of which is the visitor. Visitor engagement and the customer journey should give us an organisation that picks up things like the point that the convener mentioned about Fort William so that we can follow a customer all the way through. That gives us the ability to attract people to Scotland and help them to decide where to go in the country and to spend more money when they are here. We look for the 50 per cent growth to come from growth in visitor numbers of only roughly 25 per cent. A lot of the other growth will come through trying to get people to spend more, so the customer journey, through which we keep in touch with people and always try to encourage them to spend more, is important.
We have received evidence that data collection is too slow. If you are to respond to significantly changing market circumstances, your research must presumably be done quickly. Is any attempt being made to speed up data collection? Gavin Brown indicated that the most up-to-date figures were for 2006. We are now at the beginning of the 2008 season. Is that acceptable, or will you turn the research around more quickly?
I distinguish between types of research. The research that VisitScotland does is essentially market research: it is about visitor behaviour and attitudes, what people do, where they come from and what they want. We do such research ourselves; it is quick and it goes right into the marketers' hands. We use it in marketing and in other areas.
Dave Thompson, I am terribly sorry, but I cannot let you in because we are out of time and must move on to the next panel.
We will be interested to hear more about a matter on which we have had quite a lot of evidence. Glasgow has said that the key to its success is its ability to turn round planning applications quickly. How have you dealt with constraints on doing that? For example, I presume that a quick turnaround requires a high level of staffing. Given that Glasgow has a successful private economy as well as a successful public economy, how do you retain the professional planners that are needed to deliver the quick turnaround? Is there a secret to that?
I will try to answer all your questions succinctly. In Glasgow we developed our 12-point fast-track planning system. When a planning application comes into the office we take a view on whether the proposed development is a strategic project or a project of more local and limited relevance. Employment projects tend to be classed as strategic projects.
That is very concise. Your point about going up the league table suggests that you are describing recent developments or, at least, that the feeding through of their impact has been recent. Was a critical decision made a year or two ago that has allowed you to move up the league table as you have just described?
The driver for that has come over the past 18 months or so. It is the view of the council leader, Councillor Purcell, that we need to modernise the planning system. We are looking at what is happening as a result of the Planning etc (Scotland) Act 2006. We have picked up on the things that are likely to come into the local authority regime and we are trying to adopt them. As far as possible, we are trying to predict what will come and to adopt good practice before it becomes mandatory.
Mr Inch, we have received a significant amount of evidence on issues around planning. You say that changes have taken place in the past 18 months. What is the turnaround time for planning applications for hotels after the change and what was it before? To what extent is the co-operation that you are getting from national bodies that have to feed into the planning process giving you an advantage over your competitors—in particular, internal competitors in Scotland?
When we fast-track hotel planning applications through the system, the process takes probably half the time that it would have taken a couple of years back. Recent examples are the proposed Argyle international hotel next to the Radisson hotel on Argyle Street. The developer was under particular pressures because he had a potential operator signed up, but there was a timescale for that option being exercised. We turned that application round in about eight weeks.
Will you give me some numbers?
That application was turned round in about eight weeks. We then had to refer the project to the Scottish Government, because the council had an interest in the site, and to Historic Scotland, because it involved two listed buildings.
Was that eight weeks from the developer's first inquiry to approval?
No. The time was eight weeks from lodging the planning application to the final decision. The project was complicated, because it involved listed buildings, land acquisition and issues of transportation on to the main street.
Do you proactively consider the availability of land and provide a planning brief so that organisations such as Scottish Development International can encourage appropriate inward investment, particularly in the tourism sector?
We are working closely with SDI on hotel development, which it has prioritised, as you probably know. On land assembly and land availability, we have finalised a directory of sites in and around the city centre that we think are appropriate for hotel development. We have worked with the Glasgow City Marketing Bureau to commission research into the most appropriate star rating for sites. All the sites that we own and which are suitable for hotel development are under discussion or are somewhere in planning discussions with a potential operator or developer.
We have been given evidence that Glasgow is attracting hotel developments away from other parts of Scotland because of its fast-track system. Do developers tell you that that is why they go to Glasgow rather than other parts of Scotland? Do you have specific evidence of projects that have gone to Glasgow rather than somewhere else as a consequence of the planning changes that you have made?
I can certainly provide information—I might have to do so privately rather than in a public forum—about a hotel developer who is coming to Glasgow because he felt that he had undue problems in trying to progress a development in Edinburgh.
That is fair enough.
My question is at a slight tangent. Does speeding up the process enable you to turn down unsuitable applications more quickly?
