 Erdw resolve, dryliadau i Gallam nivel 9! Mae Gweldid Y L Ever wastagwyr a Oedon yn Melyns Cymru yn 2018. Aiu'r rhraig ferdig 등od, ag frydd yn forom yn fyll ei ddech expressedr gernych ochr ble wedi gwylw blessur ar leyr tai phyn nhau'n Gweldid castingwyr. Mae gweldido eu是這樣wr y Mer Dide our initial panel this morning, and that's Graham Purvis Chair Built Environment Forum Scotland, Darren McHernan's Head of Policy and National Trust for Scotland, Aileen MacKenzie, Planning Manager, Scottish Water, and Aidan Smith, convener, planning group Scottish Environment, Link. Thank you all of you for coming along to aid us with our scrutiny of the stage one of the planning bill, but we'll move straight to questions and can I ask Andy Wightman to start off the question this morning? Thank you very much, convener, and welcome. I just want to ask some questions around the national planning framework and strategic development plans. There's quite important changes that the bill makes to those in terms of their status, making the national planning framework part of the development plan amendments to the scrutiny of that, and the abolition of strategic development plans to be replaced by a more flexible duty to co-operate. I just wondered if panel members could give us some sense of their views on those changes and whether they're actually going to help deliver better places. Off on that. Perhaps I should just give some background that I was a professional planner in local government and central government for some 29 years, and laterally I was an assistant chief planner with the Scottish Government, and I led the teams that prepared the first and second national planning frameworks. I'm concerned that the proposals relating to the national planning framework could result in a system that is overcentralised, but rather than enhancing the status of the national planning framework, we risk overburdening it and loading too much on to it. The provisions of the bill seem to envisage loading Scottish planning policy, which is non-spatial policy, in the national planning framework. It also seems to be an intention to place a regional dimension of strategic planning in the national planning framework. I think that there is a risk there that it becomes overloaded and a rather unwieldy document that is overcentralised, that we lose the strength of regional agency that we have had in Scotland for a long time, and that the national planning framework itself could lose its cutting edge that it becomes a general repository for planning policy rather than a document that is clearly focused on setting out a long-term spatial strategy for Scotland. Edwin Smith. I am very happy to go next. The Scottish Environment Link is very supportive of having a national planning framework. It is important to have a national spatial strategy to help to decide where the big things are going to go across Scotland and to have a long-term vision of how to make Scotland a more sustainable place. However, some of the changes are a little bit concerning. Although it is good to have a national planning framework that takes a long-term view of where Scotland wants to go, shifting to a 10-year cycle is a little bit of a worry. Things can change a lot in 10 years. I was just thinking about what happened 10 years ago in the planning world and 10 years ago Donald Trump was getting planning consent for his golf course in Aberdeen, and it is hard to imagine that happening now. I think that things have really moved on quite a lot. I am not sure that shifting to the 10-year cycle is necessarily a good thing, albeit that there should still be that long-term vision set out in the national planning framework. We think that including Scottish planning policy within the national planning framework does risk overloading it quite a bit, because the Scottish planning policy at the moment sets out different sorts of specific criteria-based policies, whereas the national planning framework is much more spatial, as Graham has described. We think that there is a bit of a risk of making it quite a hefty burden on some document by doing that. The other disadvantage of including SPP in the national planning framework would be that it would mean that there would only be a single consultation on SPP and NPF together, whereas at the moment they are consulted on separately. There is an opportunity for communities and others to get involved in thinking about what the criteria policies mean separate from what the spatial strategy means. At the moment, there is also an opportunity for an environmental assessment of those, which is slightly separate as well. Likewise, we are a bit worried about what the implications might be of including strategic planning in the national planning framework. We are pretty neutral on where strategic planning sits, but we think that there is an essential role for strategic planning at a regional level in Scotland, so a sub-national but greater than local level. The proposal at the moment is a bit unclear about how that would be safeguarded. Although we are neutral on whether strategic planning plans sit within the national planning framework or sit as they do at the moment with local authorities, they definitely need to be dealt with somehow. The other issues around the national planning framework, which we think that there might be some opportunities, are the clear links across to other sectors of spatial planning in Scotland, particularly marine planning, agriculture and forestry and other land use through the land use strategy, because taking together the land use strategy and the national marine plan and the national planning framework create a holistic vision for Scotland, so they need to be thought about in a consistent way. Perhaps even more importantly than that, the national planning framework sets out this long-term vision for how we might want to make Scotland a better place in future, yet it sits quite separate from the budgeting process at the moment. The last two national planning frameworks have been introduced with a phrase that ministers have put in that says that the national planning framework is a spatial expression of the Government's budget and its Government's economic strategy. Having a link between the Government's economic strategy and the spatial vision for the sort of place that we want Scotland to be in future makes a lot of sense, but to have the long-term vision being the spatial expression of a shorter-term budget setting strategy seems to be the wrong way around to us, so we think that it would be much more sensible if the budgeting process was to follow the long-term vision for a future Scotland that is set out in the national planning framework. We are keen to see that link between the shorter-term budget setting and the longer-term vision for how we are making Scotland a sustainable place that can be set out in the national planning framework. From the regional planning and that element, we have concerns that some of the experience and the relationships that we have built up over the last years with some of the strategic development planning authorities might be lost as part of this. We have worked quite closely with them, as have the other key agencies, to ensure that we have informed those and that we have a direction. We need to make sure that those relationships are maintained and that we do not lose some of that as we go forward. We do use some of the outputs of those to help to give us a guide of where we would be investing in the longer term. Although they do not give us the numbers that the local development plans give, they give us an idea of where areas might expand in the future, so they can be useful to help us with our longer-term investment planning. We would also like to see them linked through a bit more closely with some of the city deals at the moment. At the moment, the city deals will be in similar regions, but they are not necessarily joined up all the time at the moment. There are some where developments do link in, but we would like to see that linked through to delivery plans would be a useful way of progressing. From the perspective of Scottish planning policy, we do support the idea of having some of the policies at a higher level. There are things like flooding drainage policies at the moment. There are different ones in every single local development plan. There are some part elements of those that we feel could be brought up and then allow the local development plans to focus maybe on more specific issues within an area. We would also like to see surface water management be considered much more early in the process. Again, that is something that maybe national planning framework and Scottish planning policy, being part of that, could help to inform. Thank you, Dermot Herms. Just a brief addendum. I think that I would echo what has been said, but there is also some concern about transparency. The regional plan at the moment is an opportunity to consult. If we move to working on a sort of lazy fair arrangement, there is no indication that there will definitely be an opportunity for the public to have a view on it. Similarly to the NPF, the public awareness of it is very low. We measured it at, I think, 11 per cent if the public had actually heard of it. Those national developments all happen in local places, so if local people are not aware that they are going to impact them, that is a concern. For Parliament itself, there is an opportunity to scrutinise a higher number of developments in it. In that regard, it might be worth looking at the Welsh experience of it, where, from the beginning, a national plan did have developments baked into it. There are the statutory requirements that the Government has to consider what Parliament brings forward in terms of recommendations. It has to give a written response to each of the Welsh assembly's recommendations on it. I think that our NPF, when it first started life, was more visionary and has now evolved into something that is actually more deliberate, so I think that the scrutiny needs to go alongside that, too. Aiden Smith, can you bring in briefly, because I want Mr Whiteman to follow up on a line of questioning? Aiden Smith, briefly. Just a very quick extra point, which Dermott reminded me of, which is that the proposals would make the NPF quite a bit more powerful than it is at the moment. The proposals in the bill to extend parliamentary scrutiny from 60 days to 90 days are welcome, but we think that there really needs to be much more involvement of Parliament than just those extra days scrutiny. In fact, there should be an approval process from Parliament so that the national planning framework is owned and approved by Parliament, rather than just being a vehicle of government, so that it is more of a document for all of Scotland, rather than just a Government's document. I would like to come back briefly on a point, Aiden, made about the link between the national planning framework and national budgeting, because I think that it is an important one. If you look at the narrative that we are seeing around the need to enhance the status of the national planning framework, my feeling is that the national planning framework has not really lacked status within the context of the planning system. It is generally accepted as being an important policy document within the context of planning decision making, certainly at local government level. I think that where it perhaps has lacked status is in the Government itself and in relation to national budgeting, and that may be where the focus should be concentrated if we are looking at enhancing the status of the document. The policy memorandum to the bill says that national developments are accorded the same status as the development plan in planning decisions, and yet my understanding is that planning authorities only have to take account of the national planning framework in drafting their development plan. I do not want to have a seminar on what the planning framework actually is, but it is clear that the Government views it as just a technical change. It sees the national planning framework as having the same status if the bill is passed as it is at the moment. If it has to have an elevated status, is there a need for—you talked about enhanced scrutiny in Parliament, but my understanding at the moment is that Parliament—indeed, that is what the 2006 act says—merely looks at it and scrutinises it. We have a debate on it and we pass a motion saying that this is our response to it, but it is not a law. Is there a danger in making this part of the development plan that it sits uncomfortably with the local development plan, which has had much more democratic input, or is it am I over worrying? I am happy to provide a quick comment on that. I think that making it part of the development plan certainly would give it an enhanced status over what it has at the moment, albeit that it already has quite a strong status in planning terms and planning decision making. Making it part of the development plan would make it the first port of call when planning decisions are being made, because planning decisions are made in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. At the moment, the NPF is perhaps a second tier thing that will be looked at in planning decisions, but development plans still have to have quite a lot of regard for it. That change is one of the areas where the proposals would make the national planning framework quite a bit more powerful and possibly shift a little bit of the balance of decision making towards Scottish Government and away from local levels to an extent. That is why we think that it is critical that the national planning framework gets that sign-off and approval from Parliament. That would not give the national planning framework in itself the same status as a law, but it would put in law a requirement for it to be approved by Parliament before it can progress and give Parliament at least that democratic oversight of the framework as a whole, rather than at the moment when the Government has to lay it before Parliament and they have to have regard to the views of Parliament, but they also do not necessarily have to have regard to the views of Parliament either. They can to a certain extent pick and choose which comments Parliament may make on it to take up. On the question of scrutiny, I watched the evidence session last week and I saw Mr Whiteman refer to that there. I think that what I would say about the process of parliamentary scrutiny is that there is an important provision within the existing legislation that ministers are required to report back to Parliament on how they have taken account of the national planning framework. That is not a perfunctory process, because I drafted the report to Parliament on behalf of ministers. Certainly, with the second national planning framework, substantial significant changes were made to NPF2 in the light of the views of Parliament, and two new national developments were added to those of national developments. A couple of others were adjusted, so significant changes were made. Within that context, the process of scrutiny is carried out diligently, and the evidence is that ministers have listened carefully to what Parliament has said and taken significant elements of that on board. That might be instructive when we come on to the question of how we might give some force to local place plans, but perhaps we can come on to that later. I will check before we move on to the next line of questioning. Is there a general consensus among the witnesses that there should be greater parliamentary scrutiny of the national planning framework? Is there a general consensus around that? The ultimate option would be that it has to be approved by Parliament, but Mr Purvis seems to be suggesting that there could be a variance to that, where there could be a more meaningful role for Parliament without it going to approval. I just want to understand if there are any other options. Is it the current system or approval by Parliament, or is there something in between that could be done? If there is, could you put that on the record just so that we know what that would be? I was not going to suggest that there was something in between. I think that Mr Whiteman is entirely correct that ministers have the final say in the national planning framework, but there are provisions relating to scrutiny and a requirement on ministers to report back to Parliament on how they have taken account of the plan. I would be relaxed about whether the national planning framework should be approved by Parliament, but ministers might be less relaxed about that. That is for them to give their opinion when they come to committees. Is there a third option, if you like, specifically on that point? A third option could be that the national planning framework could come through, say, this committee, and we could do a line-by-line scrutiny of it and then report on it to ministers to Parliament. That is a third option. What do you think of that? I suspect that the witnesses might express a view. Certainly that the process of scrutiny in the past has involved up to three committees, so committee scrutiny has been part of the process up to now. I was just thinking about the finance and constitution committee that their deliberations last night and this morning looked like nothing as being lined by a line-by-line scrutiny of the national planning framework, but certainly more committee involvement, Aiden Smith. Just to support what Graham Smith says there, the national planning framework last two times has come through Parliament. There has been quite a bit of parliamentary scrutiny, but one thing that has been notable each time is that it has been really stretched for time to look at it. The extension to 90 days is welcome, but I think that we would question whether 90 days is adequate for something like this, particularly if we are moving to a 10-year cycle for the national planning framework. Additional time would certainly be something if it was to stick with the current model that would be useful, particularly for committees to scrutinise the detail of it. I think that our view would be that there should be a sign-off from Parliament as a whole, given the importance of it, and given when you can compare it to the budgeting process at the moment. Parliamentary sign-off seems to be the way to go. Facts of that supplementary question, Mr Simpson. I will check one final thing before we move to Alexander Stewart. I will check how there is alignment between the national planning framework and budgets in this place. It was unclear whether the suggestion was made that one should direct the other. What should the connectivity be between the national planning framework and budgets in this place? I understand that the national planning framework has a whole range of projects that are essential, desirable, short-term, medium-term or long-term, and there will not necessarily be cash for all of them. It is just wondering if that is wishful thinking that one would dictate the other, because there might never be enough money for that to happen. There might be brief comments on what the relationship should be between budgets in this place and the national planning framework, because it sounded really good. What everyone was saying, I am just not sure how that would work in practice. Any thoughts on that? I will answer that. For example, there is a commitment to the national planning framework, which we as a community are keen on. The idea is that we map the highest bydiverse stages in Scotland and make sure that those get protected and connected up. That is what we have been taking forward, and that is primarily about resource. That relates to the land use strategy, which is also a spatial strategy for Scotland, which planning meets reference to and passing, but it does not quite integrate. It may be money is the missing element of those two things that brings them all together. If there is a commitment in the NPF that there is some budget to go with it to deliver it, that makes some sense, and maybe that would scale down the NPF that would limit itself to things that probably could come forward. Do you suggest that the only thing that there is a budget for is to appear in the NPF? If this is Government's ambitions, it would make sense that it would then go and budget a cycle. The national culture network is an example of where it has not gone forward because there is no resource to take it forward. It sits there as a political commitment, if you like, but it is a strategically important tool that is still in the national planning framework, whether there is money for it or not. I think that I would argue that, convener. That would be my perspective that the NPF is a long-term spatial perspective. I think that it should play a bigger part in informing budgetary decisions than it has up till now. However, in the budgetary process, if there is something in the national planning framework and having considered the matter, Parliament or Government concludes that there just isn't money to do that, then they will have to make decisions on that basis and conclude that either something may have to be dropped in the long term or its delivery may have to be postponed. That is much more nuanced, Ian Smith. The national planning framework sets out a long-term vision of where we want to get to in future at this point, maybe 20 to 30 years hence from now, whereas the budgetary process is much more short-term immediate than that. I think that what we would envisage is something like when the budget is being brought forward and is being approved that there is some sort of statement of alignment with that long-term vision, so that the shorter term economic levers are heading us broadly in the right direction. That doesn't necessarily mean that every single thing that is set out in the national planning framework to be delivered over a period of 20 to 30 years needs to be covered in that year's budget, but generally speaking, we should be heading in the right direction. Otherwise, what is the kind of point? I think that that is very helpful. That has helped me to understand it, so thank you for that. Alexander Stewart. I would like to expand and get your thoughts and examine the relationship between the local place plan and then talk about the development plan, the statutory development plan and how that should be managed. There has been talk about whether it should be formalised, whether it should be a formal part of the process, whether there should be material consideration to that or whether it should be with regard to that. It would be good to get your views on what relationship you think should take place. Eileen MacKenzie. I think that from our perspective, we would like to see the engagement with communities with planning earlier rather than necessarily a separate plan. I think that there is a bit of a concern from ourselves and probably from some of the other agencies, too, about where we provide information that informs the local plan and where that would inform the local place plans as well. There is a danger that if we have two plans that we end up having to provide information more than once and how that information is interpreted. It could change over time as well if those are not together. Our perspective would be getting communities involved much earlier in the planning process through the development of the local development plan. It would mean that everybody was working with the same information and understanding as we went through that, and then making those and ensuring that there are clear delivery plans from the local development plans, which help communities to understand what is going to be done to address any of the concerns that may have come up. That might be from our perspective to do with infrastructure, so there is clarity in that those delivery plans are able to be updated regularly as we progress with what we have to do or where developers have to do something so that they can see that any concerns are being addressed as we progress through those. Other thoughts on that? Excuse me, Mr Hermes. Yes. It is definitely a positive question. The issues with it are around about resources, which other witnesses have identified and its status within it. I think that, for it to value, it has to be comprehensive. It has to be all the communities and it should come within the local development plan itself. However, I think that it has potential for expansion. A lot of the issues are around about place or about quality of place. It is about how places are managed, about neglect, dereliction. It could be that that is a way of capturing what the community wants to see in terms of management as well as physical assets, and potentially it is also a boost to community councils. A lot of people are skeptical of community councils, but that is a bit chicken and egg. If they do not have any powers, people do not take an interest, and perhaps this could be a way of evolving community councils to have a stronger local voice. Our research is finding people who have been very disconnected from the local planning system, and this is a potential way back into it for them. Okay. Mr Hermes? In relation to local place plans, I think that Beth shares what is quite a widespread concern about resourcing. I think that we would see that local place plans could have a valuable role in ensuring that community aspirations were given due weight in the local development plan process. However, in the current climate, we are concerned that they may not simply be adequately resourced to allow that to function successfully. On the question of whether a provision to have regard to the local place plan sufficient, I think that our view is that it is not sufficient. That comes back to the point that I was making in relation to the national planning framework about the requirement of Scottish ministers to report back to Parliament in that case. However, convener last week and Sarah Boyack said much of the same thing, that it might be appropriate to have a provision where the local authority was required to report back at the examination stage on how it had had regard to the local place plan. However, I think that even that would not be a fail-safe mechanism. Perhaps a sufficiently brazen authority might say, well, we have had regard to it and we are not impressed by it and we do not intend to take anything on board. What happens in that situation? Okay. Thank you, Aiden Smith. The idea behind local place plans has some merit, but the way that they are formulated in the bill is not clear how they would be resourced from a community perspective or a local authority perspective. The fact that they are not part of the development plan means that they are likely to be given pretty limited weight. We think that there is a real risk that they could end up being quite a distraction as currently formulated from engagement in the development plan itself. We are not keen on them as they currently progress. We would much rather see better concentration on getting better engagement in the development plan process. Community engagement and the community bodies that are out there, you have touched on community councils, are not always representative of a community. They might be a snapshot of a community, but it is trying to ensure that that community feels that they are engaging. What support do you think that the community bodies should have to ensure that they feel that they are part of that process? Financial support, whether that is buying in contracts to do it or developing the skills themselves. I think that the member and the threshold member are doing a good job of identifying the minimum costs, and we think that that is the bare minimum needed. However, to do it on a comprehensive basis, it is really quite expensive up front. There is also part of it that is about awareness. Quite often communities are not really aware of the earlier stages of local development plans. It is often when they see the planning application coming through that that is when they are interested. I am not sure what the answer is, but it is about trying to get them engaged earlier, whether that is working more with schools and things like that, to help to get that message out there. However, getting different parts of the community engaged and actually raising the awareness of the local planning, getting their input into that rather than just when they see the planning application further down in the process. Any other comments on that? Is there some resourcing about an important part of