Welcome everyone to the 7th meeting of local government and community committee in 2018. I remind everyone present to turn off mobile phones and as meeting papers are provided in digital format tablets may be used by members during the meeting. Despite the weather, we all got a full house this morning. I am delighted to say no apologies have been I want to put on record my and the committee's thanks to all those who attended our planning bill conference at Four Files College in Stirling on Monday. I want to invite members at this point to comment on how that went. We normally do that as a practice and put that on the public record, because time is tight with us this morning, but there will be a summary of notes produced in relation to those discussions, and that will be published. Thank you to everyone who attended. That's some really useful input that will help our school today. So that said, we now move to our first witness panel, and can I welcome and I'll introduce everyone in the winner here, Claire Simmons-Chair and Dr Andy Inch, trustee planning democracy, and Dr Callum McLeod, policy director, Community Land Scotland, Ian Cook, director, Development Trust Association Scotland, and Petra Beiberbach, chief executive planning aid Scotland. Thank you everyone for coming along and for making it through what has been called the beast from the east this morning with the bad weather, and members of the public gathering was a lot of interest in this in the next evidence session, so thank you everyone for making the effort to attend this morning. We're going to allow for some brief opening statements. Maybe around two minutes would be good to allow that interaction between each of the witnesses and members to ask questions as much time as possible for that. So we'll perhaps go from my left to right here, so I don't know if Dr Inch or Claire Simmons wishes to make opening remarks on behalf of planning democracy. Thank you for inviting us. We're very appreciative of the opportunity. I'm the chair of planning democracy. We're a charity. We're volunteer-led and we've been around since 2009, and we campaign for a fairer, more inclusive planning system in Scotland. We've got a community network, around 500 people in this network now, including community councils, individuals and organisations, and we have a regular interaction and sort of try and provide support for each other through that network. So that's a little bit about us, a little bit about me. I've also got a cold, so I also got a tickly cough, so I might have to suddenly throw something over to Andy if I have a coughing fit. But just as an opening, is this the opening statement, or is this... I'd better get on with it, then. So what planning democracy is really asking for is for a planning system that is seen as a way of positively shaping the places that we live in. We see it as a mechanism that you can change the way market delivers better quality housing and removes speculation on land and so on, and we feel that the planning bill possibly has viewed planning as a negative thing that has a problem that gets in the way of development, but we see it as a vital part of our democracy. And of course everybody knows that one of the things that we've been campaigning for is equal rights of appeal. And we think that this is a mechanism that we can achieve a stronger plan-led system, and this is something that we really want to achieve. And I think that's across the board, a lot of people want to support a plan-led system. And we're also keen to overcome some of the problems that have been brought up about the lack of public trust in planning. And we do feel that perhaps ERA has been presented as a blunt instrument that slows things down and polarises and seen as a divisive tool, and it was rather hastily dismissed as such, but we want to sort of see it as something that is possible, that you can design a new system with this tool, that reinforces the principle of a plan-led system, and that encourages people to be engaged at an early stage. So I think that's all I'll say for now as my opening statement. Thank you. It's almost bang on time, Ms Simmons. No pressure, Dr McLeod, for your opening statement. Well thank you very much indeed, committee, on behalf of Community Lands Scotland for the invitation to participate in this evidence session this morning on. What we see is a very important piece of legislation in terms of taking forward the planning framework, but also connecting to other areas of public policy in Scotland as well. It's very welcome in the policy memorandum that it talks very much about moving the planning system from being a reactionary process to actually helping to promote and support investment and make good quality placemaking. We provided a very succinct written submission in terms of our evidence to the committee itself. We focused on local place planning, but we also focused on a wider set of issues that we think are important in terms of helping to take the planning process forward and connect to that wider agenda, specifically in relation to thinking about issues of repopulation and resettlement and how that might tie into elements of the planning process and wider issues of rural and indeed urban sustainable development and also thinking about powers in relation to that and ways in which we can actually rethink and reimagine in a practical policy-orientated sense people's places within landscapes as well within rural landscapes and what their role is in relation to that. So the ambition of this bill in terms of having more community engagement, having more community consultation, having a kind of more progressive approach if you will in relation to the planning process, is very