We prefer not to turn down planning applications. Most people who have a project receive planning consent at some point. The challenge in the office is to turn a bad proposal into a good one. If effort is put into pre-application discussions, lots of problems with design, materials, orientation and layout can be sorted out, so that when an application is lodged, all the major problems have been sorted out.
You say that it takes eight weeks from lodging a planning application to acceptance by the planning applications committee. How much time does the pre-planning application stage take?
I will give an example. We probably had four or five weeks of intense discussion with the developer and the developer's architect before the proposal for the hotel on Argyle Street was submitted. That project was complicated, because it involved two listed buildings and land acquisition. The council had to decide whether it would make a compulsory purchase—which it agreed to do—to allow the site assembly to happen. The project also involved complex traffic calculations.
Good. I thank Mr Inch very much and thank the other witnesses for bearing with us. We wanted to have Mr Inch's comments on the record before he leaves.
Certainly.
I do not know what the current quarterly statistics are, but for most of last year, Edinburgh's planning performance was better across the piece than that of Glasgow. Those statistics are carefully considered, as you would imagine. That said, any application that is submitted in either city involves a range of factors.
Mr Inch gave us timescales. What timescales were involved in the developments that you mentioned?
The timescales were certainly not eight weeks. The typical timescale is three to four months. For example, the Waterloo Place conversions involved referrals to Historic Scotland and seeking views from Architecture and Design Scotland. There are other factors at play. With any application of significance that involves a listed building, Historic Scotland's response time will automatically be more than eight weeks.
That does not seem to have been the case in Glasgow. We were told about two listed buildings there and the timescale for the process was eight weeks. If that can happen in Glasgow in cases involving the co-operation of the national bodies, why is it not happening in Edinburgh?
Over the years, my experience in City of Edinburgh Council was that the response times in cases that involved Historic Scotland—or, for that matter, referrals to the Scottish Government, because of a council interest or significant bodies of opposition—were not as good as we would have liked them to be. In Edinburgh, the majority of planning applications attract opposition, which complicates timescales. I am afraid that that has always come with the territory in Edinburgh.
I will bring in Margaret Bochel on this point, after which I will ask John McNairney to comment on Brian Adam's broader point about the other bodies. Perhaps he will give the matter some thought in the interim.
Obviously, Aberdeen City Council is very conscious of the importance of quality accommodation. Having such accommodation supports existing businesses, attracts larger-scale conferences to the city and allows the city to diversify into more mainstream tourism.
Given that, over the past three years, you have identified 16 sites and granted permission for 11, that is not a strong argument. What can you, in Aberdeen, and Mr Holmes's successors in Edinburgh do to get your turnaround times down to eight weeks as opposed to your four to five months?
I am not sure when the clock starts ticking in Glasgow when measuring timescales.
I think that it was said on the record—
The suggestion was that quite a lot of the negotiations are done before an application is processed. We accept an application on the day that it comes in. Things such as transport assessments may be done after the application has been lodged, which adds to timescales. My impression is that Glasgow City Council deals with such matters before an application is submitted.
Does the process by which Glasgow City Council holds conversations with developers in advance of an application being put on to the table simply not happen in Aberdeen? From the major developments I am aware of in my constituency, my understanding is that prior discussions take place between planners and developers before an application lands on the table.
There are prior discussions, but the level of detail in the information that is submitted in applications varies. Under the Planning etc (Scotland) Act 2006, about which John McNairney will say more, there will be a requirement for processing agreements for some major developments. That will help to tie down timescales.
If, as Brian Adam suggests, other cities were to have an eight-week or nine-week turnaround time as an objective, would it require a political lead for Aberdeen to do the same? In other words, would you need to be given priority when the council was allocating its resources, or would the issue simply be how you managed your workload?
Over the past couple of years, the council has been supportive of planning in the city and has given us additional resources, in recognition of the fact that planning is fundamental to achieving the council's vision. However, that is not helping us to recruit the qualified, experienced staff we need to deal with more complex applications. If we were to prioritise such applications, it would inevitably take us longer to deal with others.
So you have no targets for turnaround times for applications for major developments, of the sort that we have heard about in Glasgow.
Our target is to deal with them as quickly as we can.
Edinburgh has target times, which are the national Government target times for dealing with major applications. With all due respect, the only way of getting the turnaround time for a hotel application down to eight weeks or thereabouts would be to give it absolute priority over everything else. Edinburgh has a major applications team, but at any one time it deals with a wide range of major applications, most of which have a significant economic content.
