Official Report 252KB pdf
I welcome everyone to the meeting.
Good morning. I am from Friends of the Earth Scotland and I represent Scottish Environment LINK. I was not on the steering group.
Good morning. I represent the Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland, where I work as the Scottish planning policy officer. I was not on the steering group.
I am from Hillhead community council in Glasgow. I also sit on a community planning partnership as a community representative for several community councils. I was not on the steering group.
I represent Planning Aid for Scotland. I was a member of the steering group.
I am director of planning at Homes for Scotland, which is the representative organisation of the housebuilding industry in Scotland. My members build more than 90 per cent of new houses in Scotland and are the largest single source of private investment in Scotland. I was a member of the steering group.
I am the planning spokesman for Pilrig residents association. I am not its chairman, as some of the papers suggest. I first came to the committee in March last year, I think. Pilrig residents association represents an area in Edinburgh that contains about 1,500 households and is due to grow by another 500 to 600 in the next few years. There is a lot of housebuilding activity there. I was a member of the steering group.
Good morning. I am a self-employed planning mediator. Today, I am here as the senior vice-convener of the Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland. I am a member of the steering group.
Thank you for introducing yourselves.
The Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland was pleased with the consultation on the draft PAN, which was done in an open and inclusive manner. However, I do not think that consultation on the matter will finish for quite a long time. The issue that we would raise is the timing of the consultation. There are so many unknowns in the draft PAN, and we do not have a clear statement of planning policy. We would like Scottish planning policy 1 to be updated to incorporate a statement of policy in the area. The secondary legislation will need to be supported by a considerable raft of guidance, so we envisage a need to consult in future as that guidance is developed and the PAN, which is currently at an interim stage, is further amended.
I ask Petra Biberbach to update us on the six workshops that the Executive asked Planning Aid for Scotland to carry out with hard-to-reach groups. Were they successful in reaching groups that are not normally represented at meetings such as this one?
The work was important. It was brave of the Executive to ask us to go out with the draft PAN in the first instance. The groups that we wanted to engage with were primarily groups of people who have not been engaged in the planning system or who have never heard of it. For that reason, it was difficult to go out and get their views on the draft PAN, so we changed the format slightly. The groups that we selected included young people in Inverness and Port Glasgow, and Gypsy Travellers—we spoke to 21 families in Aberdeenshire and in and around Aberdeen. We had a workshop in Cumbernauld, which Cathie Craigie attended, and we also met a group in Laurencekirk on the border between Angus and Aberdeenshire. It was made up of people from a well-being group, who were mainly aged 70-plus.
We think that the PAN has been improved in many ways following consultation. However, having sight of revisions is always lacking. People who have been consulted do not see revisions before documents are completed. It would be good to recirculate revised documents for additional comments before they go to Parliament.
I want to put the exercise in context. Those of us around the table who have been in planning for some time will remember the days when planning advice notes appeared from the Scottish Office without any consultation having taken place. They were simply developed by civil servants and issued. That no longer happens with the Scottish Executive and the current planning division, which has a well-established and welcome track record of consulting on Scottish planning policy documents and—probably since the planning advice note on affordable housing—on PANs. Homes for Scotland, which is an industry body, certainly thinks that it is consulted and that its views are taken into account. Not all our views are necessarily taken on board, but we are certainly listened to, which is to be welcomed.
I take my hat off to the Scottish Executive for achieving what it has achieved as a result of its public consultation process. The task is almost impossible. There are around 4 million adults in Scotland, 1,000 community councils and goodness knows how many other interested community groups, and one cannot speak face to face with everyone.
The Executive has been brave in that it has chosen not only to consult the usual stakeholders but to try to reach all the communities, or at least some representatives of them. Many people are involved in the planning system, but many more are not involved. That has presented a challenge, which I think that the Executive has met head on.
Do you think that the draft PAN goes some way towards meeting the needs of the intended audiences, principally communities, planning authorities, councillors and applicants?
I reiterate what other people are saying. I welcome the PAN and recognise what a huge task we have ahead of us. For me, the chief purpose of community engagement in planning is to improve and add rigour to planning decisions. However, the PAN does not quite state that and there is no feeling of conviction in that regard. The purpose of engaging people in planning is to improve the planning decisions.
The problem with the PAN is that it is trying to do three things at once and does them with varying success. It is trying to address things that are between the local council and the community, which are the development plans and the local plans. Development plans are the most difficult ones to engage the local community in. The PAN recognises that but does not do enough to ensure that that engagement happens. With regard to local plans, people need some education about the kind of things that are important. To some extent, the PAN seems to have those elements the wrong way round, as it says that development plans are where the detail should be, but the detail should be in the local plans, as that is where people usually engage with the planning system.