welcome from our perspective. As a representative organisation, we look forward to discussing the various aspects of our submission within the context of the broader discussion today. Thank you very much. Talk to me on the cloud, Ian Cook. Thank you, chair, and good morning everyone. I think the first thing I would want to say is that I'm here from Development Trust Association Scotland, so we've got 255 members and committees scattered throughout Scotland. All involved primarily in what I would call placemaking, so I think that our interest in the bill is very much around how this bill assists communities and others to, I suppose, create the kind of places that people want to live in. I would say from the outset that I am certainly not a planning expert. The views which DTA Scotland put forward to the committee were very much views drawn from our membership, so that's communities across the country who have engaged or tried to engage in the planning process, either to get consent for community development or to try and influence planning applications that they felt would impact on their community. It's probably fair to say that from our experience of speaking to members, there's a fairly strong view that the views of communities do not currently get taken into account sufficiently and often tend to be overridden by the views of developers or the plans of developers, so there's certainly a kind of imbalance that we hope the bill will address. The only other thing that I would add, I suppose, is that we are quite keen to explore where some of the cross-cutting policy agendas might be around committee empowerment, how that connects with Lanja Forum, and given that planning is very much about local democracy, how it might connect with the forthcoming local democracy bill. Thank you very much, Mr Cook and Peter Bieberbach. Thank you very much for inviting me. My name is Peter Bieberbach and I'm the chief executive of PASS. I've also been on the member of the independent review, which put forward a recommendation for changes in the planning system. I'm also on the board of Fluch Lomant and the Drossach National Park and Chair, the planning and access committee over there, so I have firsthand experience of how the planning system works in practice. I'm also on the local housing association link group and I'm the vice chair. The committee will have already read our response to the bill, so I just want to take the opportunity to give you a little bit more details about how PASS operates. About 20 per cent of planners in Scotland volunteer for the organisation. Increasingly, also we see other build environment professional coming into this because again, it moves into a more place agenda. We also have architects, urban designers, environmentalists working with us. PASS is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It is, as I said, volunteer led for over 400 volunteers. We have three key services. In the first 15 years of the organisation it had and has an advice service, which I would say is very reactive because people phone us or email us in and want some advice. Last year we dealt with about 800 cases. In addition to that, there's about 1,000 inquiries, which are not necessarily cases because you don't necessarily need to ascribe them to a volunteer. We also help community organisations in a very proactive way and expanded our programme over the last 10 years considerably working through charrette processes, but also on the ground with community groups who want to maybe take on assets and work wanting to become small-scale developers themselves. We are quite closely with development trust associations. Increasingly, however, I think to address some of the anomaly in the planning system, we work with what we call seldom heard groups. They include gypsy travellers. We still have a system where we don't provide enough sites in an appropriate location for gypsy travellers. We also engage very proactively with young people because we think that one of the failures of the planning system is that too few people actually know that it exists and therefore only get involved very late in the process. By actually working with schools and community groups and with a youth clubs, we find that young people are very much ready to be involved in the place agenda. Last month, we launched the youth volunteer programme and again we have 200 people turning up as volunteers. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Everyone, I appreciate your opening remarks and we'll move straight to questions. Jenny Gilruth. The legislation proposes a local place plan as a new feature of the planning system and any LPP would have to have regard for the local development plan and the national planning framework. Does the panel believe that asking local councils to have regard for these LPPs is sufficiently robust? Local place plans having regard for them. Dr Inge? I think that it's a weak mechanism. Local place plans sound rather like the neighbourhood plans that should have been in existence in England since around 2010. The neighbourhood plans in England form a part of the statutory development plan along with the local plan in England, which means that they are giving greater weight in decision making. One of the odd features of the planning system in Scotland and in England is that there is a bit of a gap between what is in a plan, which is indicative and subsequent decisions, which do not need to follow that plan if other material considerations indicate otherwise, so I am sure that the committee might be aware. What that does means that the aspiration for a plan-led system can be quite difficult to achieve. One of the risks of local place plans having a weak status