I convene the eighth meeting of the Communities Committee in 2006. I remind all those present that mobile phones should be turned off. I have received apologies from Scott Barrie MSP, who is unable to be at committee today. I should also explain that Mary Scanlon MSP has been delayed; she hopes to be with us around 10 am. We are joined by Sandra White MSP, who is substituting for Tricia Marwick MSP.
I represent Greengairs community council and Greengairs environmental forum.
Good morning. I represent the Pilrig residents association, but only as its acting chairman. We had an annual general meeting on Monday and we have not yet sorted out our new committee. I have lived in Pilrig for the past 12 years and in Scotland for some 22 years.
I am the secretary of the Association of Scottish Community Councils, which is a voluntary post. I am also the chair of my local community council in Angus.
I represent Hillhead community council, which is an urban community council in Glasgow. Subject to the council's comments, I write our planning objections and represent them at public inquiries. I have also been networking on urban responses to the bill.
I am a board member of the Scottish Mediation Network, which I represent today. I chair its environment and planning initiative. I am a trained environmental mediator and I have also trained in public participation. I teach a course in public participation at the University of Edinburgh and I have written a book on the subject.
I am under contract to the Cairngorms National Park Authority to act as its community liaison co-ordinator with regard to public involvement in the local plan.
I am from the Scottish Community Development Centre, which is a partnership between the University of Glasgow and the Community Development Foundation. We are based in Glasgow.
I am the executive director of Planning Aid for Scotland.
I am the senior development officer at Greenspace Scotland.
I am the Scottish director of the Disability Rights Commission. I also represent the equalities co-ordinating group.
Thank you. I thank all members of the panel for attending the committee this morning. Before we start, I thought that it might be helpful if I were to explain how we hope to manage this morning's round-table event.
The success of the communities event that was held in the Scottish Parliament in October demonstrated how widely the consultation had reached. I admit that I was absolutely delighted to see so many people there. It is a new concept for the public and it is not always the easiest thing to do, but many people have obviously tried to engage with the process. The more such events there are, the more we will get used to and the better we will get at doing it. The problem was that 80-odd per cent of the people there wanted a third-party right of appeal, which is being denied, so the public will question the validity of the process on that basis. However, the consultation exercise managed to reach a considerable number of people.
The event that was held in the chamber was hosted by the Communities Committee. We would like to hear witnesses' opinion of the Scottish Executive's consultation in the run-up to the publication of the bill and about whether communities were involved at that stage.
My point was about the number of people who turned up at the event who had been alerted to it by the Scottish Executive consultation process. That is why there were so many people there.
Let us move on to the national planning framework. How do witnesses think that the public and communities should be involved in the development and adoption of the next national planning framework?
There is great difficulty in getting effective public engagement at that level of policy making. There is a need for engagement and a need to develop policy collaboratively, and a range of consensus-building techniques should be used. I am mindful of the kind of events and forums—for so-called policy dialogue—that are conducted in the United States, which are either facilitated or mediated and which have a high technical input. There is obviously an issue about who actually gets to such events and how representative they are of the wider public. Many of us have been following the debates and discussions on the siting of wind farms, for example, and what seems to be lacking is an overall framework on that topic, which means that the same battle is fought again and again without clear policy guidance.
The national planning framework will be a crucial overarching theme, so it is important that people are brought into the process as early as possible. Planning Aid for Scotland's concern is that the majority of people come into the planning process far too late, partly because of a lack of awareness. The aim of designing—I hope through a planning advice note—a mechanism to allow people to participate as early as possible and with the appropriate tools is opportune. To take up Roger Sidaway's point, it is important that the opportunity is given to get out to the community in a representative way.
I endorse that last statement. At a conference on community councils that Glasgow City Council organised, I led a workshop in which a community council member from the east end of Glasgow said that they could not understand any document that was sent to them, even those from the community councils resource centre, which is designed to assist community councils. The person was also unaware of the importance of engaging at an early stage. In general, that lack of awareness leads to a great deal of poor relations between local authorities and communities on authorities' plans. That is partly because communities do not realise that the actions of local authorities and communities are constrained by what has happened earlier in the process. Any measures should take that into account. Local communities should have face-to-face discussion and practical help, in the clearest terms possible, to enable them to understand what is happening and to engage.
We will come to the issue of development plans—that will probably be the centre of much of our discussions—so I ask everybody to focus their comments on the national planning framework at present.
I see the benefits of the national planning framework, but it will be extremely difficult to achieve public interest at that level and to get people to understand how important it is that they get involved. The contents of the national planning framework will be removed and obscure, so it will be difficult for the public to comment on it. Achieving effective public engagement at that stage will be a difficult task. There will have to be a lot of education about the framework and awareness raising, perhaps through the media. It will need to be made plain to people that, if they do not participate, they will miss points that may matter locally later. Many people will not want to know about the framework. Members know what people are like—they will not bother until the planning application is in front of them, when they will be told that the national planning framework was discussed months or years ago. However, I see the benefits of having a framework.
We have heard a range of concerns, all of which the committee has heard on a few occasions. The committee has a bill before it and our job is to consider whether it looks right or needs changes at stage 2. The bill sketches out a process for how the NPF will be produced and approved and what impact it will have on individual developments that might be included in it. The Executive will produce a consultative draft and a final draft will be laid before Parliament, which will have 40 days to pass comment or carry out some kind of process. The bill does not specify any formal process outwith Parliament—for example, there is no examination in public, as happens with similar documents elsewhere in the United Kingdom. If the task of getting people involved early has not been miraculously achieved, people will find that they have less ability to engage than they do at present. For example, they will have less ability than they have at present to have their arguments tested before a public inquiry.
We need quite a bit more time before the national planning framework is introduced. We also need more time before the provisions in the bill come into force in about two years' time. We should start trying to raise awareness now of all the aspects—not just the NPF but the city plans, the local development plans and so on.
Will you give us a bit more detail on that? Are there specific things that should be in the bill rather than in guidance or secondary legislation?
On the national planning framework, we want to know what will be proposed by way of pre-consultation. We need more specific detail on what that will include. As I state in my written submission, the national planning framework will be guided by a political agenda. We accept that it will come from the planning division, but ministers from whichever party is in Government will follow what is in their manifesto. There should be more time for dialogue on the issues. The 40-day period that you mentioned seems totally inadequate. The Parliament has many other commitments and will have to devote a great deal of time to the subject. What will be the Parliament's priority?
A point in your written submission that caught my eye is the idea that political parties' manifesto commitments and election results will have a big impact on planning decisions. Political parties often say, "We've been elected so we have a mandate," but that seems to go against the Executive's claim that the bill is about involvement, consultation and participation rather than about decisions being made by one group and imposed on another. In the past, planning decisions have been made by politicians at council level, but it is expected that the Parliament and the Executive will begin to make decisions on individual planning developments under the national planning framework. Where will political commitments fit into that system? Should election results determine planning applications? If not, how can we ensure that the elected body that makes the decision is genuinely accountable to the people whom it represents and not just to the people who voted for it?