It would be helpful if you could.
Many local authorities make great efforts to engage with people on local plans. I have reservations about development plans, as I said.
On that point, if the system is open and transparent, if developers are talking to communities and if there is genuine engagement and willingness to be part of the culture change of which the committee has spoken so often, is it not somewhat pessimistic to think that there will be a lot of complaints with which we will not be able to deal? Do you not think that the new system offers opportunities for change, that everybody has a responsibility to embrace the change and that we have to demand that they embrace that change? Surely it is not good enough simply to say that developers have to live up to the challenges that the Planning etc (Scotland) Act 2006 brings—although I agree that they do. Planning authorities have to get over the lack of trust that communities may have because of bad decisions that have been made, but communities too have to meet that challenge. Communities have to acknowledge that, although things have happened wrongly in the past, now they can make a new start and things must change.
I agree with you and I think that people are willing to do that, but I am saying that there are some obstacles to that. The draft PAN mentions community planning partnerships, but those partnerships do not involve the community. There is some doubt about the relationship between community planning partnerships, planning departments and the local council. The new cabinet style of local government is making people a bit cautious. It is felt that an oligarchy is making the decisions, with very little scope for addressing dissatisfaction. Issues have arisen since the Planning etc (Scotland) Bill and the draft PAN were drafted that have not been taken into account, and I think that you should take this issue into account and monitor it.
This is not necessarily in response to what Jean Charsley has said, but we should remember that it is only a planning advice note that we are talking about. In itself, a planning advice note will not bring about community engagement, as a raft of measures is required. Although it is important for the Communities Committee to examine the PAN, it is also vital for it to consider a series of measures and not to view the issue in isolation. This is not just about a PAN; we need a lot more things to be on the table before we really know whether community engagement is getting done properly.
I agree that the PAN marks a very good start. However, each audience that it attempts to address will require further guidance. That links with Petra Biberbach's point about evaluating how far we get in two years' time. Planners will need some guidance. Furthermore, what indicators can be used in monitoring and evaluating one's own effectiveness?
Looking at the current system, it is fairly easy to understand Jean Charsley's concerns about the way in which communities engage with the planning system, and by and large they are precisely the same concerns that developers have.
I am going to be a bit more controversial than the previous speakers. As a member of the steering group, I supported the process and many of the elements of the PAN, and I still do. However, during the past one or two months, when certain things have become clearer to me, I have come to the conclusion that the PAN is full of warm words and good intentions but that it will have no teeth for two years. Any question that we ask about whether the PAN will be effective always has to consider that timeframe.
Harald Tobermann said that the PAN and the guidance will not take effect for about two years, until the legislation is fully enacted. Would it not be useful to issue that guidance to local authorities as soon as it is ready, so that they can work towards building the engagement with people that is required to bring about the culture change that we are all speaking about? The legislation will be enforceable in two years' time, but let us prepare and let us know what is happening on the ground.
Absolutely. I fully agree that planning authorities and others should prepare, but I wonder whether a PAN is the right vehicle. Let us step back a bit. The planning legislation does not contain a third-party right of appeal, for good reasons. However, quality consultation with communities has been put in the legislation in its stead—or that is the intention, anyway—and the only place where I can see that happening is via the PAN and possibly some secondary legislation, but it is all rather fuzzy and vague at the moment. Planning authorities and developers need that guidance now, in one form or another, and I wonder whether a PAN is the right vehicle for issuing it at this point.
I will ask about something that Jean Charsley said. Could your views possibly be coloured by your experience of the former situation? Community councils are statutory consultees. I do not know what your experience is, but I understand that some community councils are quite cynical about planning authorities that do not comply conscientiously with the duty to consult. Having seen the PAN and the new legislation, are you any more confident that planning authorities might in future be more conscientious about keeping you advised?
The difficulty arises where political and policy decisions come into, for example, hearings. Councillors are not entirely free to do as their conscience dictates, because sometimes there is a whip.
There is absolutely no whip in planning. I think that you have to be careful.
I withdraw what I said. Let me put it a different way. When I look at the PAN, I see that, quite properly, for development plans the Scottish Executive inquiry reporters unit is involved, and that there can be hearings for major or controversial developments. However, there is no mechanism for any independent assessment of whether the process satisfied all the requirements that it ought to satisfy, so it is quite possible that a community could go away dissatisfied because other interests came into play in the hearing and overwhelmed what they were saying. That is reinforced to some extent by the PAN, because primarily it addresses the concerns of councils and developers. Although it says that it addresses communities' concerns, it is difficult for communities to see that. We will discuss later whether we need something else for communities.
