Chamber and committees

It is a sign that years of lobbying by the Scottish Government and a succession of ministers seeking to mandate community engagement before an application goes in has worked. It is actually the opposite of what Douglas Lumsden is asserting. We have heard very loud and clear that communities do not feel that they are listened to by developers and that there is no compulsion on developers to engage with communities. There are developers who voluntarily engage with communities and who have signed up voluntarily to the good practice principles that we have put in place in Scotland, but there are others who, by law, are allowed not to bother to engage with communities. The change means that there is a material difference. Following the lobbying that we have done with the UK Government, Scottish ministers will be given legal powers to demand that developers engage with communities before an application goes in.

At present, there is no statutory requirement for notification, publicity, consultation or proposals before an application is made. There are no detailed requirements that applicants must adhere to in the making of applications to the determining authority, and no validation procedure. These regulation-making powers will allow for requirements regarding the pre-application steps of mandatory notification to prescribed persons, publicity requirements and consultation obligations. They create an acceptance stage during which Scottish ministers must assess an applicant’s compliance with the regulatory requirements before deciding to proceed with the application. They also enable fee charges for applications.

That empowers communities: by law, they must be engaged with by the applicant. It is a wholesale strengthening of communities’ views in the determination of an application—

This is an indication that the voices of communities have been heard loud and clear. The Scottish Government would not have lobbied for years and years for these regulation-making powers to make community engagement mandatory ahead of an application if it was not for community groups saying that they were dissatisfied—

Good practice is patchy. That is why we need the powers in the first place to mandate community engagement and the good practice principles that we developed ahead of making anything mandatory. There are responsible applicants who adhere to the good practice principles—there are some who will make a virtue of it. However, there is no compulsion on them to do that.

The picture varies throughout the country. I do not think that that is right. I agree with community groups that are saying that there has to be enhanced and meaningful community engagement ahead of an application. I think that that is the least we should expect from developers.

There are community groups that are angry at not being consulted. The clauses that make the requirements mandatory and the good practice principles no longer voluntary will be the springboard for what we take forward in secondary legislation. A great deal of work will be done to tighten the good practice principles, and they will be the guidance that we will want developers to follow.

We will take the views of communities that are unhappy with the current system, which is patchy. There will be some areas where communities are perfectly happy with the engagement that they have had from a developer. However, the very fact that, as Douglas Lumsden has read out, Scotland Against Spin does not feel happy with the current situation means that we need to do something, and this is the something that we have to do. Not engaging with the community in a meaningful way will have to be reflected in the evidence that we gather in assessing applications. The mechanism should vastly improve community engagement.

That is my understanding.

I will hand over to one of my officials, Haydn Thomas, in a minute, as he has been in the weeds of all this. Obviously, we have been having a great deal of discussion with stakeholders on all of this. When it comes to signing up to the principles of these regulations, we have been having a continuing dialogue with producers and, indeed, vendors.

One of the things that the smaller producers were very keen to see was that there was no mandatory take-back system. To my knowledge, there is no other scheme in operation that has such a system; in fact, I remember that, when the regulations for the original DRS were being taken through the Scottish Parliament, microbreweries and so on expressed concerns in that respect, as such a move would have put an overhead cost on them that they were not really able to meet. Because it is now voluntary, I think that we have bottomed out a lot of those concerns.

It is fair to say that the Scottish Grocers Federation, which I met last week to discuss the issue, still has some questions about what the scheme administrator will do about handling fees. We have made it absolutely clear that we want handling fees associated with DRS to be proportionate, and we have discussed the issue with and had that assurance from the UK Government. However, the Scottish Grocers Federation is asking for more assurances from the scheme administrator, which, once in place, will obviously be able to answer quite a lot of the concerns. Of course, its board members will represent a great many of the stakeholders involved.

I will hand over to Haydn Thomas, who will be able to detail the discussions that we have been having with stakeholders over the past year or so.

It might also be helpful to outline what is required of the scheme administrator with regard to consulting and working with affected stakeholders. The draft designation order requires the scheme administrator to consult representatives of producers, retailers and wholesalers, including small retailers, in making certain decisions. The scheme administrator, therefore, has the duty to consult to ensure that, as it rolls out the scheme, it takes all views into account and works with producers and vendors to make the scheme efficient and ensure that it does not have any unintended consequences for any of them.

We have been engaging with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on this, and indeed did so ahead of signing up to the principles in, I think, April last year, just before the general election. Before we sign up to anything that would have an impact on waste recovery, we will consult with COSLA. We are doing so regularly, and, as I have said, we did so right up until the general principles were agreed and then beyond.

The scheme administrator would decide that.

The scheme administrator will bottom all that out. That is for it to decide.

Mr Lumsden, you can do whatever you want with your can. I imagine that, if you wanted the 20p back, you could just put it in your pocket.