That is a difficult question. Community councils must try to be as non-political as possible, but we must be aware of all the political implications of the various party manifestos and of election results.
It helps that the bill and the framework stress the importance of meaningful consultation, because it is important that the framework as a whole can take equalities into account. For some time, planning has been seen to be neutral, so equalities issues have not necessarily been considered. Consultation on the national planning framework will provide an opportunity to take equalities matters into account and to ensure that equalities issues such as disability access or race equality are not only considered, but built in at the top level, so that when the different stages of the planning process are followed, particularly by the new strategic development planning authorities, a standard of equalities consideration is expected.
I will comment briefly on a point that Patrick Harvie made. Much regional planning paperwork contains far too much detail, especially the more national documents or development plan documents. That is one reason why it is difficult for people to engage. Nobody can look through a big fat document—they do not have the time to do that, even if they want to.
Several members wish to speak. I think that I have a note of everybody.
I have a short question about consulting at parliamentary level on the national planning framework. To an extent, it has been conceded that dealing with the framework in 40 days will be pretty well impossible. Is anybody aware of best practice in other countries that the committee could consider?
I have cited the policy dialogue work that has been carried out in the United States and I can provide more information on that. There is a precedent there.
I am extremely concerned about what might be included in secondary legislation. If provisions are not in the bill, we have no opportunity to object. Secondary legislation comes along later. Three years after the city plan, we are still waiting for the conservation area assessments, which were supposed to inform planning decisions. Planning advice notes and secondary legislation seem to inform the bill, but in effect they supply an opportunity for omissions, which are of serious concern. The bill will be highly imperfect unless some of the things that people are consigning to secondary legislation are considered much earlier in the process. I would like to say something about consultation later.
To respond to Christine Grahame's question about good practice elsewhere, the Scottish Executive has examined extensively administration of the system in Bavaria, and Planning Aid is examining community engagement there at all levels. We can learn quite a lot. We can look around, but we must be mindful that different countries have their own systems, and their citizens have different opportunities. Whatever we find in other countries, we need to take it with a pinch of salt.
I have a couple of comments to make. First, secondary legislation is fine, provided that there is some auditing process to ensure that the engagement actually happens.
It is important to emphasise that the 40-day parliamentary procedure, to which references have been made, should not be the whole story. Forty days in Parliament is quite a long time, but the procedure should surely be preceded by a much longer period of public consultation on the national plan.
The water and sewerage infrastructure is a relevant current issue. People have said for decades that there is a lack of water and sewerage infrastructure. Scottish Water has been scrambling to complete work since 1 January because European directives need to be implemented. It will probably incur penalties if it does not comply. However, I am not aware of its identifying at an early stage what it will do—it will make proposals only at the planning application stage. There appears to be little pre-consultation in that respect.
Around 90 per cent of people who call Planning Aid for Scotland call very late in the process because they are concerned about a development control issue. It is then difficult to identify how to take things further. We often explain how the system works first. The merits of a particular case are not important to Planning Aid; what is important is getting the technicalities of the process across to people. It does not take people long to understand the system—perhaps five to 20 minutes, depending on the person's concern.
I want to pick up on what John Home Robertson said. People will get involved in things if they think that it is likely that there will be a return on their investment, but a problem with many consultation exercises is that people are not sure that there will be any change as a result of their investment.
I agree with much of that. If members of the public are to be encouraged to get out of their armchairs and away from their televisions and to go out to participate at a level that is far removed from their normal experience, they will have to be confident that it will be worth their while. To allow people to participate effectively, we will have to have access to expertise. Getting impartial expertise is a huge problem—issues have to be considered from a genuinely community point of view.
It is evident that the national planning framework is the biggest challenge. The closer that things get to someone's own doorstep, the more they feel the need to engage.
The word "national" is probably another thing that frightens communities off.
Why not ask people? Whose agenda is going to be set? There is a great danger of the agenda being constrained by official perceptions at the national level. We are talking about a lot of things at the same time, which is inevitable. We are talking about culture change and capacity building at the local level through community councils, the kind of work that Anna Barton has been doing, the excellent work that I have heard about in Dumfries and Galloway, and so on. It will take a long time to bring that through, and we will be crashing through the gears.
For me, what has come out of the discussion is that this will be difficult—Roger Sidaway highlighted that at the beginning—but we need to have a culture change and a fresh approach to involving people. Those are all statements that have been made this morning. Petra Biberbach asked why people have not engaged in the past; I do not know the answer to that. As part of the culture change, dealing with public engagement and encouraging people to be involved will be less of a planning role and more the role of the experts who come from backgrounds of involving communities. Unless the Executive front loads the process, people will perhaps still not engage.
That is a vital point. We all have a lot of different techniques available for community engagement, from mediation to focus groups and visioning. What is really needed at this stage is awareness. Almost 40 years after the publication of the Skeffington report, the majority of people out there still do not know that there is such a thing as a planning system, despite the fact that we have an open and transparent system. Yes, it is couched in technical language, but that is partly because the process is technical.
Not only will it be difficult, but it will take a long time. A few people will participate in the early days, but only when other people see the feedback from that and realise that participation has led to some level of influence will more people join in. Petra Biberbach mentioned people taking an interest only in local developments. People are motivated only by things that affect them immediately, and they perceive that larger-scale proposals or things that are further away from them will affect them only if they are told that they will. Awareness raising is hugely important.
I will comment briefly on lack of engagement with what I regard as, in principle, a very good planning system, which has existed in Scotland for a long time.
We will return to the issue of enforcement later. I am grateful for people's comments on the national planning framework, but I am conscious of the time so let us move on to public involvement in the development plan process.
The hierarchy of consultation that is set out in the bill is helpful, but a proactive approach will be required to engage different communities and equalities. It is important that when plans are being set out, especially at the pre-consultation stage, consideration is given to how a development is likely to impact on, for instance, older people, disabled people or faith communities. Under the bill, such considerations can be thought of at the start of the process. Potentially, people will need to think about how they engage at an early stage organisations, groups and individuals who might not necessarily think that a particular development plan will impact on them. Otherwise, the opportunity that the bill provides to integrate such issues will be missed.
I am not sure that the bill will ensure greater public involvement but it will certainly facilitate such involvement, which is desirable. As I point out in our written submission, the current system assumes in many ways that the only role for local residents is as objectors to a development that has been proposed. Early involvement will at least give people a chance to contribute more creatively. That is a hugely positive step.