We have a number of areas to cover. I will allow Scott Barrie in on this issue, but then I want us to move on. We will cover in subsequent lines of questioning a lot of the issues that have been raised.
I was going to say that we need to move on, because we want to raise a number of issues. The potpourri approach is not the most effective.
Thank you for your advice, Mr Barrie.
We have heard some people say that no planning advice note on its own will suddenly create lots of fantastic, high-quality engagement and involvement. Setting aside whether a PAN is the right vehicle and whether it is enforceable, it does help to set the mood music and the tone. Do the witnesses think that the PAN does that correctly in relation to community engagement?
I am happy with the definitions of engagement and communities in the PAN. It is important to remember that communities are not a homogeneous group; there is huge variation and we could sit here for another 10 years trying to define communities in minute detail. It is the doing that matters to us.
The draft PAN starts us off in the right direction. If nothing else, it forces us to ask some more searching questions about how we approach the issues. Petra Biberbach referred to the definition of communities. That brings the issues into fairly sharp focus for us. We need to consider issues about geography, communities of interest and how we speak to people who live in a community and to those who do not live in a community but who want to. We must also consider people who are not fussed about a development coming to a place but who are interested in the design of the houses and what the development will look like, and people who are interested in the spin-off effects. The draft PAN raises an enormous number of issues.
We have the difficulty of distinguishing between the public interest in relation to a particular community—the term "community" can be defined extremely widely or extremely narrowly, depending on the instance—and the collective effect of all sorts of private interests. I know of all too many people who became involved in the planning system when they felt that there was a personal threat to their interests. That is understandable and such people have every right in the world to take part in discussions. However, consideration of such interests may be very different from a proper examination of what is in the overall long-term public interest.
The short answer to the mood question on the draft PAN is yes, the mood is excellent, although I would like to see teeth as well.
I have a brief comment on the valuable point that Harald Tobermann made on communities' understanding of the planning process. In the past, part of the problem was that planning was seen as something for the professionals—something that only those with a great deal of knowledge could understand. Frankly, that view was encouraged by a number of the professional bodies, which tended to suggest that planning was a difficult process. Harald Tobermann made the point that we should start not from a standpoint that says, "Planning is really, really difficult. How can communities understand it?" but instead take a bottom-up approach that says, "Provided that they are given the information, communities that are affected by planning decisions are as able to understand the planning system as anyone else is."
As someone who was not on the steering group, Clare Symonds is keen to come in on that point.
Some of the language that is used in the PAN is interesting. One example can be found in the box under section 83:
I am quite happy with the approach that has been taken to terminology and the definitions of community and community engagement that have been used. If there are definitions that are in common use, it is sensible to use them. The definition of community engagement that has been chosen implies a process of continuous engagement. That is important and we should encourage it.
Although I have drawn attention to what I feel are failings in the PAN, it encourages useful co-operation between people. It is only by taking part in a discussion that someone can understand the points of view of others. That helps to achieve a better consensus, even though people might still have an eye on their own interests. Many councils have already successfully started that process with major developments or local plans, and will hold discussions with communities on all aspects of the proposals. What is lacking is the taking of a second look at the results of such communication, but, on the whole, the PAN is going along the right lines; it just needs a bit of tweaking.
I am interested in Veronica Burbridge's point that the PAN's definition of community engagement seems to imply that we are talking about a continuing process and that community engagement is a way of being for the planning system rather than a series of discrete processes, whereby we are either in engagement mode or we are not, from month to month. Are you satisfied that we will have continuing engagement, and is that a general view? I can see one head shaking and another one nodding.
The issue has to be considered at different levels. There will still be discrete consultations about particular planning decisions and specific periods of consultation on development plans. What is being encouraged in the PAN and elsewhere is connection with the existing community planning processes—the discussion groups, the area forums, the juries and the other methods of public participation that have been set up. The idea is that we ought to be encouraging wider and continuing discussion about what people want to happen in their local areas.
I do not want to seem unduly negative, because I think that we are moving in the right direction, but the PAN does not provide enough mechanisms for early or pre-statutory consultation. We do not know how to do that, no provision for it is made and no resources are allocated to it. How can we provide an incentive for a planner to do more than the absolute minimum? We have no incentives or back-ups if a planner decides to do the minimum. They might just set out a number of methods in the participation statement and go through a tick-box exercise, without listening to people. The draft PAN includes nothing that gives us the confidence that that will not be the case.
How soon will we know whether the optimists or pessimists were right?
