Local Government and Communities Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Official Report 494KB pdf

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Petition

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Planning (Rights of Appeal) (PE1534)

Agenda item 2 is consideration of petition PE1534, by Clare Symonds, on behalf of Planning Democracy, on equal rights of appeal in the planning system. At last week’s meeting, we discussed this petition when we heard from the independent review panel and the Minister for Local Government and Housing about the review of the planning system. In considering what we do with it, the committee should note that the independent review of the planning system and the Scottish Government do not support equal rights of appeal.

That said, the Scottish Government has announced that a planning bill will be brought forward in autumn next year, and that will provide members not just on this committee but across the Parliament with an opportunity to seek to amend that legislation to include an equal right of appeal. The petitioner has also confirmed that they will sit on the working groups that will be looking into recommendations of the recent review of the planning system that was established by the Scottish Government.

Given all that activity, I am minded to close the petition, but I am, of course, keen to hear members’ views.

The issues certainly remain pertinent. As you mentioned, convener, we took evidence on them last week, so it is not as if they are going away. I also think that there are other ways of taking them forward.

That said, I think that the terms of the petition are quite clear: it urges the Scottish Government to review the current rights of appeal. Clearly, that is not going to happen—or, at least, not in the way that the petitioners have urged it to happen in the petition, which goes back to 2014. Given that, whether members have sympathy with the petition or whether they are keen to pursue the issue, I think that, as far as the petition is concerned, there have to be other ways of pursuing the matter and I would therefore not go against the proposal to close the petition.

Thank you, Elaine. That was helpful.

I have a lot of sympathy with the petitioner. One of the bits of evidence that was submitted on the petition related to a case in my constituency, in which the ombudsman had made it quite plain that the council had not taken into account—in fact, had not sought—a transport impact assessment for development, and there was no way for the community to appeal the decision or whatever.

The arguments and demand for this measure partly come out of a frustration with regard to the ability of communities and others to properly hold what they consider defective decisions or whatever to account in the same way that an applicant can. I agree with Elaine Smith that the petition is asking the Parliament to urge the Government to review the current rights of appeal, and I know that the Government has clearly indicated that it is not minded to do so. However, I go back to the evidence that we heard last week on equalising the rights of appeal and the idea that the arguments for there not being a third-party right of appeal might well apply to the existing rights of appeal that the applicant has.

In that context, I am happy to close the petition, given that the debate will continue for some time and that the petitioner’s substantive point will not go away. I am also mindful of the fact that the Scottish Government has made it absolutely clear what its answer to us would be if we were to urge it to review the rights of appeal.

I agree with both Elaine Smith and Andy Wightman. I realise that there is no opportunity to take the petition any further, but what opportunity would we have to continue to investigate something of this nature? After all, the issue is still very pertinent, and we might well have an opportunity to examine it again in some way, although not necessarily as a result of this petition.

I will come back to some thoughts that I have on that matter at the end of the discussion.

We should remind ourselves what the independent review of the Scottish planning system said. Paragraph 46 of its report says:

“The evidence shows that a third party right of appeal would add time, complexity and conflict to the process, and have the unintended consequence of centralising decisions, undermining confidence and deterring investment. We believe that using time and resources to focus on improved early engagement would provide much greater benefits.”

I think that, given the views of the Scottish Government and indeed the independent review itself, that is how we should move forward when the legislation comes to us next year.

If there are no more comments from members, I want to reflect very briefly on what has been said while, first of all, making the obvious point that this matter got a significant airing by the committee at last week’s evidence session, and I have no doubt that it will get another significant airing when the Scottish Government’s planning bill goes through that wider legislative process. The fact that four members of the committee have just given fairly specific comments should, I hope, reassure Planning Democracy and Clare Symonds that that is the case.

Of course, we are deciding not whether we are sympathetic towards the issue of equal rights of appeal but whether we should close the petition. Given that members who have intimated their sympathy for equal rights of appeal are still content, with the caveats that I gave at the outset, for the petition to be closed, I seek the committee’s agreement to close it. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you very much.