I will comment in the light of experience of engaging people with development plans. Three stages are involved in that. First, the people concerned need to read the proposed development plan. However, people have considerable difficulties in doing that, so that is the stage at which they most need help. The second stage involves discussion with the local authorities. Before the local authority prints a final development plan or proposal, it needs to discuss with people how things might be improved from the perspective of the community. Glasgow was very good on that in relation to those communities that had been able to read the plan, but it was not so good in relation to those that had not.
My concern is that planning must come down further towards a local level. Local development plans become hostages to what has been decided in the national planning framework and the strategic development plans. Communities can start off from a position of having to address that.
One of the most important ways of ensuring that people see that their input is of value is to make it clear that it changes decisions. You talked about the first hurdle that we have to get over. To extend the metaphor to the point of absurdity, we are not just talking about a series of hurdles; we are talking about a track that goes round in a circle. We are talking about a cycle of planning: keeping development plans up to date on a five-year cycle and keeping that cycle going at every local authority level. My concern is how we ensure that, when people get involved late—because they see something happening near them or they feel that something will affect them—they do not have such a negative experience as a result of their late involvement, leading them to have even less motivation to get involved when we next come round to the beginning of the cycle. We want people to get involved early, but that does not happen in isolation of other points of the cycle. Is there anything in the bill that might make people less able to affect decisions if they get involved late? If that is the case, what can we do about it?
Going back to the principles of planning, we are trying to change the planning culture from being an adversarial one—with late meetings and so on—to an early and collaborative one, in which there is dialogue between planners, developers and communities and the agenda is not necessarily set by local councils. With respect to Jean Charsley, the system that she described is one that we are trying to get away from. There should be inputs relating to the local issues that should be dealt with in the plan. However, we are working within guidance, frameworks and constraints. How will what is decided at a policy level in the national planning framework be interpreted at the local level? What are the constraints on development? What are our goals? What do we want to achieve? We should look forward to what we want to achieve, rather than looking backward and negatively.
In my work in the Cairngorms national park, in the villages where there had been extremely contentious applications in the previous few years, we had a much higher level of engagement. I spent quite a long time talking to the people who had objected to those applications—as we all know, that is where people normally enter the process—to try to take them one stage earlier, which is the local plan. That has been successful. You can get people to come in at an earlier and earlier stage.
Planning Aid for Scotland runs a training programme called planning for people, which is usually centred around areas that are undergoing change, including areas that are affected by the development plan process. We have found that people do not necessarily get hung up about not getting what they wanted, as long as the system is explained to them. One gentleman who came to us recently said that he did not get the outcome he had wanted, but at least he knew why he did not get it. That is often the case.
Timing is a major problem for cities, because city plans must deal with several localities, all of which have different problems, and the people in those localities alert the local authority to problems that it has not foreseen. Timing is crucial. The Executive tends to equate efficiency with speed, but that does not necessarily generate good outcomes. For example, before us are two major planning applications, one of which is contrary to the local plan. One application is four times the size of the local plan—I have four large folders on it—and is accompanied by a slick document on socioeconomic aspects and another document on transport. A planning consultant produced that documentation and we will need to take advice on aspects of it. We also have a document on the Clyde link from the council, which is accompanied by two large documents plus plans.
Patrick Harvie talked about disincentives to engagement. Six or seven years ago, I was involved in a public local inquiry, to which I submitted about 20 to 25 objections. I managed to have one word changed. I also ensured that an area of ground that was identified for housing development included provision for extra play facilities and car parking, because of the area's confines. An application for that small housing development was made two or three years ago. After much haggling, the local authority cut more or less all the green space and the requirements to improve transport, so that all that remained was a square. That is a practical example of a disincentive.
On culture change, closer working between planning authorities and the building regulations staff of local authorities would assist the consultation of individuals. At times, building regulations and building decisions can have a direct impact on whether a person with a disability can access a building, but planning decisions about a whole development may determine whether an individual can access the community. There are good examples of planning and building services working more closely, but further joint working would help, so that individuals and disabled people are not consulted twice or at the wrong stage of the process, when decisions about individual buildings have been made.
Do you have examples of places where buildings are accessible but the community is not?
There are a number of such examples. Accessible buildings have been built without consideration having been given to transport connections, which have had to be fitted in later, or without consideration having been given to external access, such as the pavement. Closer working between builders and planners would be helpful in that context. The Scottish Executive recently published a good planning advice note on inclusive design, which is helping people to make progress on such matters and which we hope will be used more. Perhaps the advice could be made statutory.
Patrick Harvie asked a legitimate question about how we encourage communities to engage and Douglas Murray responded by telling us about his experiences. Will the Executive's proposed approach of front loading the system and allowing for positive engagement around developments—if it is done properly—limit objections because communities will accept that particular developments are needed? Will people engage less in the planning process because they will have been engaged from the outset in envisaging how their communities will develop, the services that will be needed and the places where expansion will be necessary? Will the approach address the serious problem of consultation fatigue and keep people engaged? How can we ensure that the bill delivers in that regard?
Those are important matters. We are talking about the difference between consultation and participation. In a consultation, people go to communities, ask questions, get responses and then return to the office and make a decision. The participatory approach means that people say, "Here are issues that we want to discuss. After we have debated those issues we might come up with solutions that meet the needs of all parties." Everyone approaches the discussion with a fairly open agenda and the solutions that people come up with might be different from what was expected. That might mean that people feel involved in the process and remain involved, instead of going away and then coming back with an objection.
I apologise for arriving late—I gave advance notice.
Give us 20 years, not 10. To be honest, that is the bottom line. It will take at least 10 years to build respect. The problem is that because of experience, we do not trust statements that there will be a culture change if that change is not backed up by enforcement to ensure public accountability. Will involvement be only a tick-the-box exercise? Petra Biberbach mentioned the community involvement statement that is used down south; there are complaints about that being nothing more than a tick-the-box exercise.
I am sorry, I must correct you on that. I did not mention developers; I talked about directors of planning and conveners of planning committees.
Right. I was going to say that some developers have said that they will still push the limits—that is the culture of the industry. We want a healthy economy; we need employment and developers need to make money and be profitable to keep going, so we must also consider the matter from their point of view, but if the system allows some developers to get away with pushing the limits and if they become more profitable than those which play by the rules, which will win out? That has been a huge part of the problem in Greengairs. We can pass the buck to developers or others all we like, but the system must ensure that there are penalties when things are not done correctly, and that there are rewards for people who engage in the culture change. The change has to be supported all the way through, so penalties and rewards will be crucial.
We will return to enforcement and good neighbour agreements later on.
We were asked whether we welcome the bill; Planning Aid for Scotland does. Anything that improves efficiency as well as widening inclusion must be welcomed.
There are different levels of culture change, different audiences for it and different stages to it. It will be quicker to change the culture within the planning system than it will be to change the culture of distrust in the communities. It could well be the case that, in two or three years, the planning system will operate better, but it will take five or six years' worth of seeing whether provisions that are in the bill come to fruition and whether it changes things before people start to believe that their input is real. That is simply how development works.