in decision making is that communities and others could invest hundreds of hours and a huge amount of voluntary time and effort into their production only to find that subsequent decisions broadly disregard the provisions of a local place plan. That happened in England in some fairly celebrated cases in England recently, where that has happened despite the stronger status that neighbourhood plans have compared to what is proposed for local place plans. I think that there is some real concern there about how much time and effort you are asking people to invest in a process without any guarantees at the end of the process that there is going to be any accountability for the decisions that are subsequently made. Local place plans could be a very positive way of engaging people early on, but you also need to think about what is happening at the end of that process and how those plans are actually being implemented. I suppose note that local place plans are not particularly new, that communities up in the country have been doing variations of local place plans for some time. In our experience, there is very little evidence of applying authorities really recognising and giving any weight to local place plans. So suppose in regard to the question of having regard to, we would be concerned that there is a clear link between any local place plans and the statutory planning process. I think that local place plans, we are very supportive of the proposal for local place plans, but they will achieve very little unless they are accompanied by a quite clear statement about the purpose and status of the plans. Some of this might get done with statutory guidance, but we think that there is a way to evolve place plans so that they have criteria. Depending on what the communities want to build into their local place plans, there is a legal consequence in terms of what the local authority, what the planning authority must do in terms of responding and acknowledging to that. Just in case, others want to come in and answer the question as well. My apologies for cutting across you there, Jenny. Dr McLeod, did you want to come in? Yes, thank you very much, Cymru. We would certainly reiterate the points and emphasise the point that local place plans are a welcome development in terms of the decision making infrastructure of the planning process and how that connects to wider issues as well. It is, as colleagues have already said, very important to ensure that there is a clear connection between the local place plans themselves in terms of their purpose, how they are resourced and what they are designed to achieve and how that connects to the development plan and the wider framework in that context. It is clear and important that there is a link to that, and that is clearly implementable and achievable in practice in terms of making that linkage. Clearly, it is an opportunity for local communities to have a stake and a voice, which sometimes gets airbrushed out of the planning process in relation to deciding what should be developed and moved forward at the local level, so that the plans are a useful mechanism, potentially in that respect, but there does need to be a connection with the local development plan, which is clear within that context. Do you want to add something? As it currently stands, it is too weak. We want to see a much stronger duty, because if we really have a plan-led system, it has to cascade up as well as down. The local place plan is a key driver to change the current planning system. It is a key driver in affording everyone in the community to come together to plan for their place. I agree with some of the statements around aligning it better with other policy formations such as the Community Empowerment Act and the Land Reform, but we are now consulting currently on a socio-economic duty for local development plans. Again, it has to fit in. The discussion around what we need from place has to be had at that very local level with everyone involved. Therefore, it also has to be given proper status so that it does not become just a tokenistic approach. Furthermore, I would say that it needs to be aligned with the local development plan as we know what moves to a 10-year cycle. Probably a regular update of the local place plan, a regular conversation with all the different drivers and communities within that is very important. I would say that, unlike England, the English system certainly has not worked. It has worked in certain areas, but it has been given very little credence. There is a different system in Scotland in front of us, so I think that we can drive something very new here. I suppose that, going back to Callum McLeod's point, there is an issue associated in your submission that you say with cost and the support that is required in terms of developing those plans. I suppose that there is also an issue in terms of community capacity. Iain Cook, in your submission, you point to local place plans working well when there is a sense of genuine ownership by local people, but not all communities are starting from the same base level and not all communities have that buy-in and that engagement. Therefore, what the panel's views might be with regard to poorer areas, for example, not engaging with the process or feeling that they do not have the capacity to engage with the process because they might not have done so in the past, does the legislation disadvantage them in its current form? Iain Cook, in your submission, you point to the level of capacity that different communities might have in relation to responding to the challenge and opportunity of local place plans themselves. It is very important that communities in that position have resources and