That all depends on the evaluation process.
I return to an issue that Jean Charsley touched on earlier. The Executive's aim is to deliver a planning system in which there is broad-based engagement. Do the witnesses agree that the 2006 act and the draft PAN that we are discussing will deliver that? In particular, will they deliver that in respect of the development plans, which Jean Charsley said earlier were the most complex?
I do not think so. Development plans are the most difficult plans to get people interested in. They deal with large areas and are too remote. They will seem particularly remote in the case of the unitary development plans for more than one authority, which will deal with huge areas.
Jean Charsley has put her finger on a fundamental problem. It is extremely difficult to achieve community understanding, interest or debate in the wider issues. As she said, that is simply because the wider issues do not hit home. People cannot easily visualise how something over there might change. The system is far too vague for that.
The development plan is moving on to a five-year cycle, and it is important that we shift from consultation to participation. The five-year cycle means that there will be much greater on-going involvement—that is the only way of ensuring that communities stay interested. The lack of interest in structure plans and more strategic issues is partly the result of our failure to identify issues, such as those that arise when a motorway is being planned. People get involved when the debate is about issues. For the past 30-odd years we have hidden behind language that made people feel excluded. That must change. The professional planner will and must still have language that fits with his or her professionalism, but those of us who engage with communities must start to translate what is meant by people in the planning system.
Your points are well made. It is vital that there should be a continuing process, rather than a stop-start process. Has the Executive struck the right balance between explaining the changes that will be necessary and outlining how key players—all the people around the table—will be able to contribute, in order to achieve the much-vaunted culture change that everyone talked about during consideration of the Planning etc (Scotland) Bill? If we do not get the balance right, there will be no change and people will continue to feel incredibly frustrated about the planning system.
We need to be clear about what the PAN is for—what it is trying to do and what it cannot do. We must set out the key stages of the process and the requirements at each stage. We need to ask what else needs to be done. The PAN itself will not achieve culture change. We need to think of it as part of a raft of future guidance, activities, training and skills development, linked to changes in local government and in the way that we work.
There is also a conflict of interest. The Executive is concerned with speed in the planning process, which militates against some of the points that Veronica Burbridge raised, such as the need to enable people to consider things twice, for revisions to come back and for on-going debate. It takes time for a community to form an opinion or to find advice if it needs it, and advice is not always available.
We will come back to resources and training.
The promotion of early and broad-based engagement is crucial if the new culture is to work, but what about the media's role? Many communities and individuals depend heavily on information and ideas that they pick up from broadcast media or local papers, for example. The way that things work just now is that the notification of a planning application or a development plan appears—at enormous expense to the local authority—in micro print in the classified advertisements page in local papers, which people do not read or understand, and even if they read the information, they probably do not know what to do about it. If we are to promote constructive, thoughtful consideration, it is vital that the ideas be reported as widely as possible. People recognise that we need affordable houses or rubbish dumps, but they always hope that they will be put somewhere else. We want to promote debate, so would it be helpful if some understanding could be reached with the people who run local and national broadcast and print media to try to get them to sign up, rather than waiting until there is controversy far too late in the process?
We live in a free society, so we cannot dictate to the media what they should cover. Media officers issue press releases on planning matters, but the media officers who deal with planning matters are not specialists, change all the time and do other work as well—I can only speak for Edinburgh on that, but I presume that the situation is similar in the rest of Scotland. An authority the size of the City of Edinburgh Council should have one or two full-time media officers in the planning department who feed the media the relevant information and ensure that it gets out that way. We discussed the issue at the steering group a few times, but it goes beyond the scope of what we were doing. It is a matter of resources for local authorities.
I agree entirely with that, but I want to add a note of caution. There is a great deal of emphasis on e-planning, websites and e-mail communication, but that does not reach the people whom the committee is most anxious to reach. They do not look at websites—they look at things that interest them. It is also extremely expensive to download all the information, and it can be beyond people's resources to do that in order to have something that they can physically take to somebody else to discuss.
I want to move on to the importance of pre-application consultation. Does the draft PAN place enough emphasis on how developers can carry out meaningful pre-application consultation?
I will be brave and tackle that one.
The first point to recognise is that pre-application discussions under the current system are rare. They are the exception rather than the rule. The second issue is that when someone has a pre-application discussion—the first tier of interface with the planning authority—it is not uncommon for them to work up a proposal in light of that discussion, submit the proposal and then find, as it goes up the system, that the advice that they were given was barely worth the paper that it was printed on and has changed.
