Communities Committee, 07 Dec 2005

Meeting date: Wednesday, December 7, 2005

Official Report 206KB pdf

---

Petition

---

Sewage Sludge (PE749)

Agenda item 3 is consideration of petition PE749, on spreading of sewage sludge. The petition was lodged by Geoffrey Kolbe on behalf of Newcastleton and district community council. The Public Petitions Committee has referred the petition to the Communities Committee for consideration, because the petition requests that legislation be initiated to discontinue the current exemptions for spreading sewage sludge and to ensure that spreading is subject to planning control, including a public local inquiry.

The petition has also been referred to the Environment and Rural Development Committee, which considered it on 16 November 2005 and advised that the strategy for sewage disposal is a matter for Scottish Water. As Scottish Water is reviewing its sewage sludge disposal strategy, the Environment and Rural Development Committee agreed that it would delay further consideration of the petition until the results of that review are known.

The Communities Committee has made a commitment to monitor several other petitions on various planning topics and has agreed to encompass them in its work on the proposed planning bill. The committee is therefore invited to agree that the planning related issues that other committees raise during consideration of the petition will be included in its scrutiny of the forthcoming planning bill and that the committee should take no further action on the petition because the issues will be taken into account as part of that process.

I have no problem with considering the petition when we discuss the planning bill. However, I draw the committee's attention to an answer that I received from the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development a couple of months ago, which was that the Scottish Executive was about to publish its sewage sludge strategy, so we should note that not only Scottish Water, but the Scottish Executive, will produce a sludge strategy. I hope that, by the time we discuss the planning bill, that strategy will have been published—I expected it before now.

The recommendation is right. Newcastleton is in my constituency and Geoffrey Kolbe is the past chairman of the local community council. The entire village signed the petition. What happened was that, one day, people woke to the thunderous noise of lorries travelling through the middle of the village. They had no idea what the lorries were doing until they discovered that, 5 miles north up the valley, where the watercourses all head towards the village, sewage sludge—allegedly treated—was being dumped.

The problem is that under planning law, no forewarning for such action is required. The community council was not consulted and the village did not know about the spreading. The ostensible reason for spreading the material was to fertilise the ground. Fertilisation requires a certain depth of spreading—I think that it is up to a few inches—but the height of the material that was spread was in some places many centimetres, if not metres, because the undulating ground was covered to a level.

The cause of concern is adequately described in the committee paper. The policy behind planning law is never that planning law should duplicate what might be in regulatory procedure, but the issue is whether such spreading can be construed as controlled development. Where is it fertilisation and where is it a development because the landscape and the topography have been changed by the volume of material that has been applied?

The committee would be well advised to take into account the strategy that Scottish Water eventually comes up with and the Scottish Executive's strategy, and to keep open the question whether the proposed planning bill should deal with circumstances such as those that my constituents have experienced.

I am happy to agree that we should take the petition into account when we consider the planning bill. The Environment and Rural Development Committee's position is understandable, given that strategies are to be produced that will be subject to strategic environmental assessment, which is one of the most important procedures that Parliament has agreed to recently.

We could, however, do something that might otherwise slip between the two committees. If we are to consider the petition later, perhaps we could ask the Executive for information that will be useful at that stage. As when we examined mineral extraction and so on, one problem is people's perception that different contractors or operators have different standards of practice. Could we, for example, ask the Executive whether it has asked the contractors to follow simple practices such as informing communities about vehicle movements in advance? That would not require regulation or legislation, but it would show willing on the part of the contractors.

Some of that information is already available. The Public Petitions Committee has gathered quite a lot of information; the clerks will arrange for it to be passed to us when the matter comes before us again. Although we probably all have an interest in the subject, we must be careful not to duplicate work and questions that will be asked by other committees. We must keep to the tight remit of determining how the issue can be dealt with through the planning process. Nevertheless, Patrick Harvie has raised valid points.

We must ensure that, in our consideration of the forthcoming planning bill, we do not lose sight of the petition, although we must accept that other committees—especially the Environment and Rural Development Committee—have a role in scrutinising Scottish Water's disposal of sewage sludge. Our consideration of the issue will be limited, but we must ensure that it is not lost sight of altogether. The problem is that, in the past, the issue has not fitted within any regulatory framework. We must use what opportunities we have to consider it, although we recognise that the Environment and Rural Development Committee has a key role to play.

The clerk has reminded me that the Environment and Rural Development Committee will receive a copy of the Official Report of our meeting and will be able to reflect on what has been said.

I want to go from the specific to the general. The issue has been around since the first session of Parliament, when George Reid was vocal on the issue of Blairingone.

On the point about not duplicating others' work, I note that the Public Petitions Committee raised the question whether a health impact assessment should be carried out, which is something that we have spoken about in relation to planning. The health issues relating to planning seem to be more to the fore now—for example, in consideration of mobile phone masts, landfill sites, pylons, wind farms, genetically modified crops and so on. Given that the planning bill will come to the committee next week, I am content to work with the other committees and to accept the proposals that are before us today.

I am grateful to Euan Robson for explaining the local considerations relating to the issue. I was puzzled when I first read the petition. Perhaps I should declare yet another interest because of my agricultural background. Ever since time began, people have been applying organic waste material to the land as fertiliser—and why not? Nevertheless, I appreciate that what we are talking about are large quantities of a different material.

At first sight, the issue seems to have more to do with environmental controls—in particular, health controls—than with planning. It would be bizarre if planning consent was required to apply organic waste to a garden or a field. I do not think that anyone is suggesting that. I now have a better understanding of what the concerns were in Newcastleton and in Fife, or wherever. My hunch is that the issue might be better considered by people with specialist interests in environmental protection and health protection. No doubt, we can come back to planning.

It has been agreed that the committee will return to the generalities of the issue when we consider the forthcoming planning bill.

That concludes the meeting. I remind members that there will be no committee meeting next week.

Meeting closed at 11:09.