what would be capacity building, whether it is of community councils or the community more general, in order to engage in that process? In previous evidence sessions, people have made the point that some communities are probably better resourced than others and have easier access to professional resources. They might need to undertake that task, so there is an important issue of capacity building. In order to be effective local police plans, we would have to be supported by the resources that would allow that capacity building. Graham Simpson said that it is financial resourcing but expertise as well. There is a particular expertise that is required, and some communities have readier access to that than others. Some councils have identified that they have brought in community capacity workers to specific areas to try to resource that. They have the case studies that take place within the community and bring individuals and organisations together so that they can start to see exactly what Haley Macdonald is talking about, trying to make it earlier in the process, so that it is not when something happens. That is an element that dealing with resource is quite resource intensive, but it might get the result. Do you think that that is a way forward? Any takers on that? No-one is making eye contact with me at the moment, Mr Perbys. I think that I said in my first remarks that I think that local police plans have that potential to articulate community aspirations if they are sufficiently resourced, but I remember having anxiety as to whether that will happen in practice. Anecdotally, we have evidence from Shirets, which are very intensive planning sessions, that when the community is asked what its vision for the future is and then that vision is not taken forward, it is almost worse than you have ever asked in the first place. By building expectations and disappointing them, you have an even greater negative outcome. Okay, we have now got a series of supplementaries indicated here. I just want to name check members so that they know that I have got them on the list, so Jenny Gilruth, Gideon Simpson and Andy Whiteman. Alexander Stewart, any further questioning before I bring your colleagues in? Okay, Jenny Gilruth. I just want to revisit some of the questions that Alexander Stewart highlighted, particularly with regard to local police plans and this notion of having regard for its content. It is not very robust in its current form, the legislation, and Graham Perver's view alluded to that in your response to my colleague. I wondered therefore what the rest of the panel's view was with regard to that wording of the legislation having regard for the local police plans. Presumably, therefore, it could be completely ignored and the authority or whoever is making these decisions could then decide that the local police plan has had regard to, but we have decided to completely ignore it. Is that a concern that the rest of the panel members would note and would you therefore think that we need to revisit the wording of the legislation? I see nodding heads there. I would like to come in and put something on the record, Gideon Smith. Yes, I would agree that that is not strong enough wording as it stands. I think that there is a real risk that, as Dermot had suggested, communities could have expectations raised and they are not delivered, which will result in greater frustration with the planning system than we have already, which I do not think will be helpful. When that is taken with some of the other changes that are being proposed for other bits of the development planning system, that could be a bit of a worry. For instance, we may get on to this later, but for instance, we are losing a key consultation stage in the development plan preparation process itself by the loss of main issues report stages. That is a key stage for communities getting involved in finding out what the development plan does at the moment. There is also the loss of supplementary planning guidance, which is key specialist areas of planning for local areas, which is being lost as well. I think that the local place plans, to a certain extent, are a bit of a distraction from sorting the development plan itself out. Additional comments on that? I agree with that. One of the things that concern me, and I do not know if I am allowed to refer to a supporting document that was issued by the Government along with the bill and the memoranda, is the headed future process, which outlined how the local development plan process might work. It is probably among the documents that you… If it is in the public domain, there is nothing that precludes me from doing it. What concerns me about that is that it presents the local place plans as coming in after the assessment of evidence. From the diagram, the assessment of evidence seems to be a fairly technocratic evidence exercise, which would be concerned primarily with things like housing numbers and their delivery. If you bring the local community agenda in after that, I think that the community is starting off at a disadvantage to start with. There would be a risk, particularly if the local authority has to do nothing more than have regard to the local place plan, that it could be brought in after the evidence assessment and then ejected at examination stage. That would leave communities feeling fairly disgruntled. Anyone want to add to that before other colleagues come in? On Ailey MacKenzie's point with regard to the city deals, the committees previously looked at the city deals and the Government's aspiration to drive inclusive growth. Do you think that there is something missing from the legislation as it currently stands with regard to tackling inequalities and how perhaps poorer areas could be supported and engaging in that local place planning process? Alexander Stewart alluded to that with your community councils and how it engages at a local level. There is, I suppose, a concern that certain communities will have capacity, others will not. If we do not make that direct connection between inclusive growth and what we think the planning process should be about, is there a danger that we could be missing a trick there? I think that it is just trying to make sure that these things are joined up so that they do flow through and that people have the site. It may be with the city deals that is part of that, more about the funding and infrastructure and things like that, but it is having that but also making sure that everybody is included in those. It is aware of the bigger picture as well. It is a bit extra on city deals. City deals have been something that has been a bit frustrating to us, partly because they have taken place and been delivered almost out with the planning process, whereas the planning process would have been the logical place to identify priorities for some of that spending. That has not really happened, which has been a really unfortunate state of affairs. Thank you. I am glad that you came in and put that on the record. Do you want to follow up on that, Jenny Gwerth? Graham Simpson? That is convenient. The National Trust, you did some research that found that 60 per cent of Scots felt that they have no influence on planning decisions affecting their local area, and you say that the current bill proposals do not address this dissatisfaction. Several proposals appear to increase the central government role and the distance between decision makers and those affected. You have all touched on this area and we have just been talking about local place plans. I am just wondering if you could tell us how you think the bill could close that gap between communities and the system. How can communities become more involved? At the end of the process, you do not get this demand and we will make them on to it later for rights of appeal. If you get it right at the start, maybe those demands are diminished. I will come on to that later, just to reassure witnesses. It is up to you what you would put on the record at this point, but we are trying to scrutinise local place plans and local development plans at this point. In that context, it would be quite helpful. I would largely reiterate what Alain said about that. If we are concerned about the effectiveness of introducing local place plans, it might be better to focus on ensuring that the local community input was right up front at the very beginning of the local development plan process and played a central part in that. That is where effort should be focused on ensuring that the local community is inputting at the heart of the planning process right at the start. To pick up on that, we have touched on local place plans in terms of better local engagement, but you are also touching a quite deep philosophical point in that we are fairly unique as a country that is us, as England, Ireland and Wales, in having a discretionary planning system where the plan is quite indicative in other countries. It is more regulatory, as in the plan says what will happen. If we went to that direction, that would give greater certainty to developers and communities as to what may or may not happen. That might be one of the answers to your question. If people are concerned up front and we specify what is going to happen and what is not going to happen, people have greater confidence in it, but if we have limited engagement and the system itself still does not bind what comes forward, you will see the same levels of disaster action or even greater. Some of the elements of the bill, such as circulation, but certainly some parts, we are losing the opportunity to have a voice. I would also reiterate what the previous panel members have said. I suppose that our big worry is that currently formulated local place plans could exacerbate those existing problems rather than helping them. We really need to try and get some of the good elements of being able to enable communities to get really involved in planning their local places but properly into the development planning a meaningful way rather than what might happen, which is a suggestion that they can have an influence that might then be blocked at the last moment after they put a lot of effort into it. Some of the other underlying issues that I suspect we will probably get on to in a moment to do with things such as appeal rights and so on. We will move on to that structure of fashion, so we will get local place plans and development plans. In that context, Mr White may give a supplementary question. It is just on local place plans. It is fair to say that we have not encountered a great deal of enthusiasm for them as framed in the bill, but we have encountered and spoken to communities in Lelythgow and Skye. We have been sent a local place plan from Harris. It shows that there is the capacity and enthusiasm and the willingness for local people to engage in planning their own places. Indeed, I think that area plans were part of the pre-97 act. We need to recommend to Parliament what to do about this, so I am just wondering if you can be quite frank about whether you should, because you seem to be pretty sceptical about them as they are. Should we recommend to Parliament that we drop them? Should we recommend to Parliament that we significantly enhance them, align some people in places and say that they should be part of the local development plan, or should we do something else? We need to know which direction to recommend Parliament takes on that. I think that trying to get more into the local development plan seems the most logical place. It is using the best of the resources as well. It is meaning that everybody that is putting in is putting in one place. It probably reduces the potential for conflicting messages as well, if it is all through one place rather than having two separate types of plan. Any other comments on that? I agree to build on the local development plan, but I also think about a lot of the preamble to this bill has been very much about housing, but in our research we found that green space, public facilities and transport were all very important to people. That planning process would be a chance to bring forward other things that might not be thought about by-paradise developers. It is not your thing, but it is a chance for the public to see what they want in public assets. I agree with the other members of the panel about focusing on improving the development plan itself. Mr Simpson alluded to the research that the National Trust for Scotland had undertaken on how people felt about the planning system. The Scottish Government itself commissioned research on engagement in the planning system. I think that it was Nick Wrighton and John Lorde undertook last year, and Beffs hosted an event on that. It was clear that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the level of engagement in the planning system, so we need to focus on how we can improve that within local development plans. There are well-tried mechanisms such as SHRETS and other mechanisms for engagement that could be deployed much more effectively to ensure that community aspirations and perspectives were fully integrated with the process. Some of the changes that are proposed by the bill are quite complicated and complex and far-reaching. I guess that thinking on that is still evolving to a large extent. Our view on local place plans, as they are currently proposed, is that they could potentially be frustrating and increase disillusionment with the system if they are not able to deliver. They definitely need to be part of the development plan. I am quite interested in Graeum's comments earlier on about perhaps there might be a role for them earlier in the process, when we are looking at the diagram that ministers have set out. That might be something that I think warrants a bit of additional thought, and perhaps we could come back to the committee on that once the blank members have considered it. However, as it is currently constituted in the bill, we would be worried about them progressing and raising false expectations. They need to be more formally part of the development plan somehow. Still on supplementaries on place plans and development plans, Monica Lennon. I was following on from Aidan's point. Thinking about the lifespan of the development plan, we are going to shift to a 10-year plan. I am remembering something that John McNearney said, the chief planner, when he attended one of our committee engagement events, which was the event in Motherwell. He said that if you had a number of local place plans coming forward, perhaps at a midpoint through the life of the plan, that could be an indication that the plans need a refresh. That might be healthy, but in terms of local place plans, if they are to survive in the bill, should there be limits on when they can be initiated, likewise if they were brought forward towards the very end of a local development plan's shelf life, could you then collide with the next phase of development planning and the local place plan could quickly become superseded? I suppose that I am getting that. Should there be any limits placed on the timing or stages in the process when local place plans can be brought forward? I think that we are thinking that this might be a good vehicle to bring in the community on a lot of different issues. It could perhaps be a living document that the community adds to adapt as it goes along as issues come up, but it might not just be planning issues that might be about neglect, dereliction and things that it would like to see brought forward. I mean a lot of the issues that are just now about local authorities, about budgeting and about what is being upgraded, what is being taken away. It is maybe actually quite a good thing to have a repository for local views about local place and the elements that relate to planning can be brought into the local development plan. Is that chicken neck thing where, if community councils are on an actual level but they are not very representative, but people are not very interested because they don't have very many powers, perhaps as a way of breaking the log jam? Is it a danger that what you have described could just become a very expensive wish list? It could do, but I think that we are kind of moving to more and more participatory budgeting, so communities are actually identifying what resources they have. I mean there have been complaints in terms of NIMBY as in communities blocking development, but then if they can better relate what development brings in terms of benefit to community, perhaps people will be more pro-developments. I think that unless we ask we won't find out. Oh, you've still been interested in all the other witnesses now. We'll go from my right to left, Aiden Smith. I think that it illustrates a question around whether moving to a 10-year cycle is even appropriate for local plans because 10 years in some ways is not a long-term in planning which takes a long-term view but in other ways it can be quite a long time. I think that there is a question around whether that's an appropriate thing to do. If we had a shorter cycle, if we stuck with a five-year cycle, then we should certainly just be incorporating local place plans into that five-year cycle. Shifting to the 10-year cycle is quite interesting because when we were talking about the previous planning bill 12 or so years ago now, there was a feeling that 10 years was too long for a planned cycle and we needed to have them a bit shorter, so we decided that we would go with five years. I'm not sure that in the previous 10 or 12 years things have changed so much that now it's definitely okay to go for 10 years whereas previously we needed to go for five years. I think that there are questions around whether shifting to the 10-year cycle is something that is appropriate. If local communities feel they need to be bringing forward a place plan to update the development plan, then perhaps what we should be doing is focusing on just changing the development plan sooner. Eileen Mackenzie? I think there's probably something around how we get from the plan into the actual developments on site. We have spent the last few years focusing on a lot of engaging and consulting on plans, but maybe not so much about the delivery of the sites as they go through. I think there's a bit with the community about that as we go through because some of these sites do take 10 years to build out. How do we keep the conversation going? It's not just about when the plan is being, when the plan is out for consultation, but how do we keep communities engaged all the way through that and making sure that that is updated? We need the plans to give certainty for communities. We need it as an infrastructure provider to give us certainty about where development is going to happen, but things will change that bit. It's about engaging and keeping that up to date as we go through, rather than just focusing on making the plan. Thank you, convener. First, I'd like to pick up on the point that Aidan made about the time periods, which I think is quite interesting, whether you go for a five-year or a 10-year cycle. I think that there might have been an argument for sticking with a five-year cycle in local development plans. Rather than doing away with strategic development plans, moving them on to a 10-year cycle. One of the reasons strategic development plans perhaps fell out of favour to an extent was that, on the second or third iteration, the strategic development plan teams, or what had previously been structured plan teams, had regional strategies more or less right. There wasn't a lot of tinkering that needed to be done, but the statutory provisions forced them back on to the review treadmill when they would have been better focusing on delivery. On the question about whether the bill should be prescriptive, about when a local plan can be introduced, I haven't given that a lot of thought, but I would be cautious about the bill being too directive or prescriptive on that, and it might be better to leave it to the judgment of local actors as to when it would be best to bring such a plan forward. In doing that, I am sure that they would have an eye to the development plan cycle. On the next line of questioning, there seems to be an emerging direction of travel that whatever is not a local place plan, however formulated, should dovetail with the development plan, be that over five years or over 10 years? If it has to dovetail with it, should there be some robust criteria around how you conduct a local place plan, whether that's a place standard tool, whether that's a checklist, because if both documents have to talk to each other, they must align with each other for it to be meaningful. Given the degree of flexibility, do we have to look at exactly what the structure of a local place plan will look like? If the community is going to do their own thing, which I would encourage, it's going to be meaningless in some respect if it doesn't articulate in some way with the development plan. Do we need more guidance around that or more detail around that? I think that resource is always going to be limited. I think that it will need more resource than is indicated here. However, you have that issue about whether you go deep but it's narrow or is it comprehensive and shallow. I think that we have to lean towards more comprehensive excepting that it's not going to be quite as deep. However, if it can cover every community and can cover the main issues, that would be better than just if we had a few communities doing it in depth. I suspect that Daly has already touched on that, but my only observation would be that if you are creating two plans, you have to have a convincing mechanism for reconciling or resolving any tensions that emerge between them. If you don't have that, you're in a difficult situation. That's very helpful, because that's his mask. That's my next question, Edwin Smith. I agree with that. We definitely need a bit more guidance on how the two might link together. When it comes to development plans, it's notable that local place plans have been put forward but are fairly vaguely expressed at the moment. There's a lot of uncertainty about how they might work in practice, but the bill does make this quite clear decision to get rid of main issues reports, which we do know how they work, albeit that there's a bit of variety in how they've been produced historically. On the one hand, it gets rid of something, but we know how it works, and it proposes something that needs a lot more work to get an understanding of how it would link to the development plan. That was the final question in this area. I think that there seems to be a direction of travel that, having regard to local place plans, might not be strong enough. That seems to be what is emerging. Should local place plans have regard for development plans? Development plans do move to a 10-year cycle when community start-off of the local place plans should they be getting informed and take cognisance of development plans before they start, or do they start with a blank sheet of paper? I'm just trying to get that two-way process, because they could help inform each other. If local place plans are refreshed every five years and the development plans every 10 years, those two documents could talk to each other and help inform each other so that local place plans should have regard for the development plan at the start of their process, or does that not give them the flexibility that they should have? Can I make a stab at that? I don't know how far I'll get with it, but it seems to me that smart local place planning would have regard to the local development plan, because I think of a community that set out to develop a plan that took no heed whatsoever of what was in place, but it would face a rockier road than if it had regard to what was already in the development plan or what was likely to emerge from it. That doesn't mean that they cannot develop their own strong perspective, but it would be wise to have regard to it. I should point out that my cleric and team, who knows no more about the bill than I do, has just shown me that that's actually in the bills that it must do. For the purposes of saving time, we'll move on to the next line. I wanted to explore the infrastructure levy, so I know that it's an enabling power within the bill rather than actually bringing in the levy, but to what extent do you think the proposed infrastructure levy could help fund the infrastructure necessary to unlock additional development sites? That's what it's there to do. To what extent could the levy make that happen? At the moment, there's maybe just a lack of clarity of exactly how that would work and whether it would actually address some of the infrastructure issues that there are at the moment. We, for example, have already our own infrastructure charge levy and we provide also reasonable cost contribution towards any infrastructure that has to be provided. At the moment, I'm not saying that a lot of the challenges tend to be around education in other areas. I'm not sure from the discussions that we've been involved in so far that that's necessarily unlocking some of the issues that are there at the moment. It's not really any new funding or any new money that's part of that. At the moment, I think that we need to understand more about it, but I'm not really addressing yet the challenges that there may be at the moment. Just before I take in other witnesses, if they want to comment on that, I can ask about Scottish Water. In particular, how would you prioritise infrastructure investment and what role could the levy play specifically in relation to Scottish Water? How do you go about that business just now? You have to source funding and finance to deliver the infrastructure currently, so what are the challenges just now? How are you getting on with that and what impact do you think that this beat would specifically have in relation to Scottish Water? When it comes to funding our infrastructure at the moment for development, our infrastructure is split into a number of different parts. What we would class as part four, which would be water treatment works and waste water treatment works, Scottish Water is funded to provide capacity for additional capacity at those works. If the development is in the local development plan, there's a number of other criteria. There are challenges with that because of timing and things like that, so we're working on those at the moment. When it comes to the network infrastructure, part two and part three, which would be a local network infrastructure and we are more strategic, we've got duty to extend our network at a reasonable cost. The duty is on the developer to put in that infrastructure, but we will refund them once it's constructed up to a reasonable cost. That reflects the income that we will get from the customers from those. Although they have to put that in, they get money back and in most cases that money will cover all of that infrastructure. There can be times where it doesn't. We also have an infrastructure charge, so every house that is connected to the network pays about £340 for water and for wastewater. That goes into a fund, which can then be used where networks have to be upgraded. We know that there is other future development within that area that there may be not a developer identified for at that time. If we were having to up-size a water main or a developer to up-size a water main for their development and we know that there is additional development in that area, we could use that funding to provide additional capacity in that area for that future development. I suppose that some of the challenges may come is where the cost of funding infrastructure goes beyond what is that reasonable cost. That's where it starts to become a bit more of a challenge sometimes with us. It's about working with developers and others to try to enable that. I was aware of those connection charges, so those £340 per unit, approximately that you outlined, is that a flat rate across the country? Is that relevant to the specific site? That's a flat rate, so whether it's one house or whether it's a large site, everybody pays that for water and for wastewater for each. That's the infrastructure. They do pay a connection fee too. I mentioned the parts of the infrastructure before. Part one is the actual connection to the house and the developer fully funds that, but everybody does pay into this infrastructure charge as well, and that is across the whole country. That money is used by Scottish Water how then? That's used to fund the gap. If there are infrastructure