I, too, have experienced that with a current development. As you say, the issue raises the question of development briefs and commercial confidentiality. A dichotomy exists. A developer does not want to commit to exactly what it will do before a development and an application have been worked up for discussion. However, perhaps the planning authority should consider some issues with the community in general terms, such as whether it wants a high-rise building or whether that is out of keeping with an area.
Yes. If development briefs are prepared and supplementary planning guidance is in place—if the whole policy framework exists—in theory, not even the pre-application discussion would be needed. We would simply take the documents and get on with it. However, the reality is that the development briefs are not in place. Planning authorities can take an inordinate amount of time to prepare a development brief for a windfall site, for example. We do not have supplementary planning guidance in place. A process must be followed to bring that into play.
I have a question on breaches of consent, which is perhaps another resource issue. Obviously, there is a need to police and act on breaches of consent. Will the PAN and the guidance that will be issued on enforcement result in communities feeling more confident that breaches will be fully and rapidly addressed?
No.
I will move on, then.
I will explain. Enforcement is the lowest priority when it comes to the allocation of council funds. There are few enforcement officers and they rely largely on the local community to alert them to breaches. They negotiate the signing off of developments over the telephone instead of going out to see what is happening on the ground. Those things destroy confidence. The money and staff for enforcement need to be ring fenced, or it will not work.
Do you accept that the considerable enforcement powers in the Planning etc (Scotland) Act 2006 give local authorities the teeth that they have needed for a long time and enable them to tackle developers who flout the terms of their planning consent? In case Allan Lundmark gets a bit nervous, I am not suggesting for one minute that all developers do that, but there are developers who regularly flout the terms of their planning consent, and local authorities have suggested that they do not have the powers to deal with that. The additional powers that they have been given, including the power to issue temporary stop notices, should make a big difference.
They should, but it is a question of resources and financing. Unless local authorities have the staff for enforcement, people will be told, as I was, that it is not in the public interest to take action. When I inquired about that, the reply was, "We do not have the staff or the money." You need to provide resources to go with the teeth and the powers that you put in place.
The Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland has just set up a national association for planning enforcement, which is a network of enforcement officers. It will develop continuing professional development and guidance and set up a web-based community. We hope that there will be more professional support and a higher profile for enforcement officers.
I, too, am keen on enforcement because it represents the element of teeth that I always look for in anything that consists of lots of warm words. The draft PAN refers to enforcement and the 2006 act gave local authorities more powers, but the matter boils down to making resources available to local authorities so that they can prioritise enforcement in their budgets. Edinburgh has a good planning authority, but enforcement is low on its list of spending priorities. I understand the constraints, but that is not right. If the system is to work, there need to be more wardens out there.
Can I inject a bit of realism? The fact is that, in Scotland, the local planning authorities have great difficulty in recruiting planning professionals. At a time of a huge change in the planning system, local planning authorities are starved of staff. That is one of the realities that we must face up to. On the one hand, we all want to see greater community engagement, which, in itself, is resource intensive. On the other hand, we want local planning authorities to carry out proper enforcement, which is necessary if we are to build up the trust that is vital in communities.
Petra Biberbach used the word "trust". Trust is at the heart not just of enforcement, but of the whole planning system. There are far too many players in the system—communities, developers and authorities—who simply do not trust one another. I hope that, if we can build up trust, dialogue and understanding, that will result in less need for enforcement. However, that is nirvana and, as we all know, we never reach nirvana; therefore, we must take enforcement seriously.
Nothing undermines confidence in the planning system more than lack of enforcement. When the Planning etc (Scotland) Bill was going through Parliament, we strongly supported the improved enforcement powers. We take the view that there is no excuse for breach of a planning consent. If someone has been given a consent, they should implement it. That is not to say that, during the lifetime of a project, they will not discover that they are incapable of meeting a certain condition. However, the proper course of action at that stage is to go back and seek an altered consent. We make that quite clear to our member companies—that is the advice that we give. If someone is given a consent, it should be implemented.
At this point, it might be helpful to have a short comfort break. I suspend the meeting until 11:15.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
We now reconvene the meeting.
My question is not tough—it concerns a side issue—but the committee is interested in the summary document that the Executive has said will be prepared for community groups that do not require the level of detail that is given in the planning advice note. Will such a summary help to provide more readily accessible information? Will it tell people how they can learn more about the planning process, and will it encourage people to engage in the process?