We certainly need culture change, but it must be two-way change; it cannot be one way. It is coming across that the bill proposes a one-way system with no checks and balances. We will come on to that later.
I accept that point. We all have to change the way we work—it is a continuing process.
If you have been consulted as part of the national planning framework, and if your objections have been overruled, would your organisation be likely to get involved in local development plans? How will you be affected if you are being consulted to death but have no checks and balances at the end?
I think that the point that Ms White is trying to make is that she is concerned that people will be overconsulted and constantly burdened with engaging in the process, which could make them feel a little disheartened.
On what happens when people object but their objections are not taken into account—in other words, when they do not get what they want—we have to get away completely from the present approach. We should not put something in front of people so that they can simply say, "Yes, that's fine"—although that is unlikely, because the people who come out are usually the ones who object. We should have a discussion before we reach that stage. Obviously, in real life, there will be times when people feel that they have not got what they wanted. That need not happen often, as long as people no longer think of the process in terms of their being offered something to which they object, but instead think of it in terms of their being able to take part in a working dialogue.
Let me try to be uncharacteristically provocative. Around this table, there is a perception that community groups and community councils might be more representative and more sensitive than local authorities. That is fine, but let us consider a hypothetical situation. A local authority and planners have identified a need for affordable rented housing in their development plan. Owner-occupiers in the area who are worried about the value of their houses and who are in controlling positions on a residents association or the community council say, "Oh dear me! We don't want that kind of development in our part of the world." They then make representations on behalf of the community to bomb out the idea. How can we ensure that minority groups, deprived groups and people with specific needs are represented in the system, and that professionals and people who are well-connected do not have a power of veto? As representatives of the public, committee members are worried about that.
Before I answer that, I have a comment on Sandra White's question. People accept decisions as long as they know why they have been made, which takes us back to transparency. It is often assumed that the community is one entity, but communities can be divided and have many different aims. At present, we are exploring issues to do with Gypsy Traveller sites. We are working with the Scottish Gypsy Traveller Association to broker a better scenario that will allow people to talk to one another. Gypsy Travellers need sites that provide access to schooling and other services, but that can be difficult because many people still do not want a Traveller site next to their homes. The bill will facilitate greater dialogue, but we do not have the answers yet.
A factor that has been ignored is to do with local councils. For example, we support the involvement of Travellers in a local community, but a Traveller site in the area was moved right down the Clyde because a prestigious development was planned.
I will answer John Home Robertson's question.
I hoped that somebody would.
I make it clear that, from my point of view a person is not necessarily right just because he or she objects. In fact, such people will often not be right, because "right" does not always mean "in the interests of the person who objects". No doubt such people are right in their terms, but right, as I understand it, has a bigger sense. The layer in which decisions are made about right or wrong in that bigger sense is that of local elected representatives.
Obviously, the point about the involvement of minority groups is important from an equalities perspective. The critical point is the extent to which that involvement is considered at the beginning of the process rather than later on. Local authorities have certain duties in relation to disability and race issues and they have to develop schemes to consult people, but it would be helpful if, beyond that, planning authorities had a duty to have regard to equal opportunities at the beginning of the process. That could apply to issues such as community safety, which impacts across a range of interests.
Jean Charsley said that there is a general feeling that local elected representatives in the system might be corrupt. I would not—
I did not mean that they are corrupt.
I am pleased that you clarified that. If anyone thinks that there is such corruption, there is a mechanism available to them. If communities think that there is corruption, they should be going to the police.
That is an interesting question. The point that Cathie Craigie makes is the answer that I was going to give to an earlier question. The bill refers to consultation statements at the strategic development plan stage. That mechanism starts to get around some of John Home Robertson's issues about who has the power of feedback of information. If the consultation statement is correct, it should hit all the relevant audiences in all the relevant communities and not just the obvious starting points.
Deryck Irving makes a telling point. In the terminology that is being developed, there is too much mention of consultation and not enough mention of participation, community engagement and consensus building. Rather than taking over the role of local authorities, the bill is a way of ensuring that local authorities work more effectively with communities. It is also a way of increasing their accountability.
I will start by answering a point that was made by John Home Robertson, which will lead into the rest of my response. He spoke about communities taking part and about their not wanting certain developments. The problem is that communities are often afraid to agree to any kind of development in their areas because—as I have said—if they say yes to 10 wind turbines, they had better believe that you will get 100. By agreeing to developments, they feel that they are setting a precedent.
In answer to Cathie Craigie's question, a planning advice note is currently being prepared on community engagement. Some of us here are contributing to it. Essentially, that process is to do two things: it will consider how communities can be engaged more effectively and it will widen inclusion. That PAN will go alongside the bill. Those of us round the table today want to ensure that it will be practice-oriented and that it will be a tool for everybody who is engaged in the planning system.
I want to wind up the discussion about the development plan. Christine Grahame and Patrick Harvie have questions. I will allow them to ask their questions, to which panel members can respond.
I hope that I will raise a fresh issue. The discussion has been interesting. I like the use of the word, "participation" because it is a much kinder word to use. The question of who should be involved is interesting, given what Petra Biberbach said about the varying extent to which communities are involved.
Before anyone answers that question, Patrick Harvie will ask one. Please remember Christine Grahame's important question.
Harald Tobermann referred to what communities should expect of their local elected representatives and what local elected representatives should expect of communities. Could we hook the process—perhaps at the bottom end of the development hierarchy for smaller local developments—into the changes in the structure of local elected representation? In future, there will be three or four councillors in a multimember ward. Could they be given responsibility for conducting a process that involves the wider community, community councils and other community groups? A councillor's ability to input into a development currently depends on whether they are on the planning committee, but three or four councillors in a multimember ward might have a more collegiate role. That might be asking a lot of our political culture, but changes will be expected of it.
I will answer Christine Grahame's question. We had a discussion with the Scottish Youth Parliament about the planning system and identified the need to do some work on how we engage with youngsters. "Youngsters" is a broad term, but we have concentrated on engaging 16 to 25-year-olds in areas of change. It is easy to reach people who are in formal education, but it is more difficult to reach people who are 16 and have left school. We are working with Young Scot and Youth Link to develop a programme that enables us to reach those people. It is vital that people who are potential future decision makers are involved in the planning process. We will let the committee have the results of that work.
I will respond to Patrick Harvie's point about whether local councillors in multimember wards should have a specific role in planning. In principle, subsidiarity is a good thing: the lower the level at which a decision is made, the better. Making decisions at a local level might be appropriate for a certain class of decisions, such as those related to householders and other, smaller applications. However, what I like about the current planning system in Edinburgh, which is what I have experience of, is that we have a larger planning committee, so there is expertise, accountability and transparency, which we may or may not get at a more local level. A group of three or four people is a smaller sample from which to garner expertise.