are provided with resources to enable them to have a capacity to help to shape that process in terms of shaping what is going to be in the place plan. Support from various sources should be part of that process in terms of building capacity. Whether that is from Government itself or some other sources in terms of different partnership arrangements, that is something that needs to be looked at very carefully in terms of what the optimal solutions are in relation to that. Clearly, it is unrealistic to expect communities that may have different levels of capacity to be able to engage unless they have support to do that. That is not a reason for them not to. It is quite the reverse in fact to ensure that communities do have that opportunity and that we do get from the bottom up a fit between what communities' aspirations are for place making itself and how that fits in the broader framework. That needs to be driven forward and hardwired into the process in this bill. Mr Cooke, do you want to comment? The first thing that I would say is that our experience is that there are lots of disadvantaged communities that are involved in trying to improve their particular communities. It is not just restricted to higher capacity communities, but I appreciate the point that in order to do that, they may require additional support. There is definitely an interest there. I think that the key to this is communities having community anchor organisations. Communities that do not have development trust, for instance, and a lot of the disadvantaged communities have local, locally controlled or locally led housing associations who are very well placed to provide a key role in the production or support of local place plans. I do accept that when we are looking at resourcing, resourcing is crucial. That will not work unless it is sufficiently resourced, but perhaps we need to reflect the particular needs of disadvantaged communities within how we make resources available, both in terms of financial resources and technical support. Can I suggest that on a practical level, if we are moving towards a great alignment between spatial planning and community planning, in many areas you have community local planning outcome agreements. I would suggest that perhaps some of the alignment could also be between budgets of community planning partnerships and the spatial planning departments, so that action is of working together on the ground. Capacity building is absolutely vital, but more importantly, it is for those very communities who do not feel that they have been given a voice in the past to be much more empowered to do so. I would very much agree that the aspiration to join things up locally at a very local level with community planning and other processes is the right one. I think that there is a real challenge there. I think that the resource implications are huge and the capacity building and the kind of work that would be required to achieve that are massive. The financial memorandum suggests that there is a figure of, I may be wrong, my memory is not great, £13,000 or something like that per local place plan, which I believe has probably been borrowed from some research produced by locality in England in relation to the neighbourhood planning process. As I understand it from speaking to colleagues who have studied the neighbourhood planning process, that is a very much low end. A lot of neighbourhood plans have cost upwards of some even close to £100,000. In addition to that, in England, local authorities are also giving £20,000 at least per neighbourhood plan to provide support to communities producing them. None of that seems to have been costed into the proposal at the moment, all of which will reduce capacity. One of the distinctive features of neighbourhood planning in England is that it has a very variable geography. It is happening in places typically that are much more socioeconomically wealthy and has higher capacity, and it is not happening in other places. If you do not want to reproduce that kind of geography, you need to think about very proactive mechanisms to avoid it. I will briefly remind the committee of my register of interests as I am a chartered member of the Royal Town Planning Institute. Good morning, everyone. I follow up to Jenny's question on local place plans. The bill is saying that community councils or other community bodies would have the power to produce a local place plan. I wonder if the panel has a view on whether the scope of that is correct. I note from the past submission that Petra Paterson suggested that community councils is the only community group with a statutory role and planning should be required to take a lead role in any local place plan. I am thinking about areas in my region where there are big gaps in community council coverage. I wonder if the panel has a view on whether the bill has the scope right or are there areas across Scotland where there are perhaps not community councils or there could be other bodies that would be better placed to drive the local place plan process? There are parts to the question because community councils are absolutely right. They are very varied and the coverage is quite patchy. In many rural areas, they are quite struggling as well. There is also an ageing profile. On the other hand, if you think of it in the purest sense of the word, they are the only democratically elected body at a local level. To some extent, they are rooted in that kind of function. At the same time, that gives them to some extent their credibility. However, I would not say that it is exclusive community councils. I think that all of us need to work much, much more to empower more community groups to work together. Development