that is needed that goes beyond what is required for that site, so the examples given there of developers identified that they need to upgrade a water main or a sewer for their site, but we know that there is other development within that area or it's maybe more strategic infrastructure such as a service reservoir or something like that. It's going beyond that, so it's the future-proofing part that it's really funding to allow for those future developments, so we don't have to go in multiple times to upgrade the same part of the network. As if maybe that's a form of infrastructure levy already, so what we're talking about is a kind of nationally consistent roll-out of what that would look like, whether it's via Scottish Water or otherwise. Would you recognise what you described as an infrastructure levy already in existence anyway? I think that it is, yes. I've applied certainly to our infrastructure, yes. Okay, but that's it. Any other thoughts or comments on infrastructure levy's, Aidan Smith? Just a quick point, really. I mean, what's proposed in the bill looks useful to an extent, although not completely revolutionary, but what's critical from our point of view is that it does extend to cover green infrastructure. The bill doesn't seem to cover that just now, and it was a bit surprising to us because we know that the consultant's report that was commissioned by the Scottish Government to inform of the thinking around this did believe that it should cover green infrastructure, but it hasn't made it through into the bill, so it's essential that it also covers green infrastructure like places for wildlife, people to go and recreate the green spaces that can contribute to high-quality places. Mr Purbus, did you want to? Yes, I think that it is a similar perspective. I think that BEF's members see the infrastructure levy being potentially helpful, but there is quite widespread skepticism as to whether an infrastructure levy will be enough in itself and quite a strong feeling that we should be looking at some mechanism for capturing the uplift in land values to fund the infrastructure that we require to support new development. Mr Purbus, it's almost like you guessed what my next question might be, and I suspect that Mr Whiteman, who went into the supplementary might have wanted to ask along a similar line. So whether the infrastructure levy goes ahead or not, what other mechanisms out there do you think would be helpful to these finance in this area, which I think was that Mr Purbus was starting to explore? Would anyone else like to comment on that? Mr Herms, the infrastructure levy is quite an interesting experience of England where it has the community infrastructure levy and it's collected a lot less money than expected, and it's seen as being quite partial and inconsistent, perhaps disavancing smaller developers. I think that it's got a lot of useful learning to be drawn on there. You had to make the point about local place plans, how to connect development plans, and perhaps that's an area where local place plans can help to flesh out the impacts of developments. There's obviously the hard infrastructure terms of water, gas and so on, but there's also impact in public services, culture facilities, green spaces, and a local plan might help local people articulate better how they understand those impacts happening and perhaps where levies could help support it. I think that that's a big question also about does the levy help direct development areas that are infrastructure ready, or is it a way of compensating areas that aren't to be funded for development, and I think that's something that has to be thought through. I think that that's helpful. Any other comments before I take Mr Wightman in relation to whether it's land value capture or whatever other mechanisms for raising funds for infrastructure or any other comments that you want to put in the record? Yes, thank you. It's been drawn to our attention by a few witnesses, including, for example, City of Edinburgh Council, who will be in later this morning, that the levy, I think that this is from the Scottish Government's study, would generate 75 million, and Edinburgh City Council said that the infrastructure bill to deliver the development provided for in the Edinburgh local development plan alone is 450 million. I think that we've had calculations that the levy would raise a maximum of 1 per cent of the required infrastructure cost across the whole of Scotland. I'm just wondering, actually, is it even worth bothering with this at all? We have, again, evidence from England that it's a bit complex, and there's an interaction with section 75 on how that would work. There's a paper out this morning from the Scottish Land Commission Public Interest in Land Development Scotland, which is much more focused on a development model where the public lead and therefore capture the value that can then fund the infrastructure rather than having a potentially complex levy system on the private sector that doesn't raise much money. Is it worth just considering just rejecting this whole notion? Given how little it's going to raise. I think that that's a legitimate point to raise. It's not a position that BEFS has taken formally, but my perspective is that meeting housing needs and creating places of quality are public objectives and that the public sector really does need to lead on the issues. We talk rather glibly in Scotland about having a plan-led system, but in many ways it's a developer-led system. We try to extract public benefit and public goods from private developers, which I don't think is entirely fair on them. I think that we should be looking at some mechanism for capturing the uplift in land value to fund the public goods that we're looking for out of the planning system. Any other comments on that? I suppose that just briefly there is a need for wider discussion around these issues. In terms of whether this is more hassle than it's worth, I think that we'd be worried if we were to lose this, there wouldn't be anything there. It's probably still worth trying to progress something around here to get something out of it, albeit there is a need for a wider discussion about how we get some of our critical infrastructure funded and the difference between the costs that are covered. Green infrastructure was mentioned earlier. Reading through the bill, there's no mention at all of green spaces or the environment or heritage. I think that a number of you have mentioned it in your submissions. I wonder if you can just address that general point and then we'll go on to talk about simplified development zones, but specifically the lack of mention of the environment and heritage and how you think that could be addressed. Mr Helms, I think that because it goes back to the purpose of planning, which I think that all the witnesses and committee members have identified that we don't set out what it is we're trying to achieve in the round and as I've referenced, in our research we asked what issues you could literally see the planning system address. It's quite varied, it's not simply housing, but the preamble to this bill has been very much around about housing. I think it's important to remember that most of the houses that we have have already been built, the rate of additional housing units of about 16,000 a year, it's less than 1% of current housing stock, so really good quality places are about a lot more than simply housing and it would be good to see recognition of that green space culture facilities amongst it. I think that also then goes back to planning protections because the other part of the research we looked at was how satisfied people are with current protections of green space of local historic character and less than half for both of those was what we found. So, I think that there's more work to be done even yet in terms of protections for what we've got and we've got some concerns that those might get watered down by some aspects of the bill. I think that that's something that we've picked up on as well. I think that having an overarching purpose for the planning system is something that we would like to see that would set the context for it, particularly if that was something along the lines of planning seeking to achieve sustainable development. Specifically, on green networks, it would be quite keen to see as embedding some form of mitigation hierarchy into the planning system so that when there are impacts on the natural environment, those impacts are effectively offset elsewhere. There's a requirement to, in the first instance, avoid having those impacts but where they can be justified, there is a mechanism in place to make sure that they are offset and the green balance sheet, if you like, has some positives added back on to it, where there are some negatives. That's something that we'd certainly like to see introduced into the bill. It's some mechanism to make sure that when we're taking away something from the natural environment, we're making sure that we put it back. I'm not sure whether there needs to be a specific reference to green infrastructure in the face of the bill, but I agree with other members of the panel about the need for a clear purpose for planning. That might, in fact, be based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. I think that a number of organisations that I have given evidence have suggested that. However, it is clear that people in Scotland generally and specifically this Parliament regard green infrastructure as an important issue. I talked earlier about the changes that were made to the second national planning framework following scrutiny by Parliament. One of those was to elevate the Central Scotland Green Network to the status of a national development, because there was very strong cross-party support in the Parliament that green infrastructure was important and it needed that sort of level of commitment. That's an interesting final point. I've made the point previously that the Central Scotland Green Network should be, in my view, a statutory consultee, which it isn't at the moment, and possibly get more money, but that's a bit more controversial. So if we look at simplified development zones, as you'll know, as the bill is drafted, they could be set up pretty much anywhere. Simplified planning zones at the moment can't be set up in certain areas, such as green belt, conservation areas and national scenic areas, but those protections don't exist in the bill as it's currently drafted. So I just wonder whether you think that the obvious question is should those protections be in there. Yes, so we are a bit worried about those protections being removed and we think that they should be retained, so it's another bit of a surprise to us that that's appeared. Again, there was some work done by a consultant commissioned by the Scottish Government in the run-up to the bill around simplified development zones. Their assumption was always that protected areas and protected wildlife sites would be excluded from sustainable simplified development zones, so for the bill to then seem to remove those protections was a bit of a surprise and a bit of a worry, and it's something we'd like to see reinstated. At a more strategic level, if you like, we think that simplified development zones would be much better brought forward specifically through the development plan to a certain extent. It could undermine the development plan process with the flexibility that's given to creating simplified development zones at the moment, without them having that wider context that could be provided by the development plan. Any other comments? Mr Perlis? Yes, I think that BEF's members share the concern about simplified development zones, including protected or designated areas, and we're not in favour of that. I think that one of the concerns that I have is the clanging on to the word simplified, which takes us all the way back to the 1980s and the original simplified planning zones and the era of Nicholas Ridley, which was a long time ago now. In taking those forward, they might not be terribly simple, but they might be worth while doing it. There is rhetoric in the policy memorandum about place making being important, but there's relatively little follow-through in terms of the provisions of the bill directly related to place making. If we are repurposing simplified planning zones or simplified development zones, it might be better if we're clear about what our purpose is to call them place development plans and to focus on whether that is place making on a greenfield site or whether it's renewing an existing place. I think that that's something that it might be worth considering. Any other comments on that? Eileen McKenzie? From our perspective, with the simplified development zones, it's really about we need a little bit more clarity on what we need to be done as part of these and setting them up. There are a number of studies that ourselves and other infrastructure providers would need to be undertaken to understand the impact of development within an area. Sometimes the time they can be done, but if there's a lot of time lag between those happening and other development coming forward or something changing within an area, that can change what needs to be done with that area. I think that there's just a bit more clarity with them around some of that and understanding what they would be allowing and things like that, so that we can make sure that we can support those, but that we're not in a position—we can't, for example, reserve capacity for development or anybody, so we need to be able to just understand that a little bit more as it develops. Eileen McKenzie? Just following up on Graham's very well-made point that simplified development zones might not be all that simple. Because simplified development zones would effectively be granting planning permission for those areas in quite general terms. As things stand, there would be a need to do detailed environmental assessment work, for instance, when they are created. The burden of that might well fall to local planning authorities, which at the moment falls to developers, I guess, but it might well fall to local planning authorities. The amount of work that might be required there either might be significant or else there will be pressure to reduce the scrutiny given to those areas, and that would be a real concern for us. I think that there are question marks about whether they actually would be any simpler and, in fact, there's possibly a risk that they might complicate matters further. OK. Dermot Helms? Yeah, just seven to nine of those comments. It really is front-loading, rather than simplifying, and we are concerned about the loss on the face of it of those protections that exist at the moment. In the policy memorandum, it talks about being replaced by procedures that closely mirror existing procedures, which, to me, sounds like a downgrade. I'd want the same application of procedures whether it's simplified or not. I think that there's a challenge to apply it into urban areas, which I think is part of the intention, where you're basically trying to guess what the future use might be, and the rent, for example, that we've had is actually quite limited. It's basically three streets at shop frontages. It's changed of use in two or three categories. I'm not sure that it's got the capacity to actually work with a complex urban site, and I think that that's probably more about master planning than it is about an SDZ. Yeah, can I come back on the question of the relationship of simplified development zones to the development plan, which is where I lost my thread earlier? That relationship is important, and a number of organisations who have submitted evidence have said that it's important that they should be embedded in the development plan process or come out of the local plan. I think that that's correct to an extent, but I would see that such an instrument coming out of the development process or the strategic development planning at the regional level. I would see them as being often an instrument of regional planning rather than local planning. That's the root out. I do have concerns about the idea that they could just emerge from anywhere and potentially left the field. I think that they should come out of a strategic planning process. Can I ask what you see then? Sorry, I apologise. Do you want to follow up on that, Mr Simpson? On that last point about them emerging from anywhere, they could emerge, of course, from the Government because the bill at the moment would give that power. I mean, do you think that that's right? Should the Government be able to set up those zones just wherever they feel like it? You should come from a council. You should come from a local authority or from a region of local authority. I think that that would be sufficient. I'm not keen on the idea of the Government being able to advance them. Okay, she's got some nodding heads there, but I'm just a brief follow-up on that. I'm just wondering, given the fact that if those development zones or planning zones or whatever they would be called are going to our best sitting within local development plans, I'm just wondering whether it would be useful if each planning authority is part of their process for delivering local development plans would think about areas within their authority that could be appropriate for those simplified development zones, whether that would be a first step. I think that what we've been hearing is that this sounds just like really good master planning, enhanced master planning, so if local authorities identified where those simplified development zones could be and that got enhanced master planning with community buy-in at the earliest stage, then you could maybe have a degree of permitted development rights there, but simplified development zones should not be at the expense of high quality master planning and place making in the first place, so should local development plans try and identify where those development zones could be and then should that lead to an enhanced master planning process perhaps? It's being pretty much how it should work and I've indicated that often it may come out of a strategic regional planning partnership process and then go into the local development plan that way, but yes, I see it as being essentially a mechanism for delivering quality master planning and perhaps supported by land value capture. I agree, I think that's how it should work and just thinking about it I suppose a little bit now, there may be a role for, depending on the scale of a simplified development zone, might determine which level of plan it could go in, so there may be a role for instance for some simplified development zones to be brought forward through the national planning framework and to a certain extent there's a little bit of that I suppose happens already with national developments and then regionally significant areas might be brought through strategic development plans and more local areas may be able to be brought through the local development plan, but it certainly should be brought through that kind of strategic planning process rather than being brought forward on an ad hoc basis in isolation of the development plan or the national spatial framework. I wasn't very focused on my question, I suppose what I'm trying to get towards is whether, if this Parliament passes simplified development zones, whatever it's called by the time we get to the end of stage 3 and there's criteria around that, should there be a duty on local authorities to identify potential sites for these simplified development zones or at original level, because that would be the fix rather than if the national government said that those areas should have a duty to be placed on local authorities to consider where in their local authority area there could be a simplified development zone. I think that I would suggest perhaps the other way round that simplified development zones could come forward but only if they'd been identified in the relevant plan, so it wouldn't necessarily be a requirement for local authorities, local planning authorities, to consider whether they wanted them or not, but, if they did want them, it would have to come forward with the hook of having been in the plan in the first place. I'll push on that a little bit more, because this is a national parliament, if we decide there's a national policy that we want for national strategic reasons, we want to have developments at a local level driven forward, could we not at least put a requirement on planning authorities to give consideration to identify areas that could be appropriate for simplified development zones? Even if they say that we've explored everywhere, nowhere suitable, we're not doing it, should we not always be a duty on them to consider it? Yeah, sure, I think that would be, I can't say any problems with that, but I think from our perspective it would be more important that when they are brought forward they think about the wider context of what's happening elsewhere, what other activities are happening and so on, rather than just being brought forward in isolation, which is the advantage that them being tied to the development plan process has. So it's okay for that to be a national planning priority and for a duty to be placed on a planning authority to give serious consideration to what areas could be simplified development zones. Doesn't mean they're going to say we've identified an area and it's appropriate, but that's a reasonable duty to place on the planning authority. There are some parallels, I think, with national developments at the moment, which are actually decided at a national level and then to a certain extent have to be delivered locally by local planning authorities, so national developments which are brought through the national planning framework, which tend to be more point specific things like power stations and so on, but often cover big geographic areas. They then have to be carried forward in more detail at the local level either through planning applications or similar applications for consent being brought forward or incorporated into the local development plan. I don't want to push this further, but you've not actually said whether there should or shouldn't be a duty on a planning authority. Would you be relaxed with a national strategy that says every planning authority should give cognitions to the national strategy to have simplified development zones, and they should audit their area to see which parts of their area might be appropriate for it? At the end of that process, they might decide nothing in our area, but should that be a duty on the planning authority? I think that we would be neutral on that, to be honest, which is probably not that helpful. Against that, I think that it's too directive and I'm not going to persuade it that it's necessary. I would see a mechanism of a simplified development zone as being a discretionary tool in the toolbox that authorities may want to use if they think that it's appropriate, and I think that authorities or partnerships of authorities would have a fairly good idea about whether it might be appropriate in their own situations without having to go away and consider that. I think that it would be rather top-down for the Government to insist that they go away and look at it whether they don't think that they need it. Right. How do they know that they don't need it if they don't look at it? Well, I think that authorities will be generally concerned about the long-term development in their own areas, and they would be aware that this mechanism would be available in the legislation, and it would be up to them to consider whether it was appropriate to their circumstances and would help to deliver the agenda that they were pursuing. So they would have looked at it then, Mr Purvis, wouldn't they? They would, but I suppose that my point would be that I'm confident that they'll look at it whether or not the Government requires them to through a statutory provision. Okay, that's helpful. Any other comments on this from witnesses? If you have a call for sites, as the main issues report at the moment, you might get owners coming forward. I think that the other examples, such as Hellington, the big industrial estate, is a single owner. They can probably predict fairly well what kind of development they want to see over the next 10 years. You might get universities with campuses, you might get town-centred businesses, you might actually get groups of people coming forward with a fairly clear idea of what they'd like to do, and they could front-load the planning effort, so that would be your grass-roots bottom-up response to it. Any other comments from witnesses before I bring my deputy computer in? No. Okay, morning. No, it's an interesting line of inquiry. I was just thinking about SDSDs, which is a focus-on project, since it has shown, I suppose, that in areas that are open for development and business, but I've been thinking about plans over many years of planning where sites are allocated, have consent and then nothing happens, so we've talked earlier on about a focus on delivery. Is there anything in the bill that would incentivise or encourage a focus-on delivery on sites where we know that there's a need? There may be a consent already, but for different constraints around economic viability, local infrastructure, nothing's actually happening. Is there a danger if we shift a focus to simplify development zones, that we take our gaze away from those sites that need something to be happening, but it's not really being pushed in that direction? I'm going to let that silence linger because someone will want to bite. The ever-reliable Mr Smith, thank you. I'm always happy to comment on planning matters. I don't think that there is anything in the bill really that would address that, and it may be, at the moment, beyond the scope of what planning is able to deliver to an extent and kind of tide more into land value-related issues, rather than planning matters. I don't think that it would be raising expectations to suggest that the bill would be able to address those sorts of problems, so I don't think that it will. Before we move on to our next line of questioning, which we're definitely going to lead on, back to resourcing again. I don't know how I feel about simplify development zones, I'm just trying to test the evidence and see where the balance sits in relation to that. Earlier on, I used the expression that it feels like enhanced master planning, so getting the committee on board at the early stage in my constituency, I can think of sites where that would be possible. Enhanced master planning costs money. I'm just wondering where the financial burden should sit in relation to if we're going to do a real in-depth, detailed, granular approach to place setting within the context of a simplified development zone, or whatever they're going to be called. Should that burden be picked up by national government, by local government, by developers, is there a balance there, but is there a recognition that, if it's good quality, enhanced master planning, that would drive simplified development zones in a way that might be acceptable to communities that that has to happen and how should that be resourced? Any thoughts on that before we move on? Those things were hard to extrapolate from the cases that we've got before us, because the Hellington one didn't have any residence, so you missed that whole element of planning that affects people, and the Renfrew one, I think, was £15,000 to do, but it was very minimalist. It was just short fronts, changes of use, so I don't think that we've got a kind of evidence base to say what this thing might cost to deliver, and it is the public sector almost leading the market to try and anticipate the potential future uses to do planning on that basis, and that might be a stretch at this point in time. It might just be massing questions about things that there's not enough information on, so you can't answer it. Our perspective is that this is one of the things that we'd said was that we need a bit more information about these to help us and help inform us in that. Any final comments before we move on? It might be possible to link simplified planning zones with some mechanism for capturing the uplift in land value, and there are various mechanisms available. Something that the Scottish Land Commission is looking at at the moment is really helpful and needless. I guess that there might be some scope for, if the burden of doing some of