I wonder whether a summary document is really what we are after; perhaps what we need is just a single side of A4—easy to get and easy to read—explaining how to tackle planning issues. It is a little bit early, but I can imagine an A4 leaflet appearing in all sorts of places in due course—it could appear in local libraries and tell people how to engage with the local plan and how they could expect developers to behave in pre-application discussions. There could be a series of leaflets; for example, one might tell people about enforcement. It would be crucial that such leaflets were easy to approach and that they offered a starting point and a way into the system. Summaries of advice and documents, written with the intention of giving the layperson a better understanding, will be important, but they will be the second layer, if you like, and not the first easily accessible leaflet.
I endorse that whole-heartedly. People get an awful lot of stuff through the letterbox and most do not read much of it. They do not understand it and so do not bother to read it. A leaflet that picked out the key points, explained how to do certain things and gave contacts for further help and advice would be an essential starting point. People should also have somewhere to go if they are dissatisfied or have a complaint. All such information should be given in one small document that is brief, clear and free of jargon.
I want to add a comment that perhaps goes beyond the original question. People should learn that they have to read about and take an interest in planning matters. The place for that is schools. Pupils—future citizens—have to learn about the role of the planning system in society. People think that planning is specialised, but it is part of the fabric of our society and people have to realise that.
We need a range of different ways of communicating with people. There could be leaflets, but there is also the Scottish Executive's proposal to have web-based spreading of good practice. Such a planning portal could provide information for the general public. We might be amazed—people actually are interested and want to learn more.
The idea of having a summary document arose because it was felt that people have different levels of interest. If a summary document is regarded as an awareness-raising exercise then that is fine—but a summary should not be regarded as a substitute for the PAN. The PAN is very important. It contains information about the different players in the field and, in the months to come, it will be a material consideration. A summary document would be purely an awareness-raising exercise. As Veronica suggested, numerous publications would be required for that.
All community councils—or, where community councils do not exist, the representative community groups—should automatically be issued with copies of SPPGs and planning advice notes. Otherwise, people will not know that those documents exist or will not know where to get them when they need them. The need is usually immediate.
We have been discussing community engagement throughout the morning, and I want to discuss the section of the PAN that deals specifically with delivering effective community engagement in land-use planning. That section applies the key principles of community engagement that have been developed through the Scottish Community Development Centre on behalf of Communities Scotland. The principles seem to tick all the right boxes; I will not go through them because I assume that our witnesses will be aware of them.
I welcome the use of the national standards for community engagement, particularly as they were drawn up following a good consultation process. They could be strengthened by also using the RTPI guidelines, which I think are very good. They were mentioned in the first PAN, although they now seem to have been relegated to the index. Those guidelines help with respect to confidence, as we have been discussing. They contain good confident statements, with a good-values-based set of principles. I like their language. For instance, the guidelines mention
I am a great believer in visual aids to assist communities and people who are supposed to be participating. There is one document—I am not sure whether it is Scottish parliamentary guidance—that includes a little ladder to show the quality of consultation. It illustrates where consultation has been effective and where there has simply been lip service. It is not put in those terms, but it would be extremely useful to communities to have that sort of visual aid, supplemented by the sort of things that Clare Symonds has been discussing.
I will be slightly negative at this point. I do not think that the national standards are actually standards in themselves. They are guidance—that is all. They are not measurable and they are not particularly viable. The problem is that they have been drawn up specifically with the community planning process in Scotland in mind. We know how disappointed many people are with regard to their involvement in community planning. The standards are helpful and they can explain things, but we must put them in context. They are not actually standards.
We in the RTPI are conscious of the large amount of work that is ahead of us. I suppose that we are nervous about resources, like everyone else. Essentially, we are a voluntary organisation. We are keen to find out whether research can be undertaken on the precise reasons for why community participation exercises are undertaken. Why are they done in particular cases? What do we use the results for? We are still slightly vague around the edges in that respect.
There is at least one person here who will have to come back as a full-time planner rather than a part-time one, so that might be a start. Petra Biberbach said earlier that we need to have monitoring mechanisms in place, and I take on board the point that Alistair Stark made. How do we monitor how effective the process will be?
We currently do not know the extent or quality of community engagement with the planning system across Scotland, but that information could be quite easily obtained—local planning authorities obviously keep numerous monitoring forms. Various organisations that engage with communities think that the data could be forthcoming, but we need to start to collect them and we need to do that now, before the PAN actually goes out, so that we can say that we have baseline data that will allow us in two years to go back and see whether we have achieved the swing away from non-engagement, from partial engagement or from engagement that is not as good as we would like. We need to be able to see whether the PAN has achieved that and whether the planning system has become more transparent. It is easy to measure effectiveness by ticking boxes, but it is much more difficult to measure qualitative changes, which is what we are really talking about. I urge Parliament to make it a priority to make resources available for that important baseline data-gathering exercise.