trusts have a big role, so have young people. There are many amenity groups, but I think that if somebody has to drive and brings it forward, it has to be an elected body such as community councils. We had stressed in the planning review that the role of the local community council should be extended to be a statutory function within the development plan making. Unfortunately, that was not taken forward, but I think that that is a very good opportunity to strengthen the role of community councils further. However, we are where we are. I think that it would be good not only to have an elite body but to have a duty to include everyone within the community. Does planning democracy have a view on that? I think that, broadly, we would agree that the role of community councils is very variable across Scotland. It is not a level of democracy that has been particularly well invested in over time across the country, which means that it is very difficult. One of the things to think about in relation to local place plans, which I personally would be very interested in, is thinking about where the local anchor organisations and institutions are within local communities. That is where you need to think about the intersections with community empowerment agendas, local democracy agendas and where you can vest some kind of institutional capacity that stays in and remains in communities. If you work in a lot of the disadvantaged communities in Scotland, for example, regeneration funding is tended to be project-based, projects come, organisations are set up, they run for the length of time of the project, then they disappear. There has not actually been the embedding of an institutional organisational capacity at that level, which can be continuous, which would be the ideal place to vest whether that is community council or something else. That is the ideal place to vest, that is the local place planning process. The question of the types of organisations that might be engaging in that process and have a potential lead role in terms of the local place plan is a pretty critical one, and there is variation in that. Andy is absolutely right, of course. The role of community council is very important but, in some senses, it has been challenging given the hollowing out of functions or their capacity in some instances. I think that there is some merit in thinking about other organisations that might be able to contribute or lead within the context of developing the local place plans themselves. In that context, community landowners would be potentially one type of organisation that would have a contribution to play in that capacity, not least because, in some contrast to other types of land ownership, they have a democratic accountable role to play within that process in terms of just the way they represent their membership and represent the community themselves in which they are located. Having that linkage between organisation structures that are appropriate and community accountability and a democratic mandate, in that sense, is something that different organisations can play and, certainly within that perspective, community landowners might have a role to play within that context. Mr Cook? From the DT Scotland's point of view, we would certainly like to see that extended beyond community councils. For me, it should be about looking at which organisations are driving local placemaking and making sure that they are eligible in certain respects. If you take the example of the community empowerment act, for instance, where you have got community bodies that are described with a certain range of characteristics, including democratic accountability, a group that takes those characteristics can access various community rights. I would like something similar to that that was produced or developed along the lines in terms of which community bodies are able to initiate and develop local place plans. I was just checking what the members want to explore this further. We are specifically talking at the moment about what anchor organisations community councils, for example, could drive some of that forward. It is not an either or. In my area, there is a local community council that is as representative as it can be because you rarely have elections to become community councillors, so you have to debate that there is a democratic opportunity there, but there is not much voting going on. Let us be honest about it. We have formed a regeneration forum where we have invited a mapping exercise of anyone that we thought was a community stakeholder, be it the housing association, a seniors forum, a local college and getting them around the one table to meet every two or three months to start talking about local place planning and what that might look like. It is not an either or, is it? I have seen nodding heads. I would not put that as a formal question. The question that I would ask is who should be doing the mapping exercise across our communities? Where the black spots are, so again, Royston in my constituency, the big lottery fund had to do an exercise there because people were not applying for lottery funds and it was not gaining them, so they identified where the black spots were in relation to community planning and community empowerment and community activity. Should that be a duty on local authorities to identify where the weaknesses are and that community resilience and drive forward some of that? If we just wait for communities to do it, it might never happen. It might be in statute, but it might just never happen. Petra? That's got an interesting point because, in our observation, there are different communities out there and if we're too prescriptive then we might just miss