the upfront assessment work effectively falls to the public sector, whether that's local planning authorities or central government, and things like environmental assessment and identifying the most appropriate sites for certain type of development is done, and the burden of all that is taken on by the public sector, there might be a scope for that to incentivise development to happen in more appropriate places and de-risk some of those sites to make sure that those things are less likely to crop up when a developer does it themselves, but it really will depend on the circumstances and the type of development. We'll leave that as a question now. You'll be delighted to hear Monica Lennon. I wanted to explore whether there should be a clear statutory purpose and vision for planning to continue in the bill. I think that Graham Simpson touched on that briefly, and I think that Graham Perverson and Aiden Smith gave a view. If I can go a little bit further as well. Bethes, in your written evidence, said that the decision to amend the already amended Town and Country Planning Scotland Act 1997 is a missed opportunity to create new planning legislation that has vision and clarity of purpose. The National Trust for Scotland says in its written evidence that the current bill primarily amends existing legislation rather than delivers a new approach to planning. There has been a lot of talk about the bill that it could be transformative and we could really promote and elevate placemaking and take a different approach. Based on those comments that I picked out from your written evidence, how confident are you that the bill will be transformative? Maybe start with Graham. I haven't abandoned hope that it could be, but I think that it still needs quite a bit of work. I think that I've already indicated that Bethes members feel that there should be a clear statutory purpose for planning. I've indicated that it might be based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Okay, who'd like to go next? Mr Her. I agree with that. The policy memo has got some excellent words in it, but when you get the explanatory memo, the actual bill text is quite slim. In fact, the biggest chunk is those simplified development zones. I think that it's missing that element if you want the vision, if you want the purpose. I think that Sustainable Development Goals is probably a good place to build it in. We raised our own evidence, the fact that the Sustainable Development Goals targets one of which has come up in 2020. There's a commitment to embed ecosystem services by diversity values in local and national planning. If you look at Denmark, for example, they've done that. They've now got a green map for the whole country, which the local plans can then make reference to. The Scottish Government, having committed to the Sustainable Development Goals, this is probably the best and maybe the only chance to actually meet that 2020 target. Other comments? Mr Smith? Yes, just to agree and support that, we think that there should be an overarching purpose of achieving sustainable development and tying to the Sustainable Development Goals seems to be the obvious thing to do. It would appear to be the next obvious step forward from the previous existing planning act to provide an overarching purpose of achieving sustainable development and tying to the Sustainable Development Goals. The Scottish Environment Link in your submission said that the bill is light on measures to deal with climate change. Could the bill be changed to better support the Government's emissions reduction targets and, if so, how should it be changed? It is light on them and I think that that's a missed opportunity because there's a big spatial element to climate change and the way that we decide to plan our future places is big implications for climate change as well. I think that there are particularly a development plan and national planning framework levels. There could be a requirement to actively think about how the development strategies are going to reduce emissions, so a requirement to be seeking to reduce emissions in terms of the way that the plan is set out and what the future places are going to look like would be the most obvious way of doing that. Just to go back to the points that I highlighted at the beginning about amending the Town and Country Planning Act 1997, is that partly because of the scope of the independent review? Are we at a point where we are possibly tinkering with the legislation rather than looking at the whole planning system process comprehensively? Is there anything that we are not looking at in the bill that we should be looking at? I agree that it is amending rather than such transforming, but there are quite a lot of bits in play already. We have mentioned the national cultural network. There is a land use strategy, which comes out that the Climate Change Act was meant to help and form spatial development. It has stalled due to lack of resource. There have been two good pilots, but it has not been rolled out across the country. There are things such as the marine plan. There are quite a lot of other spatial plans that are happening, too, that are not really brought into this. There are also visions for Scotland that relate to wider uses. It feels like we are missing a chance to bring things together and integrate them a bit better. Specifically in terms of the pros and cons of having an amending bill rather than a brand-new complete bill, we are probably neutral on that, although it is a bit of a nuisance to tack back to the previous bills every time to try and work out what the implications are. It is perhaps indicative of it being a bit of a tinkering exercise rather than a comprehensive review of planning. There is a bit of an issue, I suppose, about what it is planning for. We think that introducing that statutory overarching purpose would help to embed it being about sustainable development and making places better for as many people as possible, albeit reconciling and competing interests and making a future Scotland a better place. Perhaps the way that the bill has been presented as amendments to previous historic acts is suggesting that it is a bit of a tinkering around the edges rather than the comprehensive review that is required. I want to indicate to members that I know that Mr Purwish wants to come in and that I have noted that we want to come in for supplementaries, but we are deput users who are exploring a line of questioning, so we will let you in if you are just patient. Mr Purwish, do you want to add? I do not know how much rain the vice-community would be prepared to give me in relation to answering the second part of our questions, as to whether things we should be considering. We have not been... That is a very good of you. I brought up that there is generous as long as you can do it within, say, two minutes. I will try to do it within two minutes. One concern that has not been raised very prominently so far is the relationship that the bill envisages between land-use planning and community planning. There are various suggestions that perhaps the local development plan might take its lead or its vision from the community planning or local community improvement plans. My concern is the version of community planning that we have in Scotland is very corporate, very top-down. It is something that is too often done to communities rather than with or by them. I think that there is a danger if we just accept that one-way relationship between community planning and land-use planning that we could be entrenching the sort of practice that does not succeed in empowering community. I think that that needs to be carefully looked at. I was going to come on to equal rights of appeal, but I do not know if Andy Wightman's questions were on those points. I think that that is very helpful. If you have points on equal rights of appeal, please wait until or they begin to explore the question, but on those points, please do comment. Take Mr Simpson first, because that is... It is a really quick question directed at Bethes. You say in your written submission that you think that if we have legislation without a clearly defined purpose that it could be open to judicial review, I just wonder why you said that. To be honest, I am not very sure why we said that, but if you are not clear about your purpose, I think that you leave yourself more open to those sorts of challenges. I was not the author of that specific sentence. We will leave it there. Just following up, Monica Lennon's question about what is not there. Members of the panel have talked about greater alignment with other bits of government policy such as the land use strategy. Is there merit in considering bringing agriculture and hunting in forestry as land uses that have never been in the town, country planning system back into the system, for example, to direct protection forests for vulnerable transport routes or guide the extent to which whole farms can be converted to forests or purposes like that? I would definitely say so. In a way, we have done it to a degree already with things like green belts, which are partly about containing urban sprawl, they are partly about immunity, but they are also about conserving high-grade farmland. There is a recognition back in 1947 that was a national resource. It is about sustainable development and we have moved away from that. Green belts are now seen as being a bit of a constraint on development. We are losing sight of the irreplaceable nature of some of those natural assets. I think that there is definitely an argument for land use strategy to be brought forward, to be done comprehensively and then to sit as part of the planning system, because that will be the foundation of all thinking that is for communities or developers. Any other comments, Mr Smith? Yes, to a certain extent, the distinction between built development being dealt with through the planning system and agriculture and forestry and marine issues being dealt with separately is a real artificial distinction, because they are all interrelated. The lack of overlap has sometimes been a bit of a missed opportunity. We would be keen, particularly at higher levels for the national planning framework and for development plans, to link more closely with their equivalents. The national planning framework to link with the national marine plan and the land use strategy should certainly be a degree of compatibility there, greater than it is at the moment. A more local level—Dermot mentioned green belts, which is true—is overlaps into wider land management issues. There are other areas where agriculture and forestry stray into planning. For instance, Link has been doing quite a lot of work at the moment on hill tracks, which has been quite a contentious issue, which can contribute to leading to quite significant land use change, but planning does have a little bit of an in there. Once we start getting down to that detailed level, it is perhaps a little bit of a matter for some secondary legislation, but it is important that there is a relationship between planning and agriculture and forestry, so that there is an influence across those different sectors. I gave you a bit of time about what I was going to ask. Equal rights of appeal is not in the bill, as you know, so that means that the status quo would prevail, that developers could come along and challenge a decision when an application is refused at an appeal to a Scottish Government, but communities or third parties, as some refer to, do not have that right. I know that there is a range of views across the panel, but if I can go back to the 2006 act, I guess that one of the reasons why equal rights was not brought in at that point was that front loading was the—there was a lot of hope placed on getting things right, early engagement, communities being round the table early on, having a stake in the process, and that would negate the need to have any appeal at the end of that. Twelve years on, here we are, and we are trying to tinker or trying to transform planning, has front loading worked for communities, and is it only fair that we now take a look at equalising appeal rights? Who would like to go first on that one? I do not mind. We are neutral on it as a solution, but, as part of our research, we did ask that straightforward question, should local communities have the same rights of appeal as developers? 90 per cent respondents thought that they should, so there is a clear steer from communities that they think that the current system of checks and balances is not working for them. Whether equal rights feels a kind of end-of-pipe solutions that were in a front loading worked, maybe you would not need it. Just anecdotally, I was reading the main issues report for Argyll and Bute, and it made the point that the majority of housing that had come forward had come in areas that had not been in the zone for housing during the previous plan period. The front loading part is not really steering development where it is expected to appear. It has been left at quite a late stage for things to come forward and potentially to be fought through. Some of the issues have been raised about delays in the planning system. There is research in England about housing developments, and there are three causes of delay, but the middle one was, in fact, appeals by developers to get their development through. If the system is more binding at everyone, then perhaps you should have less need for the end-of-pipe solution. However, the appetite there at the moment is that there are imbalances in the system. Mr Smith, Mr McKenzie. In some ways, that gets to the root about the purpose of planning and what the planning system is for and who it is for. The current system, when it comes to appeals, is heavily weighted in favour of applicants for planning permission. Appeals are, just for the avoidance of doubt, not something that anybody really wants to get involved with if they can help it, because it is really an indicator that something else has failed earlier on, and the efforts that have gone into increasing front loading are welcome. Front loading is all very well, but the appeal end of it underpins what the whole system is about. As Dermot has alluded to, his research has been really interesting, which has shown that there is a real level of disillusionment with the current system, and a lot of it stems from appeal rights. The system at the moment has a real weighting towards applicants for planning permission, because there is already a presumption in favour of development happening. When an applicant makes an application into the system, there is a heavy assumption that the development is going to go ahead and, in fact, more than 90 per cent of applications are already approved. However, even if an application is refused, the applicant has got an opportunity to appeal to another organisation or another part of the council if it is a local application to get another shot, and there is no fee even associated with that. It is a really easy second shot that an applicant gets. They get not only one shot, which is heavily weighted in favour of them, but they get another shot, which is again looked at fresh and heavily weighted in favour of them again. Where other bodies get no opportunity to have an equivalent right to challenge that, Link's view is that there should be some introduction of a limited but fair and equal right of appeal in some circumstances, particularly when developments are contrary to the development plan or when they are of such significance that they require an environmental impact assessment. Through the bill process and through the planning reform process, what has been quite disappointing is the way that the Scottish Government has been a bit dismissive of this issue. It is clearly something that is a problem. It is not to say that there does not need to be a bit of thinking about what might be the most acceptable solution, but, for it not to be explored at all in detail, it is really frustrating for us. Introducing an equal right of appeal, introducing a new mechanism, in some ways might lead to some additional resource implications, but it is quite telling that those that argue strongly against a right of appeal for communities and others who highlight the increased bureaucracy and centralisation of decision making might result in, and the potential for it to undermine the plan-led system also makes quite a good argument against having the existing appeal system for applicants for planning permission. Scottish Environment, Link, does not suggest that we should get rid of the current appeal system for applicants. We would much rather see the introduction of an equal right of appeal, a limited equal right of appeal for other parties in limited circumstances, but to not explore that issue at all, to not address that, I think, is going to undermine the reforms and is going to mean that the continued disillusionment of the system, unfortunately, continues. So it is something that absolutely has to be addressed as part of this bill for it to be ignored means that we are going to have a continuation of thought for a lot of communities and a lot of community groups and communities of interest is effectively a running sore, which has been going on for a few decades now, and it is going to keep recurring until we try and deal with it and try and improve the current situation. Our position is that we would rather see more of the engagement early on in the planning system, whether that is in the local development plan or with planning applications. Certainly, when it is ourselves delivering capital projects, we try and engage communities as early as we can in that and try to take on views as much as we can, but we see that rather than the equal right of appeal being the way forward, to try and focus more on that. I think that I mentioned earlier things like the delivery plans and actually using those to help give communities the confidence that some of the concerns that are raised are being addressed as we progress, as developments progress through. Eileen Mackintosh, I wondered with Scottish Water's developer hat on if you get any examples of community projects where, in your opinion, there has been effective community engagement and did that influence the proposal? What sort of changes were made as a result of the community's involvement? I am more involved as a consultee, but I can provide some examples after that in writing. I will speak to my colleagues who are involved in that to provide some examples of those. Eileen Mackintosh, are you of the opinion that, since 2006, that front-loading has been working? If it is not working well enough, what do you think the barriers are? I think that there has been more engagement and more attempts to engage with communities earlier on. Like I said earlier, when it comes to the local development plans, I think that there is a lack of people being aware of how they can engage in that and the process for that. We are trying to get them involved early in that. What about communities who do engage early on and remain engaged throughout the process, but at the end of it, a decision is taken that is contrary to the development plan? For them, that should be the end of it, but the developer does come along and appeal and they get that decision overturned. For those people who have engaged in good faith and have fully participated, what do you think should happen to those people? Should that be a case of what we just did not get what we wanted? That appeal at the end, could that in itself be undermining a plan-led system? I am not really sure. I have not been involved in those sorts of bits, I am not quite so sure about that. It is okay to have an appeal that could contravene the development plan, but as long as people have been invited along to public meetings and so on. I think that it depends on what the issue is and how their views have been taken on board as part of that and whether they are things that how they can be addressed. Mr Purvis might, I do not know if you want to comment on that. Volunteer to, you may have noticed that Beth Smyth did not submit specific evidence on appeals. I am very happy to explain why. We are a broad church and we are a forum, and our members' views on that are quite varied. Some are strongly in favour of a change to rights of appeals, some are strongly against it and some, like the National Trust for Scotland, are fairly neutral, so we have not submitted evidence on that. I think that the vice convener's point about front-loading is well made. Before I let Mr Smyth in, do you want to follow up on anything before I let Mr Smyth back in? Yeah, I mean, Graham Purvis earlier on in the session, rather than characterise it as a plan-led system, I think that it is a developer-led system and maybe that is looking to fact that most applications get approved way over 96 per cent. Last week, we had a panel from industry. I think that it was our witness from Scottish Renewables who talked about the cost of appeals for big projects, ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. She referred to it as building by appeal. It is almost like developers at the high end are factoring in appeals. It is another risk that they are prepared to take. With that in mind, is there a level playing field? Do communities stand a chance against organisations, developers, who have that kind of resource and professional expertise at their backs? Communities are local authorities, too. Yesterday, we had the final decision on housing development on the battlefield at Culloden. That was opposed by local community, but also by the council, and it was against local planning. However, it has gone through an appeal, so it is not just communities that have found themselves powerless necessarily. It can also be representatives of elected authorities. A few points there. Renewables, particularly big onshore wind farms or something that we think should really be put forward through a spatially planned approach in any case. They should come forward through something in the development plan, so there is a proper debate about where they go because of the scale of them. Regardless of whether it is renewables or other big developers, there certainly is an inequality of arms where developers are often much better resource than not only local communities are but local authorities are. With the current system, when local authorities are dealing with an application—I recall this from my local authority days—there is always a concern that if you refuse it, the application is taken out of your hands and goes off to someone else, often the inquiry reporter's unit, to be dealt with. You do not have any further scope to influence it. If you decide to approve it, you have at least got the chance of putting some conditions on it. There is a waiting of pressure on a decision maker at a local planning authority level because they know that there could be an appeal, but it is only going to be from the applicant side. The wait of pressure is only coming from one side. They know that there is no possibility of an appeal from a local community group. There is a vague possibility that a community group might take them to court, but there is a huge cost associated with that, so it is highly unlikely. Whereas the developer or the applicant for planning permission, because it applies to any scale of development, can have for free a shot at having a second go and it is taken away from the local authority. Front loading is useful and can be very helpful in resolving a lot of issues. Where it works, it is great and developments can be non-contentious, but where it does not work, the developer gets a second shot anyway and can apply through appeal to have another go at getting through, whereas if it does not work, then the other parties, other bodies of interests, whether they are local communities or communities of interests, who may have a really significant interest in the outcome of that decision, have no further opportunity to significantly engage in challenging the decision. We are coming towards the end of our evidence session, and I know that we are definitely going to want to fall up on something in relation to this line of questions, and there are some bids for supplementaries, but brevity is a very important issue. Brevity would be welcome just to allow other members to get in and ask their questions as well. If you want to hear more from us on planning and appeals tonight, I have a member's debate at five o'clock, if your colleagues are speaking, so we will be looking at what happens when local authorities are overturned. I will come back to local authorities, because I had a plan to come in for the next session. Appeals are quite resource intensive for local authorities, and there is always that threat hanging over you that costs could be awarded as well. We have heard about scenarios of repeat applications, so perhaps an application gets withdrawn or it comes back in a slightly diluted format. The local authorities are doing a calculation about an appeal and non-determination. In non-determination, where it is taking too long to get a decision, that is another route where the council can bypass and go to the ministers. If we are not going to see measures in the bill to give communities more rights and developers appeal rights curtailed, are there other things that we could possibly look at in terms of repeat applications and the non-determination area where the clock is ticking, but that could reduce the council's ability to put on conditions and so on? I think that there are a range of different options. Repeat applications are another symptom a little bit of the waiting that the current system puts on applicants for planning permission, because to a certain extent, other than the fee for a new application, they do not have anything much to lose by doing an appeal or putting in a repeat application, whereas communities have very limited opportunity to get their voices heard and so can feel under pressure. In terms of the changes, we would say that introducing an equal right of appeal, equalising rights of appeal, would be the primary way of doing it. There is talk about removing a developer's right of appeal, which would equalise things. There is no right of appeal at the moment for other parties other than developers, so that would certainly equalise things. There might be scope to restrict developers' rights of appeal, so perhaps one thing could be that developers are only able to appeal in certain circumstances, such as where the decision is made, contrary to the development plan. The fact that there is no fee associated with an appeal at the moment is quite an anomaly. There is a fee associated with a planning application, so why is there not a fee associated with having to introduce an appeal? That might reduce some work there. I think that there are a range of different options that we can be gone from. Environment Link's view would be equalising it through introducing an equal right of appeal for other parties, but there could be a range of other measures that could serve to balance up a little bit to a certain extent in the current system, including on things like repeat applications, which are a particular problem in some areas. Anything else, anyone? It's not that I don't want you to put this on the record, please do, but briefly would be good and Mr Helms, do you want to add to some of that? I think that it's a potential remedy, but I think that the starting point is a recognition that there is an issue. For our community, if you think that there is an issue, I think that it came through in the independent review, although it didn't really delve into this. Either you're going to make things tighter up front, or you're going to loosen things at the end and give people more rights of appeal, or you're going to tighten the existing rights of appeal, but I think that something has to be done about it. You've expanded on the idea of what this right of appeal could be, and obviously there's a major concern among certain members of the community. That's what we've seen evidence already of that, but we talk about the limited categories. If there is a specific type of category, do you believe that it is—we've talked about the category being against or it's a departure from a plan? Should there be other categories involved in that process as well? Anyone got a view on that? So, Lynx's view would be that the two main categories where there would be scope for other parties to have an opportunity to appeal would be, if it's contrary to