I accept the need for action and forward-looking research, like the pathfinder project that we had for strategic environmental assessment and for community planning. Such research is practical and involves councils in examining how their activity develops through time. It may take time—perhaps three, four or five years, or perhaps until the end of the parliamentary session after next—before we see a real difference in the planning system: culture change does not happen overnight.
I tend to agree that the obstacles are not so much to do with whether the techniques encourage community participation as they are to do with the extent to which we ask the fundamental questions about the product—the plan—and the way in which we articulate it and bring it to the table for consultation. Clare Symonds used an interesting phrase in her submission, in which she referred to the fact that the current proposal is for planning authorities to decide, announce and defend. That goes to the heart of why a lot of people mistrust the current process of lodging objections and having a period of public inquiries—one wonders about the extent to which one can influence the process. The purpose of a local plan inquiry is to assist the planning authority in driving out more robust policy, but you would be hard put to persuade somebody who is watching current local plan inquiries that that is the case, because the process is about defending what local authorities produce. That goes to the heart of the approach that planning authorities adopt when they bring a proposal for consultation.
Another issue is names. If you call a planning department a development promotion department, you are immediately changing the way in which it is perceived by the community. The system must be made to seem fair and open—that kind of name does not do that. Parliament must ensure that the things that are wrong with the system are being addressed, which means examination of abuses. You need to scrutinise.
My question is about services that are provided by Planning Aid for Scotland to communities on planning issues. Will sufficient support be provided to communities to engage meaningfully in the planning process? Does the PAN provide enough information on the sources of support?
The PAN lists quite a number of sources of support, and more are coming all the time. Importantly, when Planning Aid engages with communities in the planning system, we tend to take communities that have never been involved in the planning system and which know nothing about it. There are different levels of support. While teaching and learning within communities, we thought increasingly that it would be useful to open that support to planning professionals who are often, as we know, under-resourced and have little experience of community engagement. We offer a dual-purpose training programme. At the moment, we have 120 volunteer planners on our books who give their time for free, even though they work very hard. They help Planning Aid to engage with the community and they advise on training. As I have said before, our volunteer planners are at the forefront of the culture-change agenda. That is important.
I want to comment briefly on one little fact that Petra Biberbach just revealed. Planning Aid has on its books 120 planners who work for free. That is precisely the measure of the resources that are needed. Why are those people working for free? Why cannot we pay them? Why cannot Petra employ 120 planners who do nothing but go out and help communities?
This is crucial—I would love to have 120 planners. We are a volunteer-led organisation and that ethos is important. We do, of course, have paid staff, but we also have planning professionals who work with us voluntarily. Many of them came into the planning profession for altruistic reasons and they want to give something back. It is important not to underestimate that. Those professionals do not want to be paid; they want to give something back on a Saturday by training communities or whatever.
Although 120 can be seen as a reasonable number, a few of us around the table represent remote and rural areas in the Highlands and Islands, so the question for us is how can your resources be made available to remote, rural and island areas?
Last year, we held two training workshops in Shetland and about four training workshops in the Highlands. Over the past three years, three workshops have been held in the Western Isles. As well as working in urban areas, we are active in rural areas. In doing so, we always work with the local planning authority. The issue of resources is, of course, involved. We would like to have more planners. The demand is definitely there for more, especially now.
I have a question about money. Paragraph 89 of the PAN says:
I am sorry, but I have not read that paragraph.
It says that the funding is
The statement needs to be put into context. The planning mentoring programme is a pilot that we proposed. We will get £10,000 to work with a community over a year. The aim of the pilot is to allow us to engage with the community over the longer term. At the moment, we can offer one-day or half-day training events. If a community comes forward with an idea, we want to be able to take those people through the stages of shaping their idea over the next year. It is not a huge amount, but I think that we will manage.
In an answer to a parliamentary question, I was told that, for the financial year 2006-07—I will take yours as ending in April—you had funding of £225,283 from the Scottish Executive. I understand that the money came from four different sources. I will not go into detail; I will leave it to you to do that should you so wish. Is it premature to ask what your funding will be for the next financial year?
Our current three-year funding package from the Scottish Executive finishes in March 2008. So far, I know for certain that we have £100,000 core funding. I have been able to attract funding for another year for our volunteer development officer post. We have also been successful in securing funding for a two-year research project to engage with ethnic minorities and Gypsy Travellers—both groups that have traditionally felt that they are outside the system. Scotland is changing; we need more ways to engage with people of all persuasions.