some opportunities. There are some communities like, for example, the Isle of Rhum who, through a development trust, are wanting to create their own place plan. They came to us, we helped them, Highlands and Islands Council declared it as a supplementary guidance so it had some statue, which was great. They now can grow the community. They are practical examples, but there are many other communities that just don't come together and don't feel the need. I suppose there is some element of a duty on local authorities to assist in that and finding this roadmap, but at the same time don't be those communities that are already wanting to do something and there are plenty of communities out there that have produced the equivalent of a local place plan. Glasgow is, for example, so I think we shouldn't just be, you have to do it and you don't have to do it. I think there needs to be some sort of flexibility around this. Okay, any other thoughts on that, Dr McLeod? I'm glad, by the way, that you mentioned mapping at the moment. I hope that we'll come back to that at some later point in this session for various other context. I think flexibility is the key here, that shouldn't necessarily be on one particular organisation to focus and push us forward. So there is a role, of course, for local authorities to play in that, but there's also a role for, as Pethys said, for other organisations to help to shape their own aspirations within the places themselves and balance that out. Any other comments for other members back in? Dr Ryns, did you want to? It's very quick. I think it's also important to think about local place plans as one tool, amongst many, for local place shaping. Then there's an interesting question there around if you're sitting in a community and there's issues that you're interested in, which of those tools are most appropriate for you to pick up and use at different points to try and achieve what you're interested in achieving? It's not that everywhere needs a local place plan, but it's important to try and think about how that is presented to people in a way that makes those tools accessible, whether that's in relation to community employment, whether it's in relation to community planning, whether it's in relation to things that come through planning acts. I think that at the moment that picture doesn't really come together for a lot of people. I think that that's a real challenge, so there's an issue there. And then Ian Cook, and then I'm going to let some members come back in for other supplementary questions that they have on this. I would fundamentally disagree with the place plan that is seen as a tool to engagement. We have tools such as the place standard, for example, to drive a conversation around, but if the place plan is to be properly enacted and it's part of the plan-led system, then it really is more than a tool for people to talk about their place and has aspiration and vision for their place. Very briefly, I think that it does make sense in relation to the question that local authorities could be responsible for mapping where there's gaps and where there's cold spots, et cetera, but I would like to think about where and how these cold spots might respond because I think this has got to be bottom up. It's got to be communities who want to do something, et cetera, so the question is how do you inspire communities to do that, how do you support them, how do you encourage them, how do you nurture them, rather than trying to impose something from the top? Okay, now, I am going to allow Monica Lennon back in a moment, Monica, but there's others with supplementaries on this specific point and I'll let you come in again. Grimm Simpson, something on this. Well, I think you all agree that the bill, as it's written, on local place plans doesn't have enough teeth. When it says that councils only have to have regard to local place plans, that's pretty meaningless. I think, as a committee, we really need to hear what the ideas are to sort that out. I think that Petrie, you said, maybe this could all be done at the time of the local development plan being produced. Should it be perhaps a requirement on councils when they're producing those local place plans to reach out and engage with communities and then demonstrate in the evidence report that they have to produce that they've actually done that job, ask for local place plans to be produced, help people to produce them at the time of producing a local development plan? Right, so the end, I mean, we're talking about a local development plan moving towards a 10-year cycle, so there are opportunities within that to produce, on a regular basis, local place plans because communities are themselves dynamic as well. I would say, yes, coming together right at the front and driving the local development plan being informed by a local place plan is the best starting point and it's also a fusion and I'm being listened to, I've identified these gapsites, I've seen those empty homes and I want to do something with it and the intelligence and the information that a local community carries with it can only be beneficial for the local development plan. A couple of very clear things, one would be that local place plan should clearly be part of the development plan, the statutory development plan for an area and so therefore when a local place plan is approved it becomes a part of the local development plan but there's also an issue at the end of the process then, as I mentioned earlier, if communities are going to invest time and effort in producing a local place plan they then have no guarantees that the decision maker on subsequent planning applications will really pay any heed in decision making. There's