On Christine Grahame's point about involving young people, in the Cairngorms a young person is anyone under the age of 45.
That still does not include me.
We have developed quite a few methods that we use to engage young people. In rural areas, the young people whom we can get hold of easily tend to go away as soon as they can. The challenge is to work with people who will stay, live and work in rural areas. We have to go to them—they will not come to us. We have to visit youth groups and hang around on street corners in an effort to get hold of one or two key people, whom we get to text all their mates. That is one way of getting word around.
We have had experience of involving students, who might be as young as 16 or who might be in their 20s. A huge number of students live in the Hillhead area, which is around the university. Most students are concerned about living within walking distance of the university.
I will give a quick answer to Patrick Harvie's question. It is true that we must work on the principle of front loading. Is it not better to prevent conflict than to have to resolve it later on? That is the simple logic. We are talking about being proactive. I propose that the bill's provisions on the consultation statement by developers should be reworded and that the statement should be renamed a participation statement. That is another principle that we should introduce if we are serious about getting people to be proactive about seeking participation.
Thank you for your comments on the development plan process. Let us move on to pre-application consultation. We have mentioned the importance of people having confidence in the planning system. Do you believe that a system of pre-application consultation will help to rebuild communities' confidence in the planning process?
Can we call it pre-application participation, please?
We will certainly bear that comment in mind.
Pre-application discussion with developers should be encouraged. Such discussion has certainly been lacking in some areas in previous years. I will give an example. I was at a petrol station one evening when I was waylaid by a developer for half an hour on the subject of a proposed development and the problems that he was having with the planners. In response to requests from the planners, he had made about nine sets of variations to his application to develop a brownfield site. Pre-application discussion should have been essential in that case, because the planners had insisted that the development include an element of affordable housing, which the local community was against because the village concerned had a limited public transport service.
Will the bill address that problem by ensuring that better discussions take place?
I certainly agree that more discussion with developers is required, even though some developers may shy away from that. Whether or not we like wind farms, there is probably a lot of mileage in looking at how wind farm developers have tried to engage communities. Regardless of whether they are for good or for bad, wind farm developments seem to have been the subject of much discussion at all stages of the process. I agree that pre-application discussions are required.
It seems to me that the situation that Douglas Murray described a few moments ago is an example of a bad planning department. I am shocked by what he described, as I have never come across a planner with such low standards in Edinburgh. Pre-application consultation or participation—or whatever we call it—would not help much in such situations, in which the planning department simply requires expertise. Having acquired some expertise over the years, I do not think that we should generally expect that the bill will do much about that particular planning department, which obviously needs to be beefed up and requires root-and-branch reform.
A couple of difficulties exist. Every developer will undertake some form of consultation—or even, if we are lucky, participation—but the bill imposes no mandatory requirement on developers to act on the findings of any consultation that is undertaken. If we want effective pre-application consultations whereby developers and communities get together to make them work, we should consider whether such consultations need to go hand in hand with a third-party right of appeal. If developers knew that failure to make a good job of pre-application consultation could leave them open further down the line to a third party exercising their right of appeal—which would apply in a limited set of circumstances—they would be more likely to engage in genuine dialogue.
Is it acceptable that developers should be allowed to get away with those things? Should we allow matters to reach the stage at which people need to appeal the decision? Should there not be a requirement on developers to engage with communities and to allow them to participate in the decision-making process?
There is a strong feeling that the process is weighted in favour of developers and against communities. Developers have a whole battery of expertise at their disposal that communities do not have. We feel strongly that there should be independent assessments—traffic and socioeconomic assessments, for example—of some of the documents that are submitted. Those assessments do not happen, and many communities cannot participate in conducting them because they do not have the required expertise or access to advice.
The bill definitely places more emphasis on pre-application participation. In Greengairs, we have been extremely successful with a developer, as the convener knows. We worked with that developer and ended up backing its application for a huge recycling facility.
Pre-application consultation is vital in order to front load the system, which is what we want at the end of the day. We want people to be involved in the process at a much earlier stage. There are already good and welcome examples of participation—especially involving the house-building industry—in Scotland.
As we have concluded our discussion of pre-application consultation, I suspend the meeting for five minutes. The meeting will be reconvened at 11.30, when we will continue our discussions.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
We move on to the issue of enforcement and good neighbour agreements. We have not touched on good neighbour agreements yet today, but we have touched on enforcement. Do the witnesses believe that the proposals in the bill that relate to enforcement and good neighbour agreements will promote greater public confidence in the planning system and the power of communities to monitor and limit the detrimental impact that some developments can have on their communities?
Frankly, we do not have an enforcement system for the 21st century. The stop notices and all the rest of it try to make things work. That is all very well if we can get hold of enforcement officers, but we have had some horrendous experiences with that. I have put that in writing and I am not sure that I want to go through it again. We have quite a lot of experience of the non-enforcement of conditions. Enforcement would go some way towards helping the public to trust and have confidence.
Based on your experiences in Greengairs, where you do not have a good neighbour agreement but you have a relationship with a developer that amounts to a good neighbour agreement, do you think that the issue is one of enshrining good practice, such as that which exists in Greengairs, and making it more widely available across the country to all communities, not just Greengairs?
I would like to see how that can be done. The issue comes down to how it can be controlled once it is in place. There is another developer with whom our relationship just did not work. The community and the first developer I mentioned have a genuine will to work together. We are seeing the benefits of that all round. I would like those practices to be enshrined in a way that would enable other communities to benefit from them. However, that would take time in relation to every community.
Enforcement is important. There is no point in having rules and regulations if we do not enforce them. The good neighbour agreement is an issue that comes up all the time. I have always been interested in that issue. You are right to say that if a third party—a community—enters into a good neighbour agreement with a developer, it has the right to appeal if that agreement is deviated from. However, that is not mandatory; it is just a suggested way of proceeding that involves the developer and a group of people.
That is a good suggestion. Perhaps it should be incorporated into good practice that there should be good neighbour agreements for developments of the sort that we are discussing. Our experience of enforcement is not happy. We asked for enforcement in our conservation area and were told that that was not in the public interest. An inquiry into the matter illustrated that there were three enforcement officers for the whole of the south and west of Glasgow, who could not do anything. An inquiry by councillors indicated that the issue was the lowest priority when it came to allocating resources. If the bill is to work, money must be allocated so that a sufficient number of enforcement officers are employed. It should not be possible for that money to be used to fund other priorities. It would also help if certificates of completion were issued after site visits, rather than negotiated over the telephone because of a shortage of staff. I agree that planning permission should be subject to conditions.
I want to comment on the issue of enforcement from an equalities perspective. Running alongside the bill are duties that authorities will need to take into account under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. From next year, there will be further duties in respect of gender. Authorities will be required to consult on and to take account of equalities matters. If they do not, individuals will have the right to seek judicial review of decisions. There is an additional enforcement route on the equalities side to be considered.