I do not represent Edinburgh, Glasgow or Aberdeen, so I can ask my next question with no worries. As planners in Edinburgh and Aberdeen, do you think that Glasgow has an advantage in planning and tourism because some agencies—notably Scottish Enterprise—are located there and are inevitably focused on Glasgow? Scottish Enterprise operates in the city day in, day out.
Glasgow does not have an advantage in tourism. It has organised its city promotion in an interesting way. I do not mean to be smug, but Edinburgh has always had a different and stronger brand. The majority of tourists who visit Scotland still use Edinburgh as a gateway city at some point. We have never felt that Scottish Enterprise has had a bias towards Glasgow in tourism. We might take a different view on other elements of the economy.
In Aberdeen, over the past few months we have started working closely with Scottish Enterprise Grampian on hotel and other tourism-related developments. For example, we are looking at putting together a brochure to identify city centre sites that might be suitable for hotel development, possibly with more focus on the top end of the market such as four and five-star hotels. Therefore, I would not say that the agency has a particular bias towards Glasgow.
I should add one exception to what I said. Although this has been getting better recently, we have not had any strong, regular working relationship with SDI on such issues. It was virtually an unknown quantity in Edinburgh.
That is helpful to understand.
Dr Bochel said that Aberdeen City Council has started working with Scottish Enterprise only in the past four or five months. Glasgow City Council has been working with Scottish Enterprise for a lot longer than that. As a result of that collaboration, Glasgow is now seeing some success. Why did such collaboration not happen before in Aberdeen?
We have worked closely with the agency on various issues but hotel development has been a particular focus of that joint working only in the past six months. Through the Aberdeen city and shire economic forum—ACSEF—we have done quite a lot of work generally on how we might work more closely together to promote the city's economic development. A key theme for ACSEF has been how we can work better with the private sector in the planning process. One issue is how we ensure that private developers, including those in the tourism industry, are engaged in the development plan process up front. If developers know how that part of the system works, they can focus their developments more appropriately, for example on sites that are in the local plan. We have tried to engage the enterprise agency more closely throughout the process so that we can help each other to achieve the desired vision. It is not that we have not worked with the agency but that the focus has only recently shifted to tourism.
Various people have mentioned staffing issues, which I understand previously caused problems for my local authority—East Dunbartonshire Council—in dealing even with simple planning applications. Can Mr Stewart give us some idea of what the picture is across Scotland? We seem to have an awful dearth of experienced planners. A lack of skilled staff seems to be one of the major hindrances to processing planning applications.
It is true to say that we have a shortage of experienced, skilled planners. Like many local government functions, planning is not—or was not until recently—an attractive university subject for school leavers to train in. However, people increasingly use the graduate entry route, whereby they can become a town planner by taking a postgraduate qualification in planning after taking a degree in another subject. We have had some growth on the production side—in further and higher education—that will bring in more planners. In addition, planners have also tended to move out of local government into other fields or to retire. At one time—1975 was probably the heyday—many people were drawn into planning, but the numbers entering the profession then remained steady before starting to drop off over, probably, the past 10 years.
Do you have figures for how many planners short the planning departments of Aberdeen City Council, the City of Edinburgh Council and Glasgow City Council are on average?
Our society carries out a survey of planning vacancies in local government. The most recent survey was done about two years ago. I do not have the figures to hand, but they can be provided.
Our average was 210.
As Andrew Holmes said, the nature of that loading is affected by the complexity of the planning applications. Location can play an important part in that.
Okay, but before we go on to talk about that, the committee is interested in hearing from John McNairney on two areas. The first is the numbers that Mick Stewart identified. You will have a Scotland-wide overview of shortages and what is being done about them. Secondly, Brian Adam made a point about other organisations, such as Historic Scotland and other agencies, whose response times could have an impact on timescales in Edinburgh, as Andrew Holmes said. How can those things be improved to further all our interests?
Many points have been raised so far. On overall performance, the planning system generally approves more than 90 per cent of applications that come before it—even approximately 89 to 90 per cent of major applications are approved. That is a positive statistic.
That is helpful, but do you have a view on how long it takes Historic Scotland to turn round an application during its part of the process? Does central Government have a role there, given that Historic Scotland is an agency of central Government?
As part of modernisation, we want to ensure that all consultees play their part and do not unnecessarily delay the process. I do not have to hand the statistics on consultees' performance, but I can get those for you. My impression is that Historic Scotland is a high performer as it turns around in the region of 97 to 98 per cent of the material that comes before it within its target timescale. A recent parliamentary debate highlighted that fact. Historic Scotland is one of the agencies that are engaging actively in modernisation.