got to be a very strong case there for those communities to have some kind of a right of appeal where decisions are contrary to what's being agreed in a local place plan. Having gone through that process, they effectively become the party that's produced the plan, they should therefore have some say in subsequent decisions and that would give them real teeth and would be a real incentive to ensure that those local place plans were implemented. Any other comments on that? We are going to have to move on beyond local place plans in a second, so if it's a general agreement in relation to the point, Dr McLeod, just come in and say it anyway. Very briefly, I think that the actual key thing in relation to the link between communities and local place plans and the broader local development plan is actually front loading that in the first place so that the community's voice is listening to it. It actually is formally connected into the local development plan itself. If you have that, you don't necessarily have to pursue a third party right of appeal in relation to that with regard to how that works in practice, so getting it front loaded is critical in that context. There's also the psychology of planning. If you know that you don't necessarily have to participate at this stage because you may have another bite later on, so I think that we want to see much, much more engaged communities, engaged individuals, creating local place plans at the earliest opportunity and knowing that it has a statue, knowing that it has an opportunity for them to be involved, but it's meaningful, not tokenistic. There are follow-up questions that we're going to have to ask as MSPs and some of the comments made. Mr Cooke, you've not spoken in relation to this matter yet. Apologies that I'm not taking another witnesses at this point. Mr Cooke, do you want to add something to that? For us, we would see local place plans being very much part of community empowerment. I think the idea that communities can proactively use the place plan when it's right for them to try and forward their ambitions is quite crucial. I think that we've got to be quite careful about why I think it's important that when place plans are produced and meet the criteria, then they are listened to and taken into account. Again, if it's just part of a fairly top-down bureaucratic system, we may flatten the activity, the energy and the enterprise that's already bubbling away in communities. Also in relation to the subject, Andy Wightman and Kenneth Gibson, I wanted to come in and ask a wee question to Kenneth. So much, I'll hold my fire. Right. Andy Wightman. So, just very briefly, convener. I think one of our problems is we've gone out and we've spoken to communities and, like witnesses here today, folk think local place plans, yeah, that could be a great idea. Our challenge is to actually recommend to Parliament whether it is a good idea or not. And as it appears in the bill, they are weaker than the English system. So I suppose a question for us is if they are to be strengthened, how are they to be strengthened? So now Andy Wightman has already said that he believes that they should be part of the statutory local development plan. Do others agree that they should be? It needs to be a duty. We can't not have what we call a proper front-loaded, unless it's a jargonistic term, but I think we all know what we mean by that, and proper community involvement to then just say, well, we can't leave it at an opportunity. It has to be meaningful and to have meaningful engagement means you have to give it teeth, and it means that you know, as a community, if I spend this time, if I spend my weeks and months helping and assisting and doing this, I know it actually carries forward my views and they have been taken into account. So, yes, it has to follow. There is a planned system as we see NPF going down, we see local place plan being part of that, and there has to be a duty. Before other folk come in, is there a difference in a duty to consider local place plans and making it automatically part of a local development plan? Those are two separate things, aren't they? It's about how they rub together or how they complement each other, so I just want to be clear what witnesses are saying, or witnesses saying that a local place plan that is approved by a local area will not define what a community is, will not define what the threshold is. There has to be referendums for neighbourhood plans in England, with not defined any of those criteria. Are we saying that no matter what, they should just automatically form part of the development plan, or are we saying that the development plan must show in a material and meaningful way have a duty to take consideration and account of them? I want to make sure that we're talking about the same thing when we go into recommendations as a committee in relation to this. So, what is it you're saying in relation to this, Petra, when you say a duty? I mean that you have to prepare your local development plan, but you have to understand and fully be aware of what a local community is, and we have a sort of definition of neighbourhood if we look at community planning partnerships. We know roughly a geographical definition. I do think that it needs to be very strong and it needs to be the local development plan has to take account of it. Yes, absolutely. It forms part of that plan-led system cascading up the way. I think that that's definitely an answer. I was going to be rude there and said that I think that's an answer. It's an answer, but it wouldn't be, it wouldn't automatically... This is really important, as my deputy convener just pointed out to me there. It has the same status in law as the