I stress the importance of enforcement. Imagine a judicial system in which people are given prison sentences by a court but there are no prisons where they can be locked up. We would quickly lose trust in such a system. To some extent, that is the situation that exists with the planning system in Scotland. Conditions are being imposed that are normally sensible, but there are few mechanisms for monitoring them, let alone enforcing them. Local authorities do not have the resources to do that properly. They rely entirely on members of the public coming forward and saying that a condition has not been particularly well enforced. As we know, members of the public may not be able to comment on that issue because they lack the necessary technical expertise or access to the site. As has been said, even if breaches of conditions are pointed out to local authorities, enforcement of those conditions is very low on their agenda. In Edinburgh, there is a planning charter that sets out the conditions that the council will enforce, but most issues roll off the table. Beefing up that side of things must be part and parcel of the legislation.
In the past, lack of enforcement was one reason for the sense of distrust or, at least, scepticism that existed about the planning system. We like to think that most developers will play by the rules, but there are always some who do not. If they are not pulled up sharply and enforcement is not seen to happen, people will ask themselves what the point of getting involved is. That is part of the problem that we have been discussing.
We may need to consider giving communities some assurance that good neighbour agreements will be enforced under subsection (9) of proposed new section 75D of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997. The bill states that a good neighbour agreement
I take your point and I agree that such agreements should be enforceable. The problem is that the public do not necessarily want to go into such a system. We always get accused of being adversarial, but we do not want to have to use the legal system. We would like it if the Scottish Executive played its part by ensuring that there are penalties and so on. Judicial reviews are out of the league of most communities; it might cost £100,000 for a judicial review of a big development, and we could not find that kind of money.
That might be an alternative; there might be two routes. The point that I am making is that the agreement would be a backstop. If a breach of contract could be established before a sheriff, an interdict could be obtained on the spot. I was just considering that line. At the moment, that would not be mandatory. If the good neighbour agreements are to be of value to communities, the recording of them should be mandatory and they should be enforceable.
I see the good neighbour agreement as being more about a good working relationship between the community and the developer, in which there is engagement and information is passed around, but the legal safeguards should be in the terms of the planning consent. When those are breached, it should not be for the community, the community council or an individual to pursue that. It should be for the local authority—which unfortunately might not have enforced such planning conditions in the past—to enforce them and, where necessary, take the legal recourse that it will have.
On the ability to take someone to court, I would like to be able to take the local authority to court in this context. At the moment, if the local authority does not want to enforce a planning condition that I think it should enforce, it can say that it does not want to and does not have to, and that is the end of the matter. I would like to have the legal right to take the local authority to court, or at least to threaten to take it to court—I am sure that it would enforce planning conditions if I made the threat. There must be an obligation on local authorities to enforce the conditions that they have laid down. If those conditions have not been met, people should have the right to take the local authority to court over that.
One of the difficulties is that we are all aware of instances where a local authority has not pursued enforcement because it does not have the resources—financial or otherwise—to fight a large developer. It is seen to cave in because it has no other choice, given the means that are available to it. It is not about what the local authority would necessarily choose to do but about what it is able to do under the circumstances. If good neighbour agreements are made enforceable, local authorities will have to be given more teeth through the increased financial resources that they might need to take a large private company to court.
Would you be in favour of the local authority having the right to claim fees or expenses from the developer in those circumstances in order to pay for the appeal process?
I do not have the expertise to suggest a particular mechanism, but it is obvious that developers—especially large ones—have more power and clout than any other group when it comes to planning. They can just delay and delay and, no matter what conditions they flouted in the first place, they eventually just get away with it.
I was involved in a big local planning case in which the developer, Wimpey, appealed against the council's decision. That resulted in a public inquiry. I had to take 14 days off work to attend the inquiry every day, to cross-examine the witnesses on the other side. The chair of the City of Edinburgh Council's local planning committee also attended the inquiry. In my view, that person is in my pay and he should have been out dealing with planning matters, not sitting on a public inquiry into the Wimpey case. That person, whom we elected to represent us in planning matters, was out of the picture for that period. At the end of the inquiry, although Wimpey lost, the costs were not awarded, so Edinburgh lost out in a big way. If developers want to go down the route of an appeal, they should pay the costs when they lose.
We are very disadvantaged in this. We do not have the means to go to law or ask for judicial review and we are not protected in law either. We have been warned by Glasgow City Council's solicitors that we have no protection against being cited in legal actions by aggrieved or disappointed developers. That is one of the things that inhibits people's involvement with community councils. Perhaps some attention should be given to finding a way to protect the legitimate activities of community councils, to enable them to object substantively in the face of the bullying that we experience from well-funded large organisations.
The point has been made several times that community councillors have problems with their status. One question in a recent discussion paper was whether community councillors should have some kind of corporate status, which might help the individual community councillors.
Let us move on to mediation and objection. We have touched briefly on mediation. Do you have any additional comments to make on what you consider to be the potential benefits of the use of mediation in the planning system and process, in terms of building consensus?
In general, using mediation to resolve disputes has the advantage of leading to a better outcome; improved relationships, which are very important; and, in the long term, savings in time and cost. As Ann Coleman's case illustrates, there is a value in getting independent, impartial, confidential and non-judgmental help in the process. The mediator is there to assist with the process of negotiation between the parties, not to deliver the outcome—it is not an adjudication.
I agree with Roger Sidaway. A range of skills and techniques is important in managing engagement, dialogue or participation—or whatever we call the process. I want to alert the committee to the existence of a couple of pieces of work that identify those skills and competences. The Scottish centre for regeneration commissioned work a couple of years ago, which was eventually published in the document "Creating a learning landscape: a skills framework for community regeneration"—I think that the Royal Town Planning Institute was consulted in that context. The document identified what needs to be done beyond the boundaries of each professional area.
I listened carefully to what Roger Sidaway said. There is a huge role for mediation, which I hope will help to shorten the period—be it two years, five years, 10 years or 20 years—that is needed to change the culture. Roger Sidaway talked about building good relationships. Are there currently adequate opportunities for community groups to enter into mediation? Does the bill contain provisions that will enhance such opportunities? If the bill does not contain such provisions, should it be amended in that regard?
In general, there is a growing awareness of the value of mediation in a number of contexts. Community mediation services are dealing with family and neighbour disputes and there is increasing interest in using mediation in commercial disputes, for example over breach of contract. Skills and expertise in mediation are being built up. We do not have precedents and examples in the planning field—I am interested in the example that Stuart Hashagen described and would like to discuss that with him. However, the logic exists and there seems no reason why it should not be applied. Given that the value of mediation has been accepted in principle, I repeat that a pilot scheme should be set up to allow careful scrutiny of how mediation would work. For example, we must consider the availability of mediators by ascertaining the extent to which community mediation services would have the capacity to assist in the process and the extent to which mediators from the private sector would be needed. A pilot scheme would help to thrash out such details in a practical way.