It would be helpful if you could provide that information to the committee. If it is possible to break it down by agency and by region, members would be extremely interested in that. Thank you very much.
I want to ask about the information to which John McNairney has referred concerning the turnaround time for major developments. Witnesses from Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen have told us that the process takes four or five months at the most. To hear that, on average in Scotland, only 45 per cent of applications for major developments are processed within four months is quite alarming. Are you able to provide a breakdown of the information on that by region or by local authority, so that we can see where the problems lie and which local authorities are pulling the average down to below 50 per cent?
You do not need to give us that information today; you can get back to us on that.
No, I do not expect that information today.
Yes, we continue to support and enable.
I hope that we are trying to provide a level playing field so that people everywhere have the same access to services. To what extent does a level playing field exist? In Glasgow, the system seems to work much quicker than the targets that are set centrally, but are we comparing apples and pears? Is that part of a marketing myth from Glasgow City Council? Is it about perceptions? What evidence has anyone got of developers genuinely gravitating towards those areas that appear to have faster turnaround times? To what extent are national agencies following a uniform approach, or to what extent are they being persuaded to act more quickly locally?
I will start with planning performance. John McNairney will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the handling of major applications is one of Audit Scotland's key performance indicators. Committee members can quickly see the city of Glasgow's handling times for major planning applications.
Is that a nice way of saying that it is a myth?
I presume that the statistics will speak the truth, as usual.
I was going to make a similar point. The issue is complicated and involves more factors than just the speed at which we turn around planning applications. Site availability is an issue, and like Andrew Holmes we have worked with developers to identify appropriate sites and deal with planning applications as quickly as we can. For example, we worked closely with the developers of the Malmaison Aberdeen hotel project to deliver approval on what could have been quite a controversial application for a development in a conservation area. We can cite good examples of our positive approach to supporting development. As I said, no hotel developer has come to me and said that they are leaving Aberdeen because of the planning system.
I want to move the discussion on from city developments. Neil Wells, who gave evidence to the committee some time ago, told us that when he was pursuing a £9 million hotel development in Argyll, it took four years to get a vote of approval—and I think he said that it had taken a further year to get approval at national level. That is a delay not of four or five months but of four or five years in getting approval for a major development. The Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority might well have been involved with Mr Wells's proposal. Will Gordon Watson comment on the application and say how the national parks strike a balance between promoting development and conservation?
I think that you are referring to the Ardgarten case. The four-year period that you mentioned included a significant lead-in time, when the park authority encouraged Mr Wells to purchase the site, which was a remnant designed landscape in an iconic location at the foot of the Cobbler, on Loch Long. Given the site's nature, we thought that it would accommodate a hotel development very well.
Was it a case of Mr Wells not having listened to what you told him in the pre-application discussions?
There was tension between Mr Wells's particular business model—he was developing a coaching hotel and needed a particular size of building—and the challenges of the site. We struggled to improve the application through the pre-application discussions.
What is your average turnaround time for hotel developments and so on? Do you have any information on the Cairngorms national park?
There is a link between the pre-application experience and the efficient handling of a development. I can give you an example of a close contrast on Loch Lomondside, where we recently had planning applications from the De Vere Group, which is considering a £50 million reinvestment in Cameron house. We had an extensive pre-application process, given that a sensitive landscape and a listed building were involved. We have been dealing with the array of planning applications that are required to bring that reinvestment about, and they are being handled within a period of two to three months. The group had a strategy for how it was going to submit the planning applications, and we had a fruitful pre-application process.
Could you perhaps provide some of that detail to the committee in writing? We would find it useful to look at the turnaround times involved.
Sure.
That would be very helpful.
I turn to the second part of Mr Thompson's original question, which was about how we promote development in the national park. We are very much engaged with our Scottish Enterprise colleagues regarding how national parks can contribute to the framework for change targets. We have been considering the national park as a destination and as a series of sub-destinations. Through our local plan process, we have been asking ourselves what product the market would want if it was given the opportunity. That can be tested through consultation. We are asking questions in our early consultation about, for example, whether there is scope for another resort development in the national park, at Callander; how we might improve forest tourism in Cowal; and how to improve water recreation on Loch Lomondside—both the facilities and the existing accommodation offer.
Are you having problems getting planners to work with you or for you?