Greater demands will be made on you in the future, as a voluntary organisation, in going out and assisting communities to navigate the maze. I listened carefully to all the evidence. Clearly, there is good will towards you from the various sectors that are represented around the table. I welcome the pilot planning mentoring programme, but we should have more than one pilot—there should be several out there in the field. Surely the funding for Planning Aid needs to be increased? The funding that you are being given seems low when what you are trying to do is to engage people from the start, particularly people who are not as informed as Mrs Charsley. Most people never become interested in planning until they find that something is about to happen on their back step. That is when most people in our communities become interested in planning.
We need to think carefully before we ask questions about money and resources. The purpose of the meeting is to talk about the PAN, its implementation and whether it meets the objectives that have been set for it. Whether Planning Aid for Scotland is financially resourced to the extent that it would wish or hope or to the extent that other people would like it to be is a matter for it and the minister. Negotiations may be taking place between that body and the Executive, so our comments might not be helpful. I appreciate that members want to assist by highlighting such issues, but we must remember the purpose of the meeting. My remarks are not directed at anyone in particular—I am simply reminding committee members why we are here and what the purpose of the meeting is.
Your remarks are helpful, but staffing, publicity and Planning Aid for Scotland resources have been the issue in many submissions. Harald Tobermann talked about the system having teeth. That is the point. Saying that we want an effective system is all well and good, but money and people are required for the system to operate, which is why I raised the issue that I raised.
Rather than asking those questions of today's witnesses, it would be better to put them to the minister when he comes before the committee next week.
I am grateful to you for bringing the discussion back on track, convener, because in our report on the Planning etc (Scotland) Bill, we clearly highlighted the fact that resources would be a major issue. That was the right place in which to raise the issue.
The community consultation and involvement work that must be undertaken in working up development projects simply represents another cost. Working up any development project is fairly expensive. Professional advisers, engineers, architects and so on must be used. Under the new system, additional costs relating to the way in which we engage with communities will have to be taken on board. Decisions on those costs will be taken during consideration of the project's overall viability—costs will simply be factored in.
There are two points about support for communities. First, some of the communities that you try to reach do not know what support is available or even whether they need support. That can be changed only through education. Some work is being done on that, but more is needed.
I am not familiar with the Winchburgh example that Allan Lundmark described, but it is interesting. I caution that it is important that any funding for community consultation that comes from developers is channelled through an intermediary. Otherwise, the advice that the communities get might not be perceived to be independent.
There are various good examples of community engagement scattered throughout the draft document that we have in front of us. We understand that it is the Executive's intention to have an online database of examples of good practice, which will be updated, from time to time, in the future. Do you think that having an online database of examples of best practice will lead to improvements in community engagement being made by planning authorities throughout Scotland? Will that be helpful? Or is there a risk that it might tend to push local authorities to conform with the examples that happen to have been highlighted from time to time, which could inhibit innovation or local solutions? I do not know whom that question is aimed at—probably the RTPI.
A lot of things tend to be aimed at the RTPI, but it is a fair question.
Not all brickbats.
No, indeed.
I endorse Alistair Stark's view that the measuring of any example's final outcome will be important. For instance, paragraph 57 of the draft PAN cites the example of a process in which I was involved. Although the consultation process was not all that bad—though it was not perfect, by any means—the final measurable outcome, for me, is what will actually be built there and how much of what is planned will be translated into reality. The building has not started yet. We must, therefore, be a bit more cautious about citing examples of projects that have worked well on paper before we have seen how they have translated into reality.
None of the examples in the draft PAN gives a description that shows that it is the engagement process that has resulted in a better planning application. None of them states that; they are almost about consultation for consultation's sake. I would welcome some examples that demonstrated that the consultation had brought about a better planning decision.
When I see the term "best practice", the question I always ask is, "From whose perspective?" A planner's perspective is very different from a community's perspective. That must be borne in mind when we consider what good practice is.
I would like the term "good practice" to be used rather than "best practice", because we should not have a hierarchy. Nothing works better in local authorities than peer review, which allows them to find out what happens elsewhere and how well they are doing it. Therefore, I would welcome it if we left good practice in the PAN and made it widely available. All of us, especially the local planning authorities, are still on a learning curve, so it is useful to find out what has worked elsewhere. I endorse Alistair Stark's point that good practice must be verified and that we need to understand properly whether an approach has worked for communities. We need more stringent criteria for what should be included as good practice, because everybody wants to have good practice and to say that they are the best.
That concludes the committee's questions. I thank the witnesses for attending. If there are any points on the draft PAN that you feel should have been covered, by all means write to the committee and we will give them due consideration.
Meeting closed at 12:02.