the development plan, or when an environmental impact assessment is required, whether there are potentially significant environmental effects. It would be those two categories. That's the sort of judgment that could be made by professional planning staff. They make it on multiple times on every day, so I think that's overly onerous in terms of a quick sense check to make sure that it would qualify for one of those criteria. Any other thoughts on that? No one's catching my eye. Mr Stewart would follow up on that. I've got a couple of questions to do with mopping up stuff that any other members weren't in at this point. Can I just check in relation to rights of appeal? Obviously, we've heard contradictory and contrasting evidence where some witnesses have been fundamentally against it, believing that it will slow up development and put at risk house building targets and the like, and it will damage the economy. There are quite passionate views here directly opposing that, saying that it's about equalising the right of appeal and giving communities more of a say. We'll have to, as a committee, have a balance in relation to that, and the vote will take place in Parliament. What will happen will happen, but I suppose the question I'm asking is that, given that the Scottish Government's position is that this bill frontloads much more, very similar to the points that our deputy convener was making about 2006, also not adopting an equal right of appeal for very similar reasons, what would success in frontloading look like? If this bill goes through, equal right of appeal is not added to it. There are no changes in relation to that. In five years' time, what kind of things should this successor committee be looking at to see that frontloading went quite well? Fair play or it didn't go well? What kind of things should our committee or a successor committee be looking at to monitor? If this bill was to be passed in its current form without adding on equal right of appeal, what kind of things would a successor committee be looking at to show that there has been a degree of success in relation to that frontloading? Mr Hearns. Can you work it backwards? I think it's from 2010. There's a study in England about housing developments and causes delay. The leading cause of delay was just lack of capacity in local authorities. That's not between local authorities and evens within local authorities, so similar developments at different processing times, simply because there wasn't enough staff. The second cause of delay was in fact appeals by developers, so they themselves were part of the delay in the system by appealing decisions. The third cause of delay was simply size developments, as in big developments take longer to process. Reversing that in five years' time, maybe you're looking to see do local authorities have enough capacity and skills to do the processing? Have developers moved away from use of appeals to get developments through? Have we got a wider mix of developments, smaller developments as well as big developments? I was again not very well being focused on my questions this morning. I'm trying to ask that what would success look like in relation to this bill as it stands, if frontloading was to be successful? Should it be a monitoring framework for government, for a subsequent look on the committee to look at, if the bill has not changed along the lines that our deputy convener was suggesting? What would that look like? Mr Hernd has been helpful to put some of that on the record. Are there any other thoughts? The Scottish Government itself commissioned consultants to look at the levels of satisfaction with public engagement in the planning system only last year, and the report that came out with was pretty stark. We have a baseline, and it's quite a troubling one, so you could revisit the sorts of questions that were asked in that exercise and see if there has been any improvement. That is helpful, and that gives us somewhere to go, Mr Smith. I think that there is a lot of narrative around this bill being about frontloading, but the discussion that we have had today questions whether that would be frontloading in practice. In terms of what the committee might want to look at in five years' time, it is really about outcomes. Five years is a short time in terms of building stuff, so it is really about satisfaction. It is about support of what Graham said about what does the public think about engagement in the process. Are they content? Do they feel that they are influencing what their places are going to be like in future? I picked five years because it was a handy number. It could be 10 years, which is the national planning framework, time framework and the proposed local development plans, which leads me nicely to the final question before we close this session. The national planning framework is a 10-year lifespan consultation around that. We have spoken today about potentially parliamentary approval in relation to that. National planning frameworks are not quite set in stone. In other local development plans, they can change even though they would be 10-year cycles. If they do change, what is the level of consultation around that within those 10 years? Parliamentary scrutiny and approval, any thoughts on that before we close this evidence session? If they do change, we would say that the national planning framework needs to be approved by Parliament and those changes should also be approved by Parliament. They should also go through, as they would have to at the moment under current legislation, there should be a strategic environmental assessment, so there should be an environmental assessment of the likely significant environmental effects of those changes as part of that. That should include public consultation as well for those changes. Mr Helms, do you want to add something? I'll take it in a second. I'll take it in a second. I'll take it in a second. I'll take it in a second. I'll take it in a second. I'll take it in a second. I'll take it in a second. I'll take it in a second. Public awareness is very low of the NPF at the moment, so it would be good to see that raised and people have a voice. Again, for Wales, they've got a 12-week period for public comment on developments. Thank you, Mr Helms. I agree with Iran and Dermot. That's my favourite answer of the morning session. Can I thank all of you for your time this morning in helping us scrutinise the bill? We've got another witness panel coming up in a moment. For the moment, I thank all of you for giving your evidence. Please follow the committee's scrutiny. But before we get to the next evidence panel, we're going to have a short comfort break, so can we suspend briefly, please? Okay, welcome back everyone. We're still on agenda item 1, where we're looking at the planning bill that is presented to Parliament by the Scottish Government. I welcome our second witness panel today, who are Councillor Stephen Heddle, Environment and Economy spokesperson for COSLA, Robert Gray Chair, Heads of Planning Scotland, Gavin Miles Heads, Heads of Planning and Communities, Ciaran Gorham's National Park Authority, David Leslie, Chief Planning Officer, and Kate Hopper, Senior Planning Officer, City of Edinburgh Council, Ailsa Anderson, member steering group Scottish Young Planners Network. Before I move to the opening question, it's obviously quite a sizable panel that we have here today, and we sought to be accommodating as possible. So, if there's a large part of agreement, if people could be brief and just reinforcing comments that you've heard, that would help us get through it. If you don't feel the need to speak on everything, please don't do that. I don't want you not to speak, but there's a management issue where there's such a large panel, so your co-operation would be very welcome. I will move to our first question, which is Graham Simpson MSP. Graham Simpson MSP. Yeah, thanks very much. There's got to be good advice from the convener for all of us. So, I'll follow a different line of questioning to the first panel because of who you are, and you represent largely the local government sector. So, there are bits in the bill that would directly affect councils. So, if we look at the idea of a national planning performance co-ordinator, and the requirement on councils to issue performance reports which could be scrutinised by the Government, if the Government then decides whether you're not performing well enough, they can send in this planning performance co-ordinator. What do you think about that whole aspect of the bill? Is it right that councils should be judged by the Government? And how do you define performance? That's not defined in the bill. Whole load of questions there, actually. And Councillor Hiddl, what's the start on that? Yeah, thanks very much, and thanks for asking that question. I think the issue around performance assessment is one of the things that's maybe costler, some disquiet, because this was something that we were hoping could have been discussed and advanced, perhaps more through the high-level group, and we could have developed a greater understanding as to how that might be implemented. There's a degree of vagueness about this, so we have concerns. With regard to the co-ordinator post, our understanding was that through the discussions of the high-level group that the roles and responsibilities of this post could include overseeing performance monitoring, supporting the stakeholder feedback process, identifying skills gaps and identifying and assisting solutions with regard to training and shared services, and good practice, and generally a positive, supportive role with regard to the relationship with the local government. But taking the proposals regarding assessment in terms of annual reporting, the undefined role of the national planning co-ordinator and how the planning authorities' performance would be assessed. We have concerns because we think that this is being advanced against a backdrop of high performance and improving performance in planning. The suggestion that an audit would essentially be carried out or that the planning authority seems perhaps disproportionate, and certainly the suggestion that the planning officers could end up in court as a result of non-compliance within three days or requests from the assessment body, we think that this is also disproportionate and would be detrimental to encouraging people to enter the profession. Mr Gray, you might have some comments on that. No, thank you, chair. As heads of planning Scotland, we have not opposed the principle of this. At the moment, if we do not improve every year, year on year, and that is something that we submit to the Scottish Government through the planning performance framework, we actually risk being fined. We saw that as there are now steps towards being fined, so you can actually see something coming and you have an opportunity to change. So the principle that we thought was a reasonable one, but we had great concerns about it being proportionate. That was our main downside, if you like. We acknowledge the need for improved performance levels across all stakeholder groups, and we would like to see the planning system measured, and not necessarily just the councils, because there are key stakeholders and there are many others inputting into the planning system. We would really like to have their performance measured, and everyone to improve, so the whole system improves. Okay. Other comments on that. I am not specifically going left to right, so you do not all feel obliged, but Ails Anderson, if you want to add to that, feel free to do so. I would just agree with Robert in terms of saying that we should not just focus on the performance of local authorities. There are lots of stakeholders involved in the system. Okay. Mr Miles. Yeah, I suppose it is just to make the point that there are two planning authorities that are national park authorities as well. They are not local authorities. We have a particularly strange set-up in that we call in planning applications, so we only deal with a very small number of the applications that are made in the national park. So when applications are being, or when performance is assessed by speed only, we do not think that that is a particularly fair reflection of the entire quality of the planning system. Okay. Edinburgh City Council, do you have a view on that, Mr Leslie? Yes, thank you. From an individual authority's perspective, we recognise there is a difference between measuring performance of the system as a whole and measuring the performance of the individual authority. We have tried to use the planning performance framework as it currently exists in a creative way to look at the quality of outcomes at a local level. I think that from the council's perspective, ensuring that we continue to focus performance on the quality of outcomes is really important in terms of local accountability. If measures are brought in at national level to co-ordinate or to scrutinise, we would look to that to be a co-operative or collaborative approach working with individual authorities so that we can learn from the experience of others and improve performance locally. Okay, thank you. Do you want to follow up on something like that, Mr Simpson? Just on the principle, really, is it right that a national government should be able to assess a local council's performance and then direct it to do certain things from a local accountability point of view? Well, at least, it's difficult to say that that shouldn't happen, because obviously we're subject to the rigor of the Accounts Commission Audit Scotland already. And in terms of the process, the entire planning process is defined in law, so the local authorities are clearly not above that. I think that what we're keen to pursue is a collaborative and co-operative approach wherever possible, and I think that the idea of having to face another big stick, because we already faced a big stick in the face of the penalty clause, is one that clearly we don't want. Okay. Yeah, I'll briefly supplement you myself if that's okay, Mr Stewart. Can I just check? I think that I was slightly worried when I heard Councillor Heddle's initial answer. It could have sounded a little bit defensive and I think that Mr Gray gave a bit more light and shade to that. Care homes at a local authority level of the care aspect are getting insane about performance of them. And if there's systemic issues, they'll deal with local authority in relation to that education in Scotland and in relation to schools also. I suppose that what I would say is what those bodies would seek to do when they go into a local authority level is to seek to be supportive and constructive and capacity-built and help to develop the local authority. I'm just wondering if, in principle, you might agree with this, it's more about tone and proportionality. Because I just want to be clear about what it is that you think about this. So, in principle, is this the right thing to do? But it's about making sure that we take a proportionate approach and it's positive and constructive and collegiate. So any thoughts in relation to that? Councillor Headland, I name-check you. I should really give you the opportunity to come back. Yes. Yeah, sorry. It's the night of our lives. You don't touch it. Yeah, you're on. Okay. It's important. I mean, it's certainly about tone and in terms of endorsing it. I'm not in a position to endorse it, but I specifically asked by council leaders to write saying that we didn't support this. So I'm not going to sit in this committee and say that this is something that we do support. I mean, but certainly in the industry being productive, we'd be very keen to work to discuss how the assessment might work in terms of the annual assessment, what that should be, whether it should be an evolution or the excellent process devised by hops, what the role of the coordinator post should be. So, I mean, we're approaching this in an entirely constructive fashion, I would hope. Okay, constructive fashion, but against it in principle? Well, we don't know the fine detail or the thing, so it's difficult to sign up to it. So the causal is open to persuasion then? I think we're always open to persuasion, yes. Excellent. Mr Gray, is that a reasonable deflection that I made that in principle this is a reasonable thing as long as the tone and proportionality is captured adequately? Yes. We've always had some form of scrutiny and it's this proportionality in the tone and we've proved over six years of planning performance frameworks a really dramatic improvement across planning in Scotland, which we haven't actually flagged up very well, but really it's on a red amber, green system. We started with reds six years ago, probably in three figures and they're now now to single figures. So the scrutiny and everyone working together in that context has worked, it has proved to be successful. We don't want something disproportionate, we don't need it and the differences between us are quite subtle. We agree on the proportionate response. I very much agree with David Leslie. Measurement tends to be about speed. How quickly do you turn something around and if we create places that are somehow or rather inadequate than actually we've failed and we'd rather be measured on outcomes balanced with speed? We understand the streamlining and the need for speed, but it's not the entire story. The outcome is actually far more important. I've actually helped to put on the record before Mr Stewart comes in any additional comments in relation to that? Okay, I'll understood. The expression of disquiet and concern about this whole going forward is understandable because not one size fits all across each local authority. You have different workloads, you have different performances, but you also have resource implications within these processes and that has to come into this equation as about how you would manage that to ensure that you are continually seeing improvement and it would be good to see if there's any views on that. To start, we obviously don't want to dominate as heads of planning Scotland we've been pushing for a number of years for full cost recovery at the very least in the development management part so that the fee should cover the cost of an application. Now in saying that councils everywhere are doing what they can to drive down the cost of a fee or the cost of actually processing an application and we are seeing some success in that. So it is a two-sided thing. We're trying to drive costs down but we want those costs recovered. And in that way, we're not reliant on council budgets which are hard pressed for many other things. The developer benefits from the development I think it's quite reasonable that the developer pays the cost of that. On the local development plan side that might not be quite the same. I don't want to stray into place plans and other resource things and simplified planning zones where there are other resource implications which might actually be more about the community and it might be that central public budgeting could cover that. We'd actually like to see cost recovery over the whole matter but I think that there are stages towards it that we could look at. Detailed resources later on. Absolutely. If there's any additional comments just now feel free before we bring other members in. Mr Leslie. I think that from the Edinburgh perspective we've consistently supported the relationship between resources and performance and I think I'd go back to my point about the way in which we report on performance that if we as an individual authority decide to devote resources to one particular part of the planning process in the city then we should be reporting how we have used these resources effectively in our annual report on performance and justify why we've done that. I very much support the idea that one size does not fit all in this area. What is appropriate for Edinburgh may not be appropriate for other planning authorities but we should have that flexibility to be able to adjust resources locally to reflect local planning situations. For instance, in one year we might be dealing with an exceptional amount of new growth where we want to devote more resources to pre-application advice. That can be reported in terms of how effective we've been. Okay. Christal Heidel? Yes, thanks. They generally support them, the comments here and just to provide a context. I think that all local authorities are keen to see more resources going into the planning system because it's important for us that we have a good functioning planning system. Every local authority in Scotland over the last year has been sitting down to write its strategic plan for the forthcoming term and every local authority will be speaking about local economic development and housing and a successful planning system, a successful planning authority is essential for this to happen. So I think that we're incentivised in our own right to have a well-performing planning system and keen to see it resource. Okay, Mr Simpson, it was your line of questioning, so as you went to explore before all the other MSPs in. Yeah, I just want to sort of go off in a slightly different direction, but still in relation to councils and councillors in particular, one of the other proposals is that councillors should have to undergo mandatory training in planning and should have to pass an exam before they're able to actually sit on committees and take decisions on planning matters. So do you think that's right? And do you also think it's right that the minister should not have to undergo that planning? I actually asked him this question on another committee and he didn't seem to think he should have to do that. So perhaps you could address those two questions. I should confirm the exception possible that I've done to give me the none of us have actually sat an exam in this area. I would like to answer that question. Councillor Heddle. Yeah, thank you again. I would say it's fair to say across costless a spectrum of opinion with regard to the having sat an exam for being on the planning committee. Some authorities will say that this happens already in licensing so what's the difference? There's the expectation that this should happen. It's clearly training is essential for the just sitting on a planning committee and just making sure that it happens would be a good thing. Others, as you say, think that there's an issue parity esteem here in that councillors should be expected to do this, but ministers, considering the appeals or call-ins might not be. And in the high-level group, I also posed this question to the minister and he said that he'd be receptive to ministers having to receive training as well. Which changed his tune. Which I thought was generous of him. I think that where we have a fear here is that the suggestion that the planning function be taken off a local authority if they don't have enough members to form the planning committee. Again, I think that that would be a disproportionate move because we don't have mandatory training at present. I would say that the planning function just works well and it's clearly well regulated and there's rights of appeal. So I think that that would be maybe a step too far and that if we could find something that fell short with that, that would be that we will. Any other views of training and assessment of councillors? David Leslie. Yes, it may be useful to share I don't experience with the committee and I think the emphasis I would put on the issues is not one of training members but training and supporting members on a continuous basis. The programme that we use in Edinburgh and have used for more than three administrations now is a programme of planning committee members agreeing in advance for the year ahead what sort of training and support programme they will pursue. In expanding that to other members of council we have a range of workshops that are open to ward councillors in terms of particular planning issues and we now have a committee structure which engages other committees in the planning process so we're looking at more joint workshops between committees. My point is really one of it's not a one-off training exercise it's a continuous process that we've seen benefit from. Any additional comments Mr Gray? Yes, in planning it's inevitably dealing with conflict someone wants to do something someone wants to stop them elected members are the decision makers in the system and I think training helps to protect them and helps to give them confidence so we'd be supportive of it. Thank you. Can you, Mr Simpson? It's really something to take away councillor Heddle. I'd be interested to know how many councils actually offer this training already as Edinburgh do. I would just be interested to know if you can maybe come back to us on that. No, I think that's something we could do. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Monica Lennon. Thank you. Just to go back to the issues that we were exploring around performance and I think both Robert Gray and Ailsa Anderson talked about other stakeholders beyond just planning officers and planning authorities who have an influence on how quickly things happen in terms of the actual process. I wonder if witnesses are able to reflect on the role of processing agreements in terms of their uptake and what value that's added to the process. Is that in any sense, if you get any evidence of that, is driving up performance? Yes, it does drive up performance because when you put something on a processing agreement it comes off the statistics. I can give you numerous examples where a developer may not actually want to develop straight away. He wants to be in the system but he doesn't want us to deal with it quickly because on the day he gets his planning permission he'll probably have to spend money by land, have investment. He may not have that lined up so we can actually work with him. We give them dates, they give us dates, we work together with two project plans. Everyone knows what's happening. There's no sense of failure in it because it's a slower process. People actually get what they want out of the system and it's right that they disappear from the statistics. And it's very helpful if we know that they haven't given us enough information. When you validate a planning application you do it on the basis of a certain specified amount of information. That might not actually be enough information to allow you to issue a decision. You might need, for example, a bat survey which takes several months because it's over certain periods in the year. And at that period if you put it onto a processing agreement everyone knows what's happening when everything's expected. A committee date is set way in advance and we all stick to it. For my own, I can only speak for my own counsel. I don't think that we've ever changed the processing agreement unless the applicant has asked for it to be changed. So we take it as an absolute commitment as a project plan. A member from the 2006... Sorry, I apologise, Monica. Ails Anderson wanted to... Okay, I'll probably forget what I was going to say but it was directly relevant to Mr Gray, but carry on. It was just to mention in terms of processing agreements as a tool in the process. I think that they're a very valuable tool available to officers in order of particularly holding accountability if, say, a deadline hasn't been reached for any reason by any of the stakeholders involved in getting... progressing a decision. So I think in terms of accountability and transparency they are a valuable tool. Can I just ask, in terms of the data I suppose that that becomes apparent or is collected, is there a pattern in terms of the circumstances where the clock is stopped? Is it lack of information? Is it bad surveys and not being the right season? Is it just a cycle of committees? Is there anything that planning authorities are learning from the processing agreement process? I might be wrong but I thought that uptake was quite low for processing agreements. I don't know if others have a view on information on that. Mr Leslie? In Edinburgh, we were one of the pioneers in using processing agreements I think before they were on the statute book in terms of a methodology of project managing the planning application and I keep going back to this point when speaking to applicants. We firmly believe that it's in the interests of all stakeholders including the community to have a clearly set out processing agreement so that we everybody knows which part of the process that they are engaging in and have clear expectations of timescale. Your point about declining use I would agree with. I don't have specific figures but overall the number of processing agreements being signed by developers for applications in Edinburgh is lower than it has been in recent years. We are trying to understand the reasons for that. I believe some of it does rest on the preparation of supporting information and uncertainty by applicants sometimes in terms of information that they have to provide or information on which they are dependent such as that coming from other external agencies. I think if we go back to the principle of why processing agreement is there which is about a form of collective agreement of everyone involved in the process and there is no doubt it's a good thing and it's also a good tool for measuring performance because if all parties meet the outcome that they set out to achieve within a timescale then that is a measure of performance. If I can return to Robert Gray for a heads of planning perspective my memory from the previous planning bill which led to the O6 act was that the way to improve outcomes the way to drive performance was to work collaboratively to get that change in culture processing agreements we're just one small part of that but from a heads of planning perspective are you seeing a change in culture whether it's from Transport Scotland, Scottish Water or the different players around the table is there any evidence that's been gathered in the last 12 years that has shown that there's greater collaboration? I think the culture change which is very big in the 2006 act has been very slow and very patchy and I think that's just a truism just to finish off on processing agreements they have been successful I can think of some I don't know whether they're in the majority but there are certainly some where the ones I'm thinking of are onshore works for major offshore installations in the North Sea you know we became part of the engineers project plan and they were still approved within the four months for a major matters but we still used a processing agreement because that was our agreement with the applicant and everyone stuck to it it's like our project plan with them and we were all working to the same outcome so they can work that way I think what you're alluding to in some of the questioning is are they actually just used to mask figures that would otherwise be bad and there is a definite risk of that and as heads of planning we've discussed that at great length and trying to get some consistency over all of the authorities and how we use them some authorities pick them up we encourage them because we see it's good project planning others see it as that's more time that could be spent more productively elsewhere and they use things like just stop the clock because there's a piece of information missing and we need it so we're not going to measure that time and all of these can work if they're consistent as long as we can give the Scottish Government consistent figures at the end of it about how planning performs they all work there is a lot of room for culture change we're using more pre-application discussions where we have everyone around the table including bodies like Scottish Water to try and draw them into the same timescale so that we have certainty that against patchy one of the things we've talked about in the past has been if we charge for that it might be easier some authorities have tried that I've had developers asking if my authority would charge because they think a neighbouring authority gives a better service because they charge and they actually give a bound book at the end of it and there are the timescales and everything you have to do it seems like a very good service and a good way forward and that is starting to drive some culture change I'm sorry for mentioning Scottish Water that it could be any number of stakeholders and then there's the development side culture we got the planning system gets on very well with large engineering projects and the culture there because it's very much a project management culture we're working extensively with house builders using homes for Scotland and the SCDI to try and merge our culture with the house builders culture not saying one's right or wrong but that alone seems to be the one where there are delays and frustrations that we still need to do some work on or that's without blaming anyone for that but I think there's a piece of work to be done which may not be legislative work it might be people actually picking up and working together for the outcome I'm going to come in with a tiny little question Pre-application discussions the committee had a one-day conference I'm not sure some of you might have been there in Stirling and we did a round table discussions with us as facilitators and it came up in one of my sessions that some planning authorities don't do pre-application discussions from a heads of planning perspective is that something that you're aware of? Yes We're all trying different things I like pre-application discussions I actually like not charging for them because I don't want anyone to be put off because if you can raise all of these things upfront on day one and know what the problems are you actually have much longer to solve those problems before you get to a determination so yes it should be done there was we're finding some authorities go very much more into the full cost recovery if we're going to do something as a cost and we have to know where that's going to be paid from and pre-application discussions at the moment where I am come from the public purse everyone's benefiting but actually the developer's benefiting more and there's a discussion still to be had about the charging there and what the real value of it is and what it would be worth to a developer to actually put money into the system to make a much more efficient system Thank you Okay, Mr Miles absolutely and we're going to have to move on to a new line of questioning after this Mr Miles It was just to say that we've been a proponent of process agreements as well we offer them in all the applications that we call in when we started doing that it worked exceptionally well for the first year or so because applicants took on that point seriously the provided information at the times that we needed it now in the time since what we've found is that in general deadlines are being missed by applicants and not by consultees in the process now we extend the timescales out and we keep going with that process agreement because generally we think there's a good development there it's just more information is needed to get it determined but it is dragging out timescales and I think there's something that we're looking at and how we encourage people to keep to those deadlines and not have it sitting there I think the other point about pre-application advice is that we share pre-application advice with five local authorities people take it or they don't take it but what is exceptionally frustrating is when applications come into the system and the pre-application advice has been more or less ignored and that leads again to delays later on because we say well hold on we told you months ago that you needed this, this and this with your application yet it's not there so then the process agreement has to be extended so I think there are two sides to this there's what planning authorities can do and there's what the development industry can do and as Robert says the project managed projects that start looking at the planning process as something to get through effectively work the way through the system very swiftly and efficiently the ones that don't have that tend to float around so we'd agree to performance of applicants too okay thank you for that just to give members a heads up newly on a question from Andy Wightman to be followed by Jenny Goruth after that so Andy Wightman thank you very much convener I want to talk about national planning framework and sustainable development strategic development plans the changes are mooted about merging up with Scottish planning policy about making it then part of the development plan and that in turn raises questions about how the national planning framework should be developed, adopted, scrutinised by Parliament and ministers I think it's fair to say it there's cross-party consensus that the national planning framework is a good thing I think most written evidence no one's really seriously questioning whether we should have it it's in law, we have to have it anyway the question is should the changes that are being proposed in this bill are they appropriate and you know Reading South Lanarkshire Council West Aberdeenshire Council City of Edinburgh Council there's quite a lot of evidence from councils that they don't want to see greater centralisation of the planning system and the national planning framework become part of the statutory development plan so I'm just wondering your views on that question about the changes that are proposed to the national planning framework Councillor Hedle Thank you very much Yeah, in the costless submission on the withdrawal strategic development plans I suppose we were maybe slightly ambivalent in that we could see the merit in them being listened on I was going to ask about strategic development plans separately in a minute I mean I noticed costler doesn't say much about the national planning framework at all except in relation to strategic development I'm happy to keep the comments to the national planning framework Okay, thank you Yeah, with regard to the national planning framework I mean the I think the point that's been made before by Robert that it's important that the planning process is kept under local democratic control so they move to incorporate in the regional aspirations within the national planning framework and that's sitting alongside the local aspirations in the local development plan There is a risk that could lead to more direction and withdrawal of local democratic control I think that if there's one key point that we wanted to make as costler would be that we feel that the planning process and the modifications to the planning process as suggested in this bill should be an end point where the decisions are being taken locally wherever possible so we've recessed an erosion in the powers of local authorities to determine plans from above through ministerial direction but equally would be circumspect about the way that local police plans play into this and I'm sure there'd be questions on that so I won't say any more about local police plans so we have concerns, yes, about how the national planning framework is going to play as proposed and something we'd be very keen to work with the Government to discover how local elected members can have a say or the best possible say and how the regional aspects of this is going to be developed and then adopted I'm just trying to encourage everyone to speak, Mr Vee. I will take you in, Mr Leslie. I think the relationship between the national planning framework and whatever arrangement we have at a regional level is a really important one. The city and the regions input to the national planning framework may well be determined through that arrangement so I guess we're going to come back to look at that in more detail but the point I'd want to make at this stage is that Edinburgh as the capital city by its nature has a number of national interests in its development but the way in which we manage those developments should be left to the planning authority for the area to deal with in detail so I think it's important that the local experience is recognised when the national planning framework is being prepared so it's a matter of how we input to that. Okay, Mr Gray, yes? No, I don't need to speak, as David said. Okay, anyone else want to comment on this? Do you want to follow up on that, Mr Whiteman? I'll come on to strategic development plans in a minute but the policy memorandum says under the national planning framework that national developments are accorded the same status as the development plan and planning decisions. What I'm trying to get a sense of is does what the bill proposes in terms of changes actually make any difference or do you think that it will make any difference whatsoever to the status of the national planning framework and the regard to which local authorities pay to that when they are drafting their local development plans and they are making planning determinations? There's not a stampede, Mr Gray, so it's quite helpful if you were to answer that. I'm trying to hold back. National planning framework we do take it into account in everything we do. Under the new legislation it looks more like a national development plan which replaces a strategic development plan which we have to be consistent with. We're going to have to be consistent with that. My potential issue with the national planning framework is the way in which it will engage with the stakeholders. Subsidiarity is a political issue in which I'll leave to Councillor Heddle but there needs to be some way in which we're all brought into the national planning framework so that it's everyone's plan and how that happens isn't spelled out in the bill and that's an issue I have. One of our asks as hopes right at the beginning of all of this was the repositioning of planning. It's the one activity that's unique. It brings together not just the developers and the infrastructure providers but the communities. And we really wanted to see ourselves positioned centrally. And it's that central positioning. We like the idea of a national planning framework that's very important and very powerful. Possibly someone who sat here before me has told you when the Irish national planning framework was launched. It was launched by, I'm not good, yes, I will try and say TSOC. It was launched by the TSOC and 17 cabinet ministers. It was that important. It was the plan for the country. And we like the idea of it being that important as long as we've all managed to have an input to it and had a hearing and a say. So that's our aspiration for the national planning framework. I think that Mr Miles would be trying to take Mr Miles and then to Ailsa and just after that, absolutely. I suppose just to answer the question. I'm not sure that it necessarily makes that much difference to the way that decisions are made. It's the process that you get to that national planning framework that everyone is a bit concerned about. Okay, Ailsa. The only comment I would make is that we have to be careful at the point at which we consider the national planning framework, particularly if it can be amended at any stage. And that may lead to a local development plan being incompatible within the national planning framework and when decisions are then made at that point, given that whichever document is later will be the prevailing document to ensure that consultation, particularly on the national planning framework, does have a very robust engagement process to ensure that all opportunities for people to participate have been taken. Thank you. Do you want to follow up with someone at Mr Wightman? Okay, that's helpful. I mean, Robert Gray says we need to have proper engagement and I don't think that anyone doubts that and I think that previous iterations have attempted to do that. But at the end of the day, this is ministers' plans. Parliament doesn't vote on the plan, doesn't adopt it. Is there a danger in future that if we elevate it to a part of the development planner, a minority administration could push through developments through that, that then you have to comply with that Parliament doesn't want, that the public doesn't want? I suppose there is the potential that that could be the case. I'm trying to think through the process as to how the exemplars what you're suggesting and how it might come through the process and struggling slightly. I think that I would just go back to my follow-up position here, which is that we're keen that the local dimension and the local democracy is maintained as much as possible. And I would need to think through more the implications of what you suggest and to see what impact that would have to come to a more recent and nuanced discussion. I mean, certainly this is something that we haven't explicitly taken a position on in-work or submissions thus far. And if amendments along these lines come forward, we need to put it back to World Board to get an all-cost of position if that was possible. I can move on to strategic development plans. I think it's fair to say that the Government in its own policy memorandum tells us that consultation that was done around the planning review, et cetera, threw up mixed views about strategic development plans. We had strong evidence from people like Clyde plan that it works well, it wants to continue, and in principle, there's nothing in the bill that stops them continuing. The fact is, however, that local authorities are merely being encouraged to do this on a voluntary basis, rather than a statutory basis. Any strong views on the future of strategic development plans? It's me again. But the thing that's being said everywhere, including COSLA, is that the one-size doesn't fit all. There are four to be replaced, or repurposed. Aberdeen City and Shire seem to be carrying on, at least for the moment. Tae plan will merge themselves into a bigger group. I think that more guidance is needed for Glasgow and Edinburgh because those are particularly large and complex. I don't see how a national planning framework can be made and be accurate without the sort of information that's collected by the strategic development plans at the moment. A new national planning framework, for example, will have a housing supply target, which will be based on a lot of data that's collected across the whole of Scotland. That data is, at the moment, collected in a number of different ways. So we are trying, largely with Clyde plan leading, to simplify that and have one way of collecting data so that we can assist in what the bill aspires to do, which is a national planning framework largely replacing strategic development plans. The one size that doesn't fit all is really where it lies, as a conclusion. I think that different areas will do different things. And way back when these were set up, I recall a lot of debate about should Inverness be a strategic development plan. And the answer was no because it's all in one authority. So there is no point in having another layer. And I think that the regional partnerships based on the local geography and putting things together in order that we can input to national documents is happening already. So we're relatively comfortable, but I do think that Glasgow and Edinburgh more guidance needs to follow. And more guidance on what the duty to cooperate actually means and how that will be brought forward because I'm not sure what will happen in the central belt if authorities cannot reach agreement amongst themselves on things which we think of as regional. OK. Any other views on strategic planning, David Leslie? Something from the Edinburgh perspective, we recognise the benefits that the city has gained from regional planning arrangements. Through the strategic development plan, we have been able to work with neighbouring authorities to address the wider needs which the city cannot meet within its own administrative boundaries. We have been able to work with other authorities to deliver cross boundary solutions to implications for infrastructure, et cetera. So the question to remind us whether future arrangements will allow us to work in a similar way with the partners that we need to work with at the regional level. We also recognise that some form of regional spatial planning is required to underpin the regional partnership delivery of things like the city region deal. There is no doubt that a spatial plan is an important foundation for that. So I think that the question really is about what sort of tone the legislation sets for that. Is it a tone which will encourage the partners to work together in the way that they are doing at the moment? Or is it a tone that will allow partners to weaken their engagement? And will weakening engagement could be a weakening of resources that have devoted to spatial planning at a regional level? And I think that linking that back to previous questions about the national planning framework, we will have a duty to feed into that. Do we have a strength at regional level of defining our vision and objectives, which can be clearly articulated and feed into the national planning framework? Okay. Yep. That's Keisler-Headle. Yeah, thank you. Mr Leslie has made some of the points that I was going to make. And the following one for what Mr Michael Wightman said. Yeah, there's nothing in the bill that prevents the regional working to take place on an informal basis, at least. But the context that we're working on is that there's other legislation coming through that's encouraging regional working. In terms of the Enterprise and Scholars review, we're expected to collaborate across local authorities to develop regional plans in respect of that. In terms of education, cross-council working. And councillors are always going to work together with us an opportunity to improve services, improve service delivery. The problem comes if, as a result of this working together, we come up with a plan, but in some way conflicts with the regional dimension or the national planning framework as placed alongside the local development plan. So I think that this is something that needs to be unpacked. Okay, I think that we've got a good cut at that. Jenny Gilruth I want to revisit some of Andy Wightman's line of questioning there. First, Robert Gray, in your submission, you pointed the three strategic objectives identified by Heads of Planning Scotland. With the first one, being planning needs to be repositioned as a strategic enabler as well as a statutory regulatory function. And in the previous panel, we heard contributions with regard to city deals and the disconnect between the aspiration of city deals to drive inclusive growth and perhaps the aspirations of the planning bill in its current context. Is there an opportunity here, therefore, to join up what we do in government with regard to the economy in terms of planning and to drive, I suppose, investment in terms of tackling inequalities? Yes, it is the straight forward. I think that it is really part of this repositioning. City region deals came not within the normal defined system that we have been working to and they had to be dealt with quickly. They are important and it is how we are providing infrastructure which we needed but they were not particularly unified with a set of plans. Every activity that we do involves the use of land so planning should be central to all of that and the way in which we set things up. It should work with the infrastructure and the plans are where we actually line up that the infrastructure works with the development. So yes, there is an opportunity to do it and it is a bit of a stuck record but we are the people that bring the community in which deals with the equalities issue. Is it being done fairly or not? So yes, we have the capacity, I would say, through the plan making system and I think that that is the bit that has maybe not been as valued as it should be because everyone is interested in the development management system and the issue of the day. But through plan making we can actually deal with the use of land, the way in which infrastructure is provided including the city deal models and the community aspirations should not be lost in that and this is the place where we actually resolve those conflicts. We should be making great places, if we are not making great places, we are not succeeding. And that is what we want to be judged on at the end of this. Sorry, it is a very long way of saying yes. I do agree with what you have said. Jenny, the rest of the panel. Would anyone else like to see yes in relation to this before Jenny Glawriff follows up? Okay, I think that they might just be in green. Okay, with regard to local place plans then, the legislation in its current form asks the local development plan to have regard for its content and we've heard numerous criticisms of that, have regard for in terms of not perhaps being robust enough and communities perhaps being ignored. So I'd like to get the panel's views on that. But secondly, Ms Hopper and Mr Leslie in your submission you note that there is a concern that a local place plan could raise expectations. And I wonder if the rest of the panel agree with that assertion. Mr Leslie, I suppose you might be starting this off and give the rest of the panel a chance to gather other thoughts in relation to that. From the council's perspective in terms of encouraging greater community engagement in the planning process, a local place plan is of interest. Will it achieve that? The question about raising expectations really is about when in the process this could be used. Our view at the moment is that there should be some flexibility in that because we can see benefit in a local place plan helping to articulate community objectives at the stage of preparing a local development plan. We can also see it helping to articulate community outcomes once key development proposals are defined in a local development plan. So it could be prepared after the adoption of a local development plan. I think in terms of managing expectations it is about clarity of how the relationship exists. I come back to my previous point about one size doesn't fit all. I think that there could be an opportunity for place plans to be used by community groups in a number of different scenarios, but they need to be clear what they expect as an outcome from that and when in the process that might be most effective. Clearly some form of guidance from Government to manage consistency and expectations is going to be important. Other comments on local place plans? We agree with that. There is a real risk that unless there is an equal resource from the public sector to support those, that it enhances inequality actually and that the richer areas do better because they have more people with more free time, more skills and they devote that to something that they want to see. But in poorer areas that doesn't happen or areas where there are more people just working and busier. So there is a real risk there. How that ties into the development plan system is a big issue because we don't want a community investing a lot of time and energy in something that then may not be ignored but certainly isn't taken into account in the way that they want it. I think that's where we need to have more clarity about exactly how it will fit in. There is certainly a place for local place plans if they are used in the right way. We need to ensure that they are deliverable themselves and are not just aspirational in terms of taking forward proposals and development plans. We need to be able to have something tangible within them to take forward. There are also questions of what we do at a local level when a local place plan contradicts the national planning framework, whether that be in terms of a desire to see possibly no more housing in an area where we have identified that there is an acute need, for example. Another issue that we need to address is how local place plans fit within the context of other documents that are available, particularly to community councils, to progress their aspirations. How does it sit alongside community action plans, local place plans, coming through community empowerment? In terms of taking it forward, there is still a lot of clarity that is required, and there will be a lot of guidance that is required, particularly in terms of how they are delivered by community councils, consistency across how they are prepared, and the resourcing that is required by both spatial planners but also community planning in taking those forward. Any other comments on that? Thanks, I think that the co-authors response, we weren't wholly supportive of local place planning, but it's not something that we're against. I mean, we're entirely supportive of the principle involving communities in their plans, and particularly community councils' community planning. I think that when it comes to the local place plans, as described, the other panellists have made the point that there is a potential equality issue and that the less well resourced communities may struggle to produce a local place plan and lose out to the communities that can