When we advertise vacancies, we are not inundated with large volumes of applications. However, we have been lucky—we have been able to recruit, mostly. We have had to use agency planners when we have had difficulties, to fill gaps and to keep things going. That is increasingly the case for some authorities as they try to keep up their efficiency. They will make temporary arrangements if there are continuity issues around recruitment. We are one of the lucky authorities in that regard, judging by other experiences that we have heard about.
I will throw in another wee point about the building warrant process. In some authorities, delays and problems have been caused by the building warrant and building control side of things, as opposed to the planning side. Do you have any comments on that?
I am responsible for building control, which is a bit like planning when it comes to trying to find and retain staff. I do not just mean building standards staff; there are also the environmental health officers, trading standards officers and a whole roll of regulatory officers throughout local government. There is a shortage of people coming forward to do those jobs. The other important issues are the quality, skill sets and experience of officers. Generally, they are hard to recruit and retain.
My questions are based on my experience with my local authority, Fife Council.
We need to work with all our partners in the planning system—the RTPI, the universities, the planning authorities and the private sector—to ensure that we do all that we can to attract planners into the system. That is probably a long-term agenda. In the short term, we need to explore options such as sharing the use of specialist staff. For example, minerals planners are not available in every authority. Enforcement is another area in which authorities could do with assistance. We should also make more use of non-professional staff. We are trying to focus on ensuring that planners concentrate on the areas in the system in which they can add value. We want to take some minor applications out of the planning system, to free up resources for dealing with more significant applications. We also need to work with schools.
Is the public sector able to compete with the private sector on salaries, working conditions and career structure? There has been considerable movement to the private sector.
There has. I am not the best person to talk about terms in local government, although I have spent most of my career there. The last time that I advertised for a graduate planner, I was not successful—I could not attract anyone to interview because planners had moved to the private sector. Remuneration is an issue, but I cannot comment on it.
Presumably, money is the reason why planners move to the private sector.
Yes.
That is why I asked about the issue.
Does the public sector not have to pay more?
That is exactly the point that I am trying to make.
As Mick Stewart said a minute or two ago, the problem is common across a wide range of technical professions, especially those associated with development in local government. In my experience, planning is rather better off than most technical professions in local government, certainly in this city, as it is able to recruit at the lower end. Increasingly, it loses its better staff at middle manager level. Typically, people go for 20 or 25 per cent more. I am afraid that public sector pay scales have difficulty coping with that, especially as we are all in the throes of the modernising pay exercise.
I want to add a caveat to the discussion, which seems to assume a constantly increasing flow of applications and increasing buoyancy in the sector. I am an historian of tourism, to a certain extent. Travelling around, one sees a lot of evidence from the past of disaster—derelict hotels and hotel schemes that never worked, including the colossal golf hotel at Cruden Bay in the north of Scotland, which was knocked down in the 1950s. That should give some of us an opportunity for thought. Do we not need a more historical and sectoral analysis of what is developing and where, instead of saying that there is a standardised starred component that has to be accommodated? In the greatest tourist areas of Europe, such as Switzerland, there are varied stories; that input should be studied carefully before we go ahead. Such an approach would not necessarily inhibit developments. If we substituted the word "supermarket" for the word "hotel", we would be in much more contested territory for localities and planners.
The national parks are experiencing a lot of investment, primarily in high-end resort-type developments—large-scale coaching developments and so on. Our tourism aspirations are focused on the quality and range of the accommodation and products that we offer. We have an ageing stock of traditional hotels that are underperforming and offer a poor experience. Our strategy is to encourage a focus on reinvestment in those hotels. There are one-off examples of niche developments—boutique-type hotels—in prime locations. Recently we handled a planning application to redevelop a hotel at Inverbeg. That is the first time that a smaller coaching hotel has been redeveloped to offer mid-range, affordable accommodation. We are anxious that in our area there should be a range of accommodation, not just top-end, fractional ownership, resort-type developments, to cater to different needs and different sizes of wallet.
I have a question specifically for Mr Holmes. If I heard you correctly, you suggested that one reason for the difference between Edinburgh and Glasgow is that people in Edinburgh object more regularly to planning applications. That sounds a bit lame to me. Is there any statistical evidence to back up your assertion?
I did not suggest that people in Edinburgh objected more than people in Glasgow—I do not know what the figures for Glasgow are. However, it is a matter of record that the majority of applications in Edinburgh are objected to. Other issues are the presence of a world heritage site and the fact that most of the areas of prime development interest are conservation areas. There is a particular set of factors that inevitably mean that any application within a mile of where we are sitting will raise issues that are not necessarily raised in other parts of Scotland. That affects the speed of the planning process.
