Meeting of the Parliament 14 March 2023
Having plans is fine, but how do we deal with the risk? Who takes that risk? Do they have the money? Do they have the incentive? Are they addressing competing priorities? Of course, they want to get the houses built as quickly as possible. If developers say, “No, it’s too much of a responsibility. We’re not going to build those houses; we’re going to build somewhere else,” that is a challenge that I am not sure we have resolved.
I hope that that has changed, because the quagmire that Cupar got stuck in is astonishing, given that, just down the road, as Mark Ruskell will know, because it is in his region, there was a proposal to connect up the district heating system—the biomass plant for St Andrews, which was built by the University of St Andrews—with a new Persimmon development 100 yards away. The university and the developer had a discussion about connecting it up, but the developer said, “We don’t have to do it; there is no requirement; so we are not going to connect up,” and it put gas boilers into those houses instead. We are supposed to be moving away from gas, but there are gas boilers in those brand new houses, right next door to a district heating system. We could have connected them up, but there was no requirement. That was post the new frameworks that Mark Ruskell talked about.
I should probably conclude.
When it comes to solar panels, businesses were required to pay extra business rates for solar schemes of above 50 kilowatts on their roofs. They were also required to get planning permission. In England, that was not the case. The minister who is responsible has just changed that, but why has it taken so long to get some of those really simple things in place so that we can provide the right incentives?
We need the people, we need the expertise, we need the road map and we need councils to be able to do more than their statutory duties, in order to make those big changes and make sure that we meet our climate change obligations.