do that. How do you get away from that? You could resource support, and I think that that comes through the equality question as well, because another equality is the expectations question, because the expectations will be raised when there's not a realistic understanding of what is possible or indeed what is likely, and that suggests a close relationship with the planning authority in supporting them through the development of the local place plan. So there's a resourcing question inherent in that as well. I think that the final thing that I'd like to say on local place plans is on the peer regard to question, and I think that that frame, peer regard to, is appropriate, and would be more supportive of the local place planning if it is in that form, because it leaves the decision making with the elected representatives. It also allows the elected representatives to wrestle with the problems that might come from a local place plan, potentially being in conflict with the other things in the framework, and it consists right doing a number already, the national planning framework, the local development plan, simplified planning zones, there might be conflict with the agent of principle, agent of change principle, the fairer Scotland duty, and the locality planning. Those are all things that a fully informed local place plan might have to take consideration of, and that's development of the entire industry in itself. So, a degree of flexibility in allowing the elected members to wrestle with this problem, I think, is appropriate and would be content with the peer regard to. Alexander Stewart, you were exploring something along those lines earlier. Do you want to explore it further now? If we can. Following on from Jenny's comments, you talk about resources once again for implementing how this is going to happen within communities, and we're aware that some communities do have community councils, some communities do not have that community council involvement. They have other organisations that are there to try and assist. How do you get across to ensure that you get them engaged at the early stage to ensure that the expectations are met, that you don't lead them in a certain direction and then it's going to not happen or it's going to fail? How do you square that circle? No one is making eye contact with me. Come on, witnesses. Thank you, Mr Miles. I was going to add almost on from the last discussion as well that I think we're probably being more negative about this than we really feel, because we all invest an awful lot of time and money in trying to engage communities very well throughout the process, and different authorities will have different ways of doing that. We've done that through trying to have people out speaking to communities and community action plans for communities, which tend not or historically haven't focused on land use planning elements, but over time we've tried to get them to do that. That means that they create a plan for their community, and I suppose that one of the things that we do there is that we try to make sure that they speak to as many people across that community before coming to that plan for their community, and I'm not sure that community, that local place plans would necessarily have to do that, and there is a worry there that a place plan could come from one part of the community rather than the whole community. And I think that inevitably as a public sector we try to get as many people involved as possible, so that takes time and money. Now, as a national park authority, we've maybe devoted more there, and we have a smaller population than big urban authorities or just authorities over a wide area, but it works, and then that feeds into the development plan. I think that when you get down to resourcing in bigger areas, I just don't see how you can do that evenly across the area. And we do it over years, so it's phased over years, so we have a five-year rotation within these plans for communities. It's identifying the stakeholders. Within the community. And then ensuring that you can have a good report with them as to what they want and how they feel they're not just paying lip service to being part of the process. But I think that in areas of much larger urban areas, when you're trying to manage that, I mean, Edinburgh will have a massive issue of trying to deal with that in a specific area, in comparison with smaller council areas or locations that may have a real community spirit that is not going to be advised in other areas. And I think that it's capturing that process. But, as I said, without the resource, it's virtually impossible for it to be achieved. But is there any other way of achieving it, trying not to deal with the financial part of it? I guess that that is the point that we've tried to do in a national park and we've tried to tackle individual communities. And we probably did start with the ones that had more ability in the first place and worked with them first, and then went round to the others. I think maybe the tricky part of this is that there's a learning process for whoever's doing it and for that community and that when you do it a second time, more people get involved because they see the value in it. So the first time you do it, it's unlikely to do it properly. The second time you get better and it's iterative and you improve over time. So, yeah, it's good to be a challenge. Okay, can I just check something in relation to this? So I think it's quite interesting that communities can kind of self-define so it could be community of interest or it could be a geographical community. That could create some problems because once you're drawing lines on a map, and someone mentioned it might be a community doesn't want any additional housing, but if you just draw that line on the map a little bit to the left or the right or east or west, I suppose you should say, you might suddenly find out there's a wider community there that actually sees the need and the demand for housing, for example. So I'm just wondering if we need a bit clearer guidance about what we mean by communities and how local authorities should interact with them in the first place. I would like to think of local place plans as a positive thing to take forward place making and development, rather than a restrictive thing that stops essential development and place making that is needed for a wider community. So guidance, what's your thoughts in relation to that, Mr Miles? Just as I've been speaking for a bit, I guess it's about enhancing the development plan that seems to make a lot of sense and it's quite a clear context for that community to take it forward and it's about adding detail to something that's already in the development plan. If it's trying to compete with the development plan, then I think that's where you end up with potential for unhappy communities. That might is that. So sorry, Ylsa Anderson, yes please. Just to pick up on one of your points when you spoke about defining communities, I think it's also important when considering a local place plan that we define what local place might be. Within a community council, for example, you could have many settlements and many communities would each community or each part of a community require their own local place plan in which case we are looking at a very big task to try and deliver in terms of coming to local development planning. And even within community councils there may be communities who are particularly involved and have a good sense of place and sense of community. But even within a community council you may have other settlements and other communities who are not as engaged in the process. So it's how flexible the local place plan can be to accommodate everybody's aspirations and desires in terms of what the outcomes would be from those documents. I'm just wondering, because I'll take it in a little second here. I'm just wondering if that's why we'd a lot more guidance structurally around what that would look like because if you look at community council area as you say, there could be six, seven different communities within those boundaries who may all disagree with each other in relation to what a local place plan should look like. They might also not identify with the community council area that they've been placed within. And if we want a planning authority to at least have regard for, some of us would say, go further than have regard for Councillor Heddle the local place plan. There has to be some kind of structural alignment with the local development plan in the first place till we plan an authority to do that. Councillor Heddle. You suggest a structure and guidance. I think that that would be absolutely useful. There needs to be a company with flexibility as well because it's a large and diverse country that we live in. And I can certainly know that the issues that pertain in my own local authority area ornally where 21 inhabited islands and a population of 20,000 is going to be absolutely different from that in Edinburgh, where you'll have that number of people in a small sub-community that will contribute to a larger community. And there's issues there that you might find communities set against each other for the reasons that you described, the number of reasons for wanting a better description. But I think that one of the key things that would be useful would be if we could consider maybe some pilot local place plans and I mean so developing best practice around that. No, that's not the main point I was going to make, but this is when I've ended up. Okay, we'll roll with that, Councillor Heddle, unless you want to add anything else. Ails Anderson, did you want to come back in? Oh, right. Okay, any other supplementaries in relation to local place plans from committee members? I suppose we should mop up a couple of questions on local development plans that we just have to ask if we wouldn't be doing our job properly. So in relation to the evidence report in relation to development plans, there's a suggestion that there should be a minimum consultation requirement in relation to what then sees that evidence report produced. So any views on that, if there's no views that's fine, we'll move on. I want to see if there are any views in relation to what a minimum consultation requirement would look like in relation to that. Ails Anderson? I'm aware through the proposals that they're seeking to remove the requirement for a main issues report. I would certainly see, in terms of trying to reach the point at which you've got your evidence report, it would be essential to consider the options and have those presented for public scrutiny. So in effect, to prepare that document, it may be worthwhile to still have that main issues process to have public scrutiny and also link into the strategic environmental assessment. I don't know if that's something that the committee would be willing to consider rather than removing that whole process from the system. Also, it allows for the gate check to consider the fact that all the options have been presented and the favourable options being presented as part of the gate check which then feeds in to preparing the draft proposed plan. I don't want to speak for committee members. I suspect that they're open minded by just looking at the weight of evidence at the moment and the suggestions that will be here. I might roll that together with other questions that we just have to ask in relation to the gate check because it was helpful Ails Anderson that you mentioned that. So when you get, when planning authorities get to the gate check stage, should there be a requirement for further stakeholder engagement and consultation to make sure that process itself has been handled correctly and if there should be stakeholder engagement at the gate check stage, who should those stakeholders be? Again, you don't have to have thoughts on this, but we're just trying to tick off the various elements of the bill as we go through it. Mr Gray. We quite like the gate check procedure because if you get through the gate check, it means you're not going to fall down on some of those things at later stage. You know, you could lose two years. So the gate check would seem as something positive. As Hawkes would never have discussed should other stakeholders be part of the gate check, but there is a no reason why not. I think that we're quite open-minded about it. Okay. Yes, Mr Leslie. I was going to input from our analysis of the process that we went through in our current local development plan. There was very strong evidence given from stakeholders who had been involved in the process about early engagement and continual engagement. And I think that that kind of answers both questions that we, whatever the process, we have to ensure that we gain ownership and understanding early in the process and we retain that ownership and understanding as the development plan evolves. So I think that there is opportunity to use gate checks, and I would say plural, rather than singular, throughout the process to build that understanding. Okay. Now, just a housekeeping note to fellow committee members. The witnesses are going to have to hear a heck of a lot from me if no one's making bid for task questions. So I'm going to move on. Oh, Mr Whiteman. Excellent. I'm going to go to resources. It's a new topic. Absolutely, yes. I love new topics. Just something we haven't really explored very much is that the bill proposes abolishing statutory supplementary guidance. Any views on that, given that for some authorities this is deemed and some communities is deemed to be a very valuable way of framing local planning policy? Ailsa Anderson, yes? Just from experience, I work in Aberdeenshire where most of our supplementary guidance is map-based. If that was to form part of the plan itself it would bulk out the plan quite significantly. So in terms of providing the additional information, I think there is a place for supplementary guidance. I think going with the current status where there needs to be a policy hook is a good way to go because at least then you have the context which has been scrutinised. And then you have the ability to have particularly the map-based evidence sitting separately. We shouldn't abolish statutory supplementary guidance. Not necessarily, I think there is a place for it. Kate Hopper, yes? I think I agree. There is a role for statutory supplementary guidance. Edinburgh is very keen on using their statutory guidance to deliver infrastructure. We are currently bringing forward supplementary guidance for that because it allows us to address the changing nature of growth within Edinburgh on a much more quicker and more transparent basis to that. So we would still support some role for guidance that allows us to bring forward a changing infrastructure plan, for example, within a 10-year process of a local development plan. But that would, whether that's statutory or non-statutory, we don't have a view on that at the moment. Any other views? Do you want to follow? Oh, sorry, Mr Miles, yes? I suppose it's a bit like the one size doesn't fit all. There are authorities who've used SG very, very effectively and it's vital for them, and there's others who've found less, got less out of it, and it probably depends on what your authority is like and your approach to planning generally. But if you abolish the provision, no one can use it at all. Just to find a little supplementary, I mean, it strikes me that this is a bit random, but I did notice that the submission from head to planning Scotland, virtually all the questions that committee asks you say yes in bold. You are the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for this bill. I think it's fair to say that across most of our written evidence, most of our engagement outside with communities and most of our oral evidence in the committee, most people think that the bill, as far as it goes, is kind of okay, but they want more. They want it to be a little bit bolder, they want it to be a little bit clearer and clearer the act that we're going to get at the end of this process is not the bill that we have at the moment. I'm just wondering why heads of planning appear to be the sole cheerleaders for the minister. Don't let Mr Whiteman temporary enthusiasm, Mr Gray. How would you like to respond to that? I'm genuinely curious. I'm speechless. I don't believe that. No, no. Yeah, obviously, this is put together by, you know, largely the executive on behalf of all of us. It's a number of authorities, lots of different authors. We made it look like one. On the route to get here, we put a number of asks. We wanted some game changers from the bill just to temper the enthusiasm. I don't think we got our game changers. What we got were things that technically, actually we can work with these. We can work with all of these. There are controversial ones like place plans, simplified planning zones, but there are tools in the box that you don't have to pick up and use if they're not for you. Maybe place plans are different on that, but, you know, if some council wants to pick up, for example, a simplified planning zone, and they think that it will help the regeneration, it will help inward investment, it's the right thing for them, that's fine. And if another authority thinks that's wrong for us because it's too much exclusion of elected members and communities and we're not going to use it, well, that also is okay. So some of our enthusiasm is around that one size doesn't fit all, and that's recognised in the bill. So it does actually help local councils to pick up the bits that are useful for them and use them. So overall we do. We are quite supportive, yes. The game changer really wanted was a central repositioning. Does it do that? Is there something at the front of the bill that says what planning is and what it's for, and how important it is? No, we didn't get that. The resourcing of planning, possibly primary legislation, isn't the right place about resourcing, it was our other cost. Continued simplifying and streamlining of what we do. It was the other, you know, the third leg of the thing that we were doing. It doesn't particularly affect us either way. So on the three things we were measuring it against, it was a... It didn't do the first one particularly well. The second one, we wait and see, it doesn't necessarily need the legislation. And the third one, it doesn't stop us continuing to simplify and streamline. And there might be something through the co-ordinator where there's some assistance. So we are measured about it, but on the questions we were asked, the answer is yes. As you were answering that question, anything else on that, Mr Wightman? Yes, I mean, that's helpful, and I suppose part of the reason might be I'm speculating here that obviously heads of planning have been very involved in the last two years with independent review, with working groups inside government. And so for you, kind of this is the last stage, whereas for a lot of other people, this is the first stage. They haven't been as heavily engaged. And on your point about purposes of planning, there's broad support for that. So I think you can take some comfort that there will almost certainly will be some movement in that direction. But was Councillor Hiddle wanting to say something? I wasn't particularly... Yes, sorry, chair. I wouldn't dream to speak on behalf of the head supply in Scotland, but with your indulgence, could I briefly return to the supplementary guidance question? Yes. In terms of supplementary guidance, I think that is another useful tool in toolbox because it's a means of taking out of the larger plan issues that may be subject to change at the time that the plan is being put together. And as we move to plans, LDPs were a longer timescale, the rest of the risk of locking into that plan something that may become rapidly redundant and kind of at odds with the planning aspirations authority. So supplementary guidance is a useful tool for reasons such as that. Okay, now I think one of the things that was listed earlier on was simplified development zones, so I suppose we should explore that given that it's in the bill. So we've heard a lot of evidence already in relation to that, a lot of folk don't like the name. I have to say the thing, the work of the balance being get the development zone right and doing the kind of place making bit properly. So what's the witness's view of what the purpose of simplified development zones would be and what's good about it and what would you want, some clearer maybe safeguards or clearer definitions around so simplified development zones? Ailsa Anderson? Take that one. In terms of the principle of simplified development zones, I think they are again a useful tool that could be made available to planning authorities where they deem it's appropriate to use. I think it may be appropriate to have them sitting under development plans in order to avoid undermining a plan-led system. It would then mean that the public scrutiny again is there and if it's part of perhaps the evidence report, the gate check could confirm that a simplified development zone is appropriate for an area rather than being imposed possibly by a third party, for example. It should only be implied where there is a need for avoidance of planning being seen as a blockage to the system and not just used as a matter of course. I think that there needs to be a purpose for why we would implement them in an area. Any other comments on that? Mr Leslie? Support the comments that have just been made in the sense that the council sees potential for simplified development zones as a delivery mechanism for the local development plan. We would support them firmly in the context of a plan-led system, perhaps even exploring the potential for a simplified development zone while the plan is in preparation. I think that that way you can begin to build community engagement with the concept and identify the issues that would need to be resolved before a simplified development zone was put in place. We would certainly firmly support the idea of massive planning, the use of design frameworks, etc., to be all set out in advance to bring that transparency to the use of a simplified development zone if, indeed, it will advance delivery of the plan. I think that that is helpful. In the last session, I suggested that each planning authority should have to, as part of the formation of the development plan is to give consideration to whether there are suitable areas that would benefit from a simplified development zone. I was not suggesting that they must choose an area, but that they must go through the process of identifying whether it would be an appropriate area. Would that be a reasonable duty or burden to put on planning authorities if that becomes a national objective, any thoughts on that? Mr Leslie? The answer, yes. Okay. Coeslau no resistance to that as a duty on local authorities to go through a process of considering and then having a rationale for why they have chosen some areas or decided against it just in relation to that? I think that the preference would be for it to be discretionary because the landscape both geographically in terms of economic development is in a very fariat area in terms of what you are looking for and what opportunities you have. In terms of bringing these things forward, there is obviously a cost to preparing the planning for the simplified development zones. It might be something that is a cost that is incurred that will not ultimately be realised as a good spend. I will bring Mr Simpson in a second. I suppose that the point that I was trying to get to was that if the bill is passed, because the national priority that simplified development zones is a beneficial thing to see rolled out under certain caveats and strictures around that, if the national government approaches a planning authority and says that there is not a lot of development going on here, you have not went for a simplified development zone, can we ask you why? At least if every planning authority had considered that as one of the tools they have in the box, there would be a rationale behind why they have not chosen that, and that would then give a dynamic between what would be central direction and some local democracy. Is it something that you think council should consider as a matter, of course? Well, I think that that is a question. It could be always asked under any circumstances and it would be up to the local authority to justify their decisions. I think that as a duty upon local authorities to identify simplified development zones, I do not see that would be helpful, I think that discretion would be preferable. Okay. Mr Simpson, did you want to explore some areas around this? Just to take that on a stage further, the bill as it currently stands would give ministers the power to set up simplified development zones. So they could do it in Edinburgh, Mr Leslie, or anywhere, at all, even. Do you think that's right or should ministers not be able to do this? Mr Leslie. Since Edinburgh has been mentioned, I think that I go back to my previous answer about embedding it within the plan-led process. So in terms of local accountability, if the planning authority in Edinburgh has considered the issue as part of the preparation of the development plan and decided that the simplified development zone approach is not an appropriate tool for taking forward development in one of the city's growth areas, then I think that the council would be in a strong position to discuss with ministers why they do not consider it appropriate. If it was imposed, I think that we are entering into another area of discussion. Okay, nope. Absolutly put that on the record. I have to concur with my colleague here. I think that there are issues of local democracies, there are issues of subsidiarity at work here, and if it's going to be imposed upon local authorities, it could only be described as a power grab. But it's in the bill, Councillor Hedl. We'll wait and see what the minister says in a few weeks' time on that. Any other thoughts? Okay. I suppose we should explore... Well, I suppose it's in the bill, so we will explore it. Did you decide that you want to come in further? Infrastructure levy. So there's provision within the bill in relation to that. It's an abling power within the bill. That's one way of raising finances for infrastructure and promoting development. Any thoughts in relation to that? Is there a mistrick? Are there other things we could do to raise those finances as well? Any comments? I don't have to have comments again if it's not an area of the bill. Mr Gray. From our experience in the north-east, which has been quite difficult, we had a strategic transport fund, which effectively was an experimental form of infrastructure fund, and it failed at the Supreme Court because we had too great a distance between the intervention, which was usually a junction or a railway station, and the development that was contributing towards it. We couldn't line them up well enough. I think that the bill would probably now enable us to do that. But it leads to other difficulties about reasonableness and proportionality, and dealing with developers and trying to get their buy into it. We found that developers liked the transport fund. The developers would probably like an infrastructure fund because it gives them some certainty about how much they will be asked for. The landowners very much did not like it, and it was interesting that it was challenged by the landowners because ultimately it's the value of the land that reduces. So it was an interesting experiment. I wish people well with the infrastructure fund. I'm disappointed with the level of funding that the Government says is likely to be raised by it. It put a figure of £75 million against it nationally. Each council needs that form of money for the infrastructure that it's short of for the type of development. I know ourselves. We were looking at more like £80 million for the interventions. I know Fife, I think, along the same sort of lines. Other large authorities will need that form of money for road improvements, rail improvements stations to try and have a no net detriment. I know that it's almost impossible for new development because our infrastructure in some parts of the country is pretty creaky. One of the other things on it is that you can go beyond things which we normally think are essential for the development to take place. And there is a debate around the country about whether broadband is something that you need now. And you shouldn't be developing if there