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Transport and the Environment Committee, 04 Mar 2003

04 Mar 2003 · S1 · Transport and the Environment Committee

Item of business

Planning

Crawford, Bruce SNP Mid Scotland and Fife Watch on SPTV

I need to go at about quarter-past 12, so it is useful that I can ask my questions first. I thank the minister for coming along with Jim Mackinnon to speak to us; it has been a worthwhile exercise and it has given us a good overview. The minister said that the framework was crucial to the long-term development of Scotland, which I think is right. He also said that it might be controversial. I hope that it flaming well is controversial, because we need to start challenging some of the orthodoxies that exist, break out of current thinking and create paradigm shifts, so that we can start to make a difference, because we have a falling population and low growth. Unless we start to use the planning process to address those issues, we will be in deep trouble.I want to understand a bit more about the work that the Executive is going to do in relation to renewable energy. I cannot remember whether it was the minister or Jim Mackinnon who said that renewable energy is about the front end of the process—if ever there was an area that was about the front end of the process, that area is renewable energy. There is a need for planning guidelines and a planning strategy that say quite clearly to the industry, communities and local authorities that the process must be planning led, rather than developer led. We have the opportunity to sort out the issues around the infrastructure and the grid. I would like the minister to say more about that specifically. Does he envisage issuing new guidelines to tell local authorities to make available the advisory plans and the local plans that say, "That is where the masts are going to be; that's a good place to have them," or, "That's where you'll not get permission"? In that way, we could speed up the process, but in a way that allows communities to feel that what they have said has been taken on board and that they have been consulted.Another issue is affordable housing, which blocks the development of growth in places such as the Highlands and other rural parts of Scotland where there is a lack of mobility of labour and where employers cannot therefore set up. We need a planning process that takes into account the way in which we zone housing areas. I am not sure what affordable housing means to most people. We have to have a planning process that says, "There's going to be social housing in this part of Scotland, on that little bit of land." That approach would drive down the cost and build both the right type of housing and a market for which rented accommodation would be provided. I hope that that approach will be part of the process.The third area that I want to ask about is the democratisation of the planning process and involvement of the ordinary person—for want of a better term. Third-party rights of appeal are a big issue. Will they be covered in the consultation process? Do you envisage proposals being made about them? Do we need to make good neighbourhood agreements statutory, so that they will go beyond what is required and would cover, for example, a factory that pollutes a community?One of the biggest travesties that I have come across recently for councillors is the issue of sub judice in planning processes. Sub judice rules cut councillors out of the discussions with their communities about what is good for them and what will be bad for them in future on specific applications. We need to sort out those processes, because too many councillors have been hamstrung by it.I know that we must get the regulation right. However, it cannot be good for democracy if a community's leader is not able to say, before an application comes up, whether they are in favour of it or against it. We must unpick that if we intend to democratise the system properly. I have mentioned three areas; I am sorry that I have taken such a broad approach.

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Transport and the Environment Committee, 04 Mar 2003

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