I admit that when I scrutinised the bill I did not look for opportunities for mediation. Perhaps the matter will be included in guidance. Does the bill provide opportunities for mediation? If it does not, should mediation be mentioned in the bill rather than be left to guidance?
We have debated the matter among ourselves and on balance we think that a hard and fast provision in the bill is probably not required, because in essence mediation should be a voluntary process. However, in so far as the bill's approach is to emphasise community engagement and participation, mediation should be explicitly mentioned as being part of the toolkit.
Mediation is a crucial part of the culture change that is required. The more that mediation is used successfully and seen to work, the more people might move away from the adversarial approach. Mediation should be considered at all stages, even before people have any issues to fall out about. A framework should be in place to allow dialogue before people form entrenched views about anything. Although, like Roger Sidaway, I do not want hard and fast provisions on mediation in the bill—the last thing that we want is overly prescriptive legislation—mediation is one of the most useful tools in the tool kit.
I was going to ask about the practical issues that arise from the existing capacity for mediation in Scotland, but Roger Sidaway has addressed that. Does a balance need to be struck between what we might call mediation with a capital M, which by definition involves an independent and external person, and getting planning authorities and communities to gain some of the techniques and skills that mediators use? That would allow planners to become people who deal with people as well as people who deal with plans. Would some sharing of skills be useful?
Yes. The more people there are who know and appreciate mediation and, ideally, have practical experience of it, the better. The committee should remember that we are talking about assisted negotiation. Negotiation goes on all the time in our everyday lives and mediation is just an enhanced negotiation process. I am glad to say that people from local authorities and many Government agencies attend the training courses that I run. In trying to achieve culture change, it is important to have people inside agencies who are fully aware of the implications of mediation, so that there are internal advocates of the mediation approach. However, a clear distinction must be made between officials in planning authorities who are the decision makers and those who are interested in negotiation and mediation, otherwise potential conflicts of interest may arise. We must separate the responsibilities of decision making from those of bringing in impartial advice and skills.
I agree that mediation has an important role early on in the consensus-building approach as well as in conflict resolution. Two members of Planning Aid for Scotland are currently doing a mediation course. As Roger Sidaway said, it is vital that resources are found to implement the pilot that has been talked about for the past 18 months but which is just hanging there, because we do not know what could work, what works well, what local authorities must do and what outcomes can be expected. We need much more hands-on experience, which is why it would be helpful for the committee to have the results of the pilot before any new provisions are put into the bill. The bill will undergo various stages, so now may be a good time to consider initiating the pilot.
In the mediation process, we need to bring local elected members into the equation, because they are removed. When we ask elected members to talk to us about decisions that have been made about our area, the only one who comes is our local councillor—no one else ever comes. The members of the planning committee have never yet come to speak to our community. Elected members need to be brought into the process.
I have been a convert to mediation since I went to Baltimore and saw it working in lots of different facilities and areas there, not just in litigation but in area neighbourhood things. I am convinced that there is a role for mediation and I am a wee bit disappointed that you do not want it to be covered in the bill. I seem to remember that the family law legislation covers mediation—it is not compulsory, but it is there in the legislation.
Mediation would be most helpful in engendering constructive participation in communities. For example, the University of Glasgow wanted to build a new medical sciences building, which was desperately needed and for which it has funding. We had good pre-application discussions with the university and it agreed to some changes, but at the same time we were aware that there was a growing, orchestrated campaign against the proposal by particular sections of the community. If it had been possible to get an impartial mediator in at an early stage to discuss the problems and deal with them, that would have helped. We tried to do that at a later stage when we invited all parties to come and discuss things, but by that time positions were so entrenched that nothing could be done.
I take Christine Grahame's point. I undertake to go back and, with my colleagues, reconsider what might be done in the bill.
The committee would find it useful if you could submit some written evidence of your experience of environmental mediation in the United States. That would be much appreciated and would give us a good context for reflecting on what has been said this morning and for adding to our knowledge.
As communities, we need to build in more networking between the various parties, and mediation and equal rights are subjects that I have not really considered from a community council point of view. However, community councillors have statutory obligations in respect of human rights, equal rights and disability discrimination, which I became aware of only a few months ago.
I wanted to say something about resources, but I will just comment on Douglas Murray's points because community planning is a big part of the planning issue and people who are involved in any kind of community planning and development are more likely to become involved in planning issues. There are nearly 50 community development trusts and companies within the Cairngorms national park, which are producing creative solutions to identified local need. Four local authorities cover the park area, but they do not engage sufficiently. We still have top-down solutions imposed on us. We have just been told that our new community planning partnership will have a community representative for the first time. Speaking on behalf of communities, I do not regard that as community planning; it is local authority planning. As Douglas Murray said, community planning and local authority planning should be linked.
It is important to consider the stage that has been reached in the rolling-out of the community planning legislation and acknowledge that that process is based on engagement being a prerequisite. Community planning partnerships must engage with community bodies in their area in order to develop a vision, then produce development delivery plans to achieve that.
Planning Aid has been in existence since 1993 and, until 18 months ago, it was able to employ one and a half people and had about 60 volunteers. Over the past year and a half, we have increased our casework by 55 per cent, which has led to severe resource issues. Our work is delivered through Planning Aid volunteers, all of whom give their time freely, and those 110 volunteers are severely stretched. We therefore want to up the number of volunteers commensurate with the demand. We must double their number, as the demand will be there to get more people involved in the system.
Do you need extra resources to develop your volunteer network?
Absolutely. At the moment, we have a Scotland-wide network of planners. We have planning volunteers in Orkney who find it difficult to work in Shetland. We have planners all over Scotland, but we need many more and we need the resources to go with that.
The majority of your volunteers are professional planners or have some planning qualification. Can you envisage developing an additional network of people who are not professional planners but who can advise communities on how they might set themselves up into groups and on how they can engage with the process short of the technical planning considerations? Can you envisage having two tiers of volunteers, one of which addresses issues of a more general nature and one of which is made up of planning professionals?
Yes. You must have read our literature. We have 100 planning volunteers who are planners and must be Royal Town Planning Institute registered, as that provides indemnity in giving free and impartial advice. We also have about 100 organisations that we call our friends. Those people are not planners, but they are out there, telling other people about the service that they have received from Planning Aid. Most of them are amenity groups or community councils that we have trained in the past three years—we have trained 243 community councils on aspects of the bill. Those friends are vital to us and we would like to do more with them.
I will add to the shopping list for resources. The most valuable resource for people in the community is their time. We will never be able to pay for that, so one object should be to minimise the use of their time—to try not to make processes as drawn out as they sometimes are and always to keep an eye on whether a process can be shortened without losing fairness or affecting any technical considerations. Sometimes, I feel that that does not happen.