There must be statistics somewhere to show whether objections are more common in Edinburgh than elsewhere. Do you think that that is correct?
Anecdotally, that is my impression. There cannot be anywhere that gets more objections, on a bad day. I do not know whether statistics for objections are recorded nationally. The point that I was making about Edinburgh is that the key issue is not necessarily the speed of or the resources available to the planning system, or what its targets are. There is always a set of factors that means that major applications have rather more challenges—I once described them as obstacles—to address than there might be elsewhere. I think that most of the national Government agencies would take that view, otherwise we would not have the number of statutory designations that we have. There are 20,000 listed dwellings—listed buildings or structures—in Edinburgh. That number is not matched anywhere else in Scotland.
I have a point of clarification. I think that you said at the beginning of the session that the performance of Edinburgh's planning department was superior to that of Glasgow's planning department. What period were you referring to? Where can we get statistics on that? What you said cuts across the anecdotal evidence that the committee has heard.
It does. From recollection, according to last year's figures—I am talking about Audit Scotland figures; they are among Audit Scotland's key performance indicators—Edinburgh's performance was marginally ahead of that of Glasgow. Ten or a dozen years ago, Edinburgh was firmly rooted at the bottom of the planning performance league table, but its performance now is rather better than the Scottish average.
I am interested in a statistic that Mr McNairney gave. He said that the target for processing major applications is four months, that around 45 per cent of applications are processed within that time, and that the figures are moving in the wrong direction. We have heard about the nationwide lack of planners. Let us delve into the matter. Apart from the lack of planners, are there particular reasons why 55 per cent of applications are not processed within four months? Why are the figures moving in the wrong direction? Is that happening purely because of a lack of people, or are there other obstacles that we need to investigate?
I do not know what the exact reason is for that performance. A range of issues is involved. We have not discussed development plans in Scotland. An up-to-date and relevant development plan provides certainty for investors and communities. We must try to modernise the development plan system as a priority.
Mr Holmes has been given the chance to provide an explanation on behalf of the City of Edinburgh Council. In the interests of fairness, Dr Bochel should be given the chance to provide an explanation on behalf of Aberdeen City Council.
On the AECC, we gave detailed planning permission for a 222-bed hotel in three months. There were issues to do with relocating a park-and-ride site and trunk road issues, but I do not think that three months was too long or unreasonable a timescale for dealing with the application.
To be fair to you, Charles Skene said:
The only recent application that I recall was for apartments in Rosemount, which I think we dealt with relatively quickly.
I will be helpful to Mr Whitton by saying that I spoke to Mr Skene recently and he said that the problem was not with Aberdeen City Council.
It is difficult to compare authorities. I have agreed to give you the statistics that the directorate has, and there are Audit Scotland targets, which are monitored, as Andrew Holmes said.
Nobody would want the system to be uniform, because circumstances differ, as Mr Holmes quite properly said. However, I would have thought that you would at least be interested to know whether there is an attempt to market one part of Scotland at the expense of another, on the basis of criteria that are not necessarily hard and on which you can provide no evidence. The matter is of considerable interest to me.
All we can do in taking an overview of the system is to work with each planning authority to try to ensure that it delivers the best service locally that it can deliver. That is the approach that we commend.
I do not think that we can take that broad theme much further.
Tomorrow we will meet SDI and a potential investor to consider a number of brownfield sites for tourism development in the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park. The purpose of the meeting is very much to consider whether SDI can assist potential inward investors on issues to do with site contamination and feasibility.
Will Mick Stewart comment on that from the Stirling Council perspective or, more broadly, from the Scottish Society of Directors of Planning's point of view?
I cannot comment on the SDI from the society's point of view. Stirling Council has had dealings with SDI. It assisted in securing council approval of a mixed-use development that involved two hotels at the Craigforth motorway junction.
I met SDI representatives for the first time a couple of months ago as part of discussions with Scottish Enterprise Grampian on how to promote the city better. The negotiations and discussions have started.
As two or three panel members have said, over the past six months or so, we have seen considerable improvement. Prior to that, I can think of occasions when SDI brought potential developers to Edinburgh and the local authority did not know.
I thank the gentlemen and ladies of the panel for coming to committee this morning. Your evidence is helpful in our understanding of the issues. We are grateful to you for that. We may pursue other issues with you, or make requests for further information. Perhaps you will furnish us with the one or two bits of information that you have agreed to provide. That would be helpful.