is no broadband because it's become such a normal part of people's lives in the same way that you need a road to the house. And there is a debate around whether that should be chargeable under an infrastructure levy. I think that it's another one, sort of a stuck record, but it's another tool in the box. It's useful that it's in there. We expect another two rounds of research before we start to think about using it again. I hope that it works, but it has a long way to go yet. Any other thoughts about infrastructure levy, Kate Hopper? Edinburgh has concerns over the use of a levy because we have not got the evidence that it's actually the best solution for Edinburgh or for the country. We have support for it if it could be used locally to replace section 75. At the moment there's a concern that a levy could be used purely for strategic infrastructure, cross boundary infrastructure, where at the moment that's really due to historic growth in Edinburgh, not due to future growth allocated through local development plans. Edinburgh's local development plan has been costed and it was referred to this morning. It's in the region of £450 to £480 million to deliver that plan. What wasn't mentioned was that there's an infrastructure gap of around £200 million due to the issues currently with section 75. Now, the concern is that nationally if we weren't only able to deliver £75 million through a levy, that was coming not close to what Edinburgh's required to deliver its own local development plan moving forward. Our concern is that it's going far enough. Could it be locally used to replace section 75 and therefore could we use something like a delivery programme or an action programme to set out an infrastructure strategy for the city that's set out the infrastructure required in using a levy or a tariff to generate that infrastructure? That would be Edinburgh's proposed approach for a levy instead. So that's helpful because you're suggesting other mechanisms to do some of that which, I suppose, is at the heart of the question. It seems to be that the infrastructure levy might be okay but it's a small part of a much larger solution. So we need to think of other ways of raising cash. Are there any other solutions or parts that have to be a magic one to make it all better? Is it any other interventions that would be helpful that you'd wish to put on the record? I think it's back. The one size doesn't fit all. Borders rail had a specific active parliament. It was very like the North East Strategic Transport Fund but it was successful because when it was challenged, the individual challenger didn't have to pay his money but the scheme didn't collapse. There was an acceptance that all developers along this railway line will have some benefit that they will all pay into it. And the infrastructure levy probably allows other authorities to pick it up if it's the right thing for them. Thank you. That's helpful. We'll move on to a new line of questioning. Now, Maureen Cylennan. Thank you. I'm going to come on to equal rights of appeal but before I do, I want to read from one of the statements that we've received. Delays in the system are caused by severe cuts to planning budgets and staff shortages. It is resources they need, not reorganisation. Planners tell us that they are overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of their workloads. They are extremely stressed. Good planning doesn't require yet another reform programme. Improvement will come through adequate funding and staffing levels and empowering staff and giving them the time to do their work, reflect, learn and implement change. That came from unison Scotland, the largest trade union in Scottish public services and they tell us that they represent a full range of staff in planning teams. Now, we've got some people here who are on the front line. Is any of that relatable? Kate? Ailsa? Whoever? Yes, planners are very hard-worked, but this is about good management and we've not been very good in the past about collecting the statistics that we need. Some authorities, with the use of consultants, have come up with some figures about how many planning applications an individual planner should have in a year and how many they should have at any one time. You can actually work out how many planners you need. At that point, the resource can go up and down in conjunction with your chief executive. There should be formulas for how many planners you need. We're very bad at increasing planners when you have an upturn. It's that balancing, the peaks and troughs is difficult, but it's about managing it. We do have skills shortage and we do have a difficulty in attracting people into the profession. We have a shortage of courses, I believe, and they're a bit uncertain about the future of some of them. It is a problem that hops is addressing in a number of ways. However, we will go through what is the true cost of a planning application and what is the staffing that you need to deal with it. We will be working on that with us hops. It's very interesting the ability for planners to do their jobs for good morale. The comments from Unison Scotland are pretty brutal. I didn't see anything like that in the hops response. So maybe the planning bosses are not so close to it. Not to put people on the spot in terms of your own personal experience, but Kate and Ailsa, I would imagine, are very much on the front line day-to-day, more so than the management tier. Is this something— I mean, I was a chair of Scottish Young Planning many years ago. What is it like for young planners right now? Just talking about the Scottish Young Planners Network, I think that given that we are working within constraints, that does have an effect. We do as well as what we can with the resources that we have available to us. Talking to people in the network who work across a whole range of sectors, everyone is feeling it whether they are in the private sector or the public sector or within an agency. We work with what we've got. In terms of moving forward, I think that moving to a period where we have certainty in the procedures that we as officers have to abide by in terms of what is expected of us when we are in the front line, how we engage with people, how we engage with people in terms of the key stakeholders and just providing that certainty in the system and ensuring that it is robust and fit for purpose will help everybody get on with their day-to-day jobs, I think. Thank you. If I can turn to Councillor Heddle, perhaps to get a coeslau take on this. The Royal Town Planning Institute, and I should probably remind people again that I'm still a member, did some analysis of the planning performance framework. So, between 2009 and 2015, there was a 23 per cent reduction in people who do planning jobs in planning authorities. Is that sustainable? Councillor Heddle? I think the answer is probably it's not sustainable, but you could say the same across the entire spectrum of the local government finance. All aspects of local government finance have been subject to efficiencies and cuts. This is just a further embodiment of that. I think that someone else talked earlier about the climate. I think that it was getting purpose. The climate that we work in, so perhaps that was alluding to his study, but in terms of the bill then, what staff and financial resources while planning authorities require in order to deliver a higher quality of service, does the bill address any of that, and if not, what's missing, what would need to change? Degree uncertainty there, because the bill assumes that it will lead to savings for planning authorities that can be reinvested in the service, and ideally that will be what will happen. But I think it's also potentially placing greater burdens on the planning authority. And one of the things that we spoke about was the potential impact of local place plans, and if there's an expectation that local authorities have to support that. Equally assessment and performance reporting is something that's through the bill, like the sticker rock, like letters through the sticker rock, sorry. And this undoubtedly will place additional burdens on local authorities. So there's trade-offs inherent in the bill in terms of resourcing requirements, and resources for local authorities. So it's difficult to see whether the bill is going to help in terms of resources or not. I want to move on to equal rights of appeal, but I suppose it's kind of a connected. We've talked a lot in the committee so far about what the previous planning bill was about, the aspirations behind that, a big emphasis on front-loading, early engagement, people working collaboratively. We've heard that that's really not been that successful. Is that down to resources or is that part of the story? Yeah, I think resources are part of it for me, for at least the last six years we've been speaking to different ministers about increasing resources and planning by increasing fees. The ministerial view always coming back to us is improve performance first and there will be fee increases, but that's without ever defining the level of improvement and the level of fee increase. And we're still discussing it and the agenda is still the same if we keep improving though there will still be an improvement in resources. But we really do have to actually involve ourselves in the true cost of planning and work out where those resources will come from and resource it properly because I do recognise the stress that you spoke about earlier. If part of the aspiration for good place making is to put people at the heart of decision making, do you find any room in your heart at all for circumstances where there should be an equal right of appeal? I'm going for the heart strings here. Right. Code like it, Dave. If you have a heart basically take a volunteer. What should you have used an equal right of appeal, Mr Leslie? I think bound to respond by saying all planners have a heart. Quite genuinely the planning process has built into it for since it started basically a right of community engagement in one form or another. And I think most planning authorities like Edinburgh are looking at ways of meaningful community engagement. So the reason that we have accounts of commitment to look at this question of a community right of appeal and we have had discussions with government about Edinburgh's experience and why we've reached that position is very much in recognition of our experience of front loading of the system has not been enough to generate community trust and confidence in the planning process. So we are asking ourselves the question what more could be required to do that. Some of what more could be required could come in the form of issues that we've been discussing this morning in terms of place plans and other forms, other tools of community engagement. But there does still seem to be at the end of the process in certain circumstances a lack of opportunity for community to feel that they can question the way in which a decision has been made. So we have set out certain circumstances where defined community bodies and we would use the same terminology as is used in the bill and used in the community empowerment act could be given some form of equality of right of appeal. I think that compared to other planning authorities that seems to be quite an unusual position that Edinburgh has taken arguably quite a progressive one. From a Heads of Planning point of view or even a causal point of view are there any other authorities that are looking at even in a limited way equalising appeal rights? No, I think that with Heads of Planning we've spent many years now dealing with streamlining and making delivery faster and a third party right of appeal will not make delivery faster it will make it slower. And that gets it. Is it fair or not? If you go the history of planning with 1947 basically the development value of your land was nationalised and you couldn't just build what you wanted you had to ask for permission but if it was unfair you got a right of appeal. At that point we didn't have third parties really having much to do with it. Have we now moved on so far that it's inequitable? There is the question about should developers still have a right of appeal beyond local democracy? I prefer that as a question to raising third party rights of appeal because I think if we keep front loading with things like place plans and engaging people in the upfront planning process through plan making then we've actually got something where we've involved people and it's equitable and then you would need a very good reason to depart from your plan. But the departures come through local democracy as well from elected people generally and I think we of all the activities we have in local government I think planning is already there with the communities and I really don't think yet another right of appeal would actually be a beneficial thing. I think we would regret it if we saw it in action. Another colleague might want to ask about maybe tapering that the appeal rights that developers have just an observation and a question because the language that I think we use in the planning system is important. I think there's been a shift in language from talking about third parties to equal partners. Is there a sense within heads of planning that communities are a third party and somehow maybe not on an equal platform? Because I think that in itself from everything that we've heard actually antagonises communities, local people and that can include local businesses and they feel that they are not quite on the same wavelength and have the same status. So even that language if planners are using the language of third parties do you accept that that could be a barrier to good community engagement in itself? Yes, people outside the system don't understand the term third party and I think that's just fact. And we do have sorry, it's a live thing but you know cross boundary is where there are issues you know when one authority approves something and the town immediately across the boundary is full of objectors is that actually fair and they have no right of appeal anywhere? So if there was you know to be some movement on should others be allowed into the system to debate whether development should happen or not I think would look to criteria like that actually there's a built in unfairness if they live in the wrong authority. It's not their elected members that have made a decision that have affected them. There are quite a few boundary ones and there might be some mileage in looking at that but if you live in the authority you've elected your representative they've done something you don't like well at some point a decision has to be made and the recourse is you don't elect them again sorry councillor Heddle. Well I don't think that was personalised to councillor Heddle just all councillors. councillor Heddle, you've been very patient I know you've wanted in and then we've got a supplementary from Graham Simpson councillor Heddle. Thanks very much yeah the cost list Mr Parton a third party right of appeal in the past due to the impact it might have on development and local economies impacts it might have on the time to determine applications and indeed the connect external forces that might act against the local interest and I could sort of pick on my own local authority area or me it's an area that many people would like to see turned into an 80 or so but the elected members reasonably take the viewpoint that it's a place where people should be allowed to live and work as well so you know they have to be circumspect but things like that and I think that the the bill as it's developed and this have measures in there to involve communities I mean the the local place plans as articulated the work that happens already in terms of the the pre-application procedures and I think the increased planning performance demonstrates that the this is something that's good in terms of performance as well and indeed I think the the infrastructure at your levy is another thing that is a potential way to involve communities because it's a direct linkage to between development and positive developments for the community if this is something that can be determined locally and the benefits reaped locally but I think Cossla is going to have to consider this whole aspect before the stage 2 of the bill not least because the the discussion is widening to equal right of appeal rather than third party right of appeal of course equal right appeal can can be many things it could be nobody has any appeal and I don't know if that's the what you're intending at this point but obviously it's a spectrum of things that we need to consider I noticed in the previous session I think it was Dr. Ench made into some points about an equal right of appeal under strict circumstances a limited equal right of appeal I mean that's something we're having to consider as well Okay, Mr Miles and then before I take you Mr Miles just some housekeeping we've got about 10 minutes maximum left of this evidence session we really have to close I'm keen to let members back in so my apologies but brevity would be very helpful The reason that we didn't support it is that we have often the same group of people objecting to every development that gets considered by our planning committee and sometimes they have well set out reasons that are considered sometimes it's simple because they don't want development in a national park and if every one of those decisions was appealed then you could see the thing grinding to halt so I think that's where the fear for lots of planning authorities comes in that in some cases it could be misused Thank you Mr Simpson That's convenient I'm really interested in that stuff from Edinburgh council I've never heard a council talk like that before saying we don't think we're quite getting things right here you know we think we should be looking at some sort of right of appeal I've never heard a council say that that's quite that's actually very refreshing because normally councils are quite defensive they think they're getting everything right they all think they have hearts of course as you do Mr Leslie I was frantically looking through your written evidence I couldn't see anything in there about this do you obviously consider it as a council I wonder if you could give us more details about the kind of scheme you're thinking of and whether you think Edinburgh could be used as a maybe a trial area for this you know if MSPs if the Government wasn't really sure about how this would work maybe it could be tried somewhere That's a very interesting idea to pilot it in one area the limited amount of work that we've done to look at this I would emphasise it's very much a focus on communities we're not using the term third party I think we already have a basis within the Edinburgh planning concordat of looking at a tripartite approach to dealing with major developments the developer, the planning authority and the relevant community affected I think that's a basis from which this type of commitment has grown I think it's also in recognition that many developments in the city do not fall into the category of a major development but there is a significant local development and a significant local development doesn't have any statutory provision at the moment for pre-application engagement with the community so we're recognising that there is a definition there which is something that needs to be looked at we're very much looking at this in the round it's not looking in isolation it would only work if in certain circumstances I certainly concur with comments made by other colleagues it would not be in the council's interest to hold back development it has to be done in a way which allows the community to feel a greater sense of confidence in planning decision making but not to delay the process unnecessarily Any committee in the council this idea? This is a council commitment so it's one of the administration's commitments that was agreed by full council Okay Specifically, so just a remark that we've got a question Mr Simpson specifically what is the commitment because that would be quite helpful that we're just absolutely clear about that I can read it out to you the council commitment number 10 is to work with the Scottish Government to review planning policy and overhaul the planning appeal system to make it short and more independent and give communities the right of appeal Okay That's helpful Only those we've articulated in discussion with Government He's just relating that So you've had discussions with Government about this We have approached Government to express the views yes, yes Okay So that's my one to follow-up when we've got the minister in front of us at a later date, obviously Is it okay, Mr Simpson, to move on now? Yeah I'm really interested to learn more if there's anything you can send us in writing if there's any documentation that I think will be really useful because you know, we've got a bill in front of us that doesn't include this if we've got a major council the council covering the capital city that's been in discussions with Government about this I think we need we really need to know about it because we're going to have to come up with suggestions for this bill it'd be very, very useful anything you can share with us Could we now be happy to follow that up? I think that'll be very helpful including we're obviously on a timescale in relation to this bill but also in relation to the City of Edinburgh's timescales in relation to what that community of appeal would look like and when they think that could be implemented as well I think would be helpful to see if it's within the scope of the timescales of what we are doing here Thank you very much Mr Samson and Mr Whiteman Yes, thanks Thanks very much Convidur following up from the discussion we've just had and Robert Gray's mentioned earlier that the question he would prefer is the question as to whether the applicant's right of appeal should should persist or not I wonder whether Mr Gray has an answer to that question it's worth noting of course is I think David Leslie said it's always been part or it may have been Kate Hopper I can't remember always been part of the system but when it was introduced it was only intended to be temporary the appeal rights of applicants doesn't exist in most other European countries because you have a plan and you stick to the plan and we have a rather more discretionary system so I'm just wondering in light of the fact that Robert Gray and others have said that a third party right of appeal would clog up the system and lead to delays whether getting rid of the applicants right of appeal would get rid of delays and strengthen local democracy we have a local review body within the councils for things which do not have to go to the government for appeal I think that I think I'm speaking for me rather than Hopps at the moment I'm not quite sure what the you know you have to hope the Hopps view is as written but I don't have any particular difficulty with the applicants right of appeal being to another council body and being part of local democracy I don't necessarily think it has to be to the minister now I know the minister on some things has a much wider view than a local authority and there's a subsidiarity issue in there but there are many more things which I think are of local significance that could be dealt with locally maybe straying on to Councillor Hetle's territory of a you know a political statement rather than a technical statement but technically it could work yes you could put those appeals some of those appeals that go to government could go to the local review body run by the council itself but yes I mean technically obviously anything could work in this regard my question really is do you think there should be a merits-based continue to be a merits-based appeal on decisions that have been based very very firmly on a very very comprehensive and well supported local development plan that have widely supported in the community that even when it goes to a reporter are upheld and a minister overturns I mean do you think that's an acceptable way of strengthening the planning system I yeah sorry I was kind of missing a bit of it but really it's determining something as a planner you're looking at the policy background which is the development plan and other material considerations and it's a matter for the decision maker as to the weight they give to those material considerations and generally when it goes to a reporter or a minister what happens is he gives a different weight to those and I'm not sure why the reporter's decision on the weight to those is any more valid than people who live locally and have been elected so I'm quite happy for a system of appeal but for it to be local and for it to be dealt with through the elected members system which we already have for some things and feel free to to give us some supplementary evidence in relation to that and writing if you want just before we close this evidence session I'll just ask the same question I asked in relation to the whole right of appeal that I did the previous panel is this bill will go through it may be amended in that year it may not be stage 3 will come and go and a planning legislation will be on the book so if there is no equal right of appeal and the contrast to that is the front loading of the planning system and the process and everything else I asked the previous panel how should we gauge the success of that front loading in terms of the planning process so in five years time or 10 years time when a successor committee is going well how does that planning act go down they didn't go for equal right of appeal did it do what it said it was going to do how would we how what would we look at to demonstrate that it did what it said in the tin what kind of things would we look at any thoughts thank you Mr Leslie quite simply quality of outcomes and if one of the key outcomes that we're seeking to achieve is good places we need to find ways of measuring how stakeholders consider placemaking having been delivered so if we're sitting here in five years time or 10 years time we need to have developed measures that we can report locally on quality outcomes I think that that's very helpful our deputy convener has quite rightly spoken about the ambitions of 2006 in relation to to front loading of the system and while it's impacted at best whether those were were particularly realised I think that's the diplomatic thing to say so with another planning bill before is again talking about further front loading of the system and so whoever it won't buzz almost it won't buzz I don't think MSPs I have to say whoever in 10 years time is looking at this this again it's what what framework what monitoring framework should there be to see what actually it did do what it said in tin or no it didn't so that's very helpful Mr Leslie any other thoughts in relation to that before we close this evidence session Ailsa Anderson I would just like to agree that it's a point of which delivery when you can see that there's tangible change and that is the good thing about the planning system that when a decision is made and the development is delivered you can see the tangible difference that it makes either to a business or a community or individuals themselves depending on the level that you go to I think added to that in terms of thinking about the coming young planners in the future is that they have access to good education and continued professional development in that there's continued enthusiasm both from the professional side and the community side of planning okay thank you very much thank you for your time to put that on the record here before we close the evidence session councillor Heddle just started on to an earlier point I think the success could be measured by no councillors being kicked out at the elections due to planning decisions I think that that will be virtually impossible councillor Heddle and in that not so positive note can I thank all the witnesses for what's been a long and worthwhile evidence session please follow the course of the bill if there's anything additional you want to give us a supplementary evidence please do that cos I know you're constrained by the questions that we ask and the time that's available so please do stay in contact with us so thank you very much for attending today to help us with the planning legislation and we now move to agenda item 2 which previously we did that we take in private so we now move into private session thank you