Capacity building is also relevant to many equality groups. In relation to the built environment and disabled people, we receive many comments about how further capacity building would help to enable information to reach local groups as well as national groups.
Thank you for that helpful point.
We still very much need a third-party right of appeal. The one way to make earlier involvement and all the other measures in the system work is to provide public accountability, and the way to do that is to have a right of appeal so that, in appropriate situations, we can pull everything together and put it out there. The public should have a right to information and a right to appeal to ensure that what they have said has been truly assessed.
As I said earlier, a third-party right of appeal will mean that people will try harder to get the plan right much earlier in the process. The issue is one of parity. Everyone should be on a level playing field.
If all of the aspects of the bill were applied in the most positive and effective ways possible, that might remove the need for a third-party right of appeal. However, especially because one of the drivers of the legislation is the desire to speed up the process, I am concerned that that might not happen. There is a danger in that, whenever a corner is cut, the community is disenfranchised further. It is slightly iniquitous that only certain people will be able to question decisions. The safeguards that will be built in by the bill will work only if they apply fully, meaningfully and constructively. There will always be problems if engagement is insufficient, hurried or is conducted in language that is not wholly accessible. There are dangers in assuming that merely to put in place provisions that look good will solve the problem.
We should also bear in mind the fact that the third-party right of appeal has nothing to do with nimbyism, which some people who agree that there should be one have been accused of. It would be a limited right.
The committee has seen the petition that was co-sponsored by Scottish Environment LINK and the ASCC. It gathered more than 5,000 signatures from a wide variety of sources across Scotland.
The bill contains provisions to that effect in respect of fish farming in Shetland.
In my experience, people who ask me to become involved in planning issues usually do not have much experience of the planning system. For them, the idea of scrutinising a planning application, submitting an objection to it, attending a planning committee and thinking about the possibility that they might need to participate in a public inquiry at some point down the line is quite intimidating. People who do not have much experience of the planning system can be put off by the thought of having to go through all those steps.
I agree that a third-party right of appeal would affect how the whole planning system works. It would give communities, interest groups and other organisations confidence that planners must listen to their views and take them into account. Such a provision would also address the question of parity. It is important that the bill start off on a positive footing by telling developers, "Guys, you need to have consulted"—
Do you think that the provision of a right of third-party appeal or the operation of appeals would have that effect? That is an important difference.
I think that that effect would come from a right to a third-party appeal.
The issue to which people are drawing the Executive's attention is that planning is about not just promoting development but about regulating and scrutinising applications so that development does not take place in an uninhibited way that adversely affects people's lives. We need some scrutiny—in particular, we need a third-party right of appeal for situations in which the authority that is granting the planning consent is also an interested party. At the moment, the Scottish Executive cannot deal with that situation. It has only 26 officers and such complaints do not receive any attention. There are other areas in which just knowing that they could appeal would give people a great deal more confidence in the operation of the bill.
I am sorry, but I will play devil's advocate again. Is there a risk that a third-party right of appeal could become a device for protracted obstruction by pressure groups, for example? We have heard of cases in which communities have had terrible experiences and of cases in which things have worked out fairly well. Let us say that in Greengairs, for example, a good neighbour agreement had been thrashed out with the developer, there had been protracted discussions involving the local authority and a deal had been arrived at that the community agreed represented the right way forward. How would you like it if some pressure group from somewhere else altogether suggested exercising a third-party right of appeal in a bid to override something that had been thrashed out locally?
If another developer came in and threw such an agreement up in the air, it would be nice to have a third-party right of appeal in those circumstances. Pressure groups are subject to the same rules as other parties in the system. Anyone who wants to participate in consideration of a planning application at local level has to make their case on the basis of material considerations. The system is controlled at every stage. There would not be a huge difficulty is saying that certain criteria would have to be met before someone could appeal. Someone could come up with a reason for an appeal that no one else had thought of—for example, there might be an ancient well in their back garden that no one else knew about. There would be criteria to stop unnecessary appeals going ahead. Other parts of the system work like that, so why could not a third-party right of appeal work in the same way?
Perhaps it is not an accident that I am sitting next to John Home Robertson, because I am going to be controversial as well. I, too, have doubts about a third-party right of appeal, partly because I have been involved in quite a few public inquiries, which would inevitably be the format for such appeals. A £30 entrance fee would be the least of the problems. To take part in a public inquiry takes up a huge amount of time, whether one has experts to hand or not. If one wants to take such an inquiry seriously, one has to commit one's life to it for a certain time. If possible, one would want to avoid such an inquiry.
Harald Tobermann has made a good point. When we talk about developers, we always assume that that refers to someone else, but when it comes to a new school, for example, we are the developers.
Planning advice notes have no legal force, so they do not guarantee that we will get such engagement. I agree with what you said about engagement and about making people more aware of things so that we get a better result, but we still have a problem with some things, such as the example of the school on the golf course. Local authorities have problems that they have to solve, but their solutions conflict with other interests. In such cases, there should be independent discussion and arbitration because there will never be agreement between the communities that do not want developments and the authorities that do.
In talking about the third-party right of appeal, people seem to assume that objectors will come in right at the end of the process and use it in ways that could be construed as being malicious. Perhaps it could be built in that only people who had participated in the pre-application consultation and who had gone through some form of mediation could consider using such a right of appeal, and even then only in certain limited and legislated circumstances.
This is my personal view rather than the Scottish Mediation Network's view on the third-party right of appeal. I am sympathetic to it, on the grounds that have been mentioned—equity, parity of power, and so on. It would take into account the views of communities in general much earlier, so I would support it.
I am sure that the Executive has reflected on that. Also, in their evidence to the committee, other witnesses have related their impressions of how the third-party right of appeal works in other parts of the country. The committee will need to reach a conclusion on that matter, taking into account all the evidence that we have heard.
I would like to respond to Mary Scanlon's point about the planning advice note, which was mentioned earlier. Planning advice notes do not have statutory power but they are followed carefully by people in the planning profession, who rely on them. We welcome the fact that there is to be a planning advice note on community engagement, which will take ideas from communities and the work that the committee has been doing. We should not underestimate the tools and assistance that we are being given.
Thank you. That concludes the committee's questions to you.
I commend the committee on the layout of the room and the way in which this dialogue has developed, which has illustrated the advantage of taking a consensus-building approach.
Thank you very much.
May I just draw the committee's attention to serious omissions from the bill? I make the point on behalf of local planning authorities. Some matters have been omitted from the bill that planning authorities feel must be dealt with. Those omissions will affect communities' regard for the bill. I mention such issues in our submission, so I will not go into them now.
The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities will be witnesses at our next meeting, so we will hear directly from local authorities.