development plan, or should the development plan have a dispute resolution system, for example, when it doesn't match the local place plan. So, having that duty is one thing, automatically making it part of the development plan is another thing entirely. So, I mean, I've got more infuse on that, but I'm keen to know what the witnesses' infuse are. So, Petra, I'm trying to push you on this. Should it just automatically form part of the local development plan, or should there be a stronger lever to have it influence the local development plan? Should it, for example, be a material condition, a material consideration in relation to planning applications if something goes against the local place plan? What do we mean by stronger than having regard to? Because I think that it's very, very important that it's meaningful that if you invest and you want to drive more democracy, democratisation of the plan-led system, that you want to have a material consideration of the local development, of the local place plan in the development plan making. But having said that, we shouldn't forget that as we're moving into a more, in a system that is more collaborative, we're actually not seeing the local authority plan making authority here and the local community here. We should actually work together so that they are aware of what's being proposed, they are aware of what's been happening, and then find it seamlessly going into the local development plan. But, yes, I wanted a strongest possible, given the strongest possible commitment to local place plans. I will take you back in a second, Dr Ninja-Clear sounds like a promise, but your organisation said that you think it should just be part of the development plan. Petrus Pass seems to be saying that it should be a step removed from that, but it should be influenced and feed into the development plan. Again, I don't want to get words into your mouth, I want to be clear about what you're actually saying. If you're content with that, I'll ask Mr Cook or Dr McLeod what they feel about it. I'm saying it's stronger than that, it should be part of. It has to be a material consideration of the local development plan. So it will be in the local development plan? Well, it follows, doesn't it? If you prepare something at a local level and you want to have it meaningful and give it a proper statute, then yes, it has to be part of that. Right, so that's a yes. You agree with the plan of democracy then. I suppose that our view is that there definitely needs to be a stronger lever, as you've suggested, beyond what's currently in the draft bill. What I tried to allude to tell on, I suppose, was a view that the statutory guidance needs to provide criteria, which clarifies the different levels of sophistication that local development plans could take and that the different levels of legal status would attract, depending on the criteria that local development plans... I suppose that we're looking for something that is kind of far organic, that's much more about a power, but that once produced, if it meets the criteria, it must be regarded within the local development plan. It must be reflected within the local development plan. If it meets the criteria, docks on the clouds? We're clear that the local place plan does need to have a formal and clear link into the local development plan itself, and as Ian says, if whatever the criteria are in relation to that are met, it ties in in relation to that. So yes, a clear formal link within the context of what the local place plan does and how that fits within the local development plan. I think it'd be nice to move beyond local place plans as well, because it's a huge amount in this. I think it's really important to clarify how I understand talking about everybody agrees that front-loading is a good idea, that a plan-led system is a good idea. If something forms a part of the development plan, as defined in statute, as I understand it, that means simply that it is a material consideration that has somewhat more strength in decision making when it comes to looking at planning applications than other material considerations. The law says that decisions will be in accordance with the plan unless other material considerations indicate otherwise, or that's paraphrasing. So we're still talking about a relatively weak mechanism. One of the problems in Scotland is that when we talk about a plan-led system, we don't have one, because decisions don't have to agree with what's in that plan when other material considerations indicate otherwise. I think it'd be really interesting for the committee to consider if people are really serious about a plan-led system, I don't see anything in the bill that addresses this issue. Until you address that issue in a more fundamental and meaningful way, which hasn't happened as far as I'm aware in any of the deliberations up until now, I don't think that you can really talk very strongly about a plan-led system. You're always going to have that scope for the decisions at the end of the process, not to be in accordance with what's in the plan. Just maybe a degree of patience there. We're trying to exhaust local place planning, and then we want a whole myriad of other things. I can absolutely assure you, but we have to be crystal clear what witnesses are actually saying when we come to form our opinions. It's maybe useful to clarify, sorry, that the nature of the development plan and its weight and the nature of including something as part of the development plan, what that means in strict legal terms is quite an important point to clarify, I think. If he's in front of his outlining that, I appreciate that, Dr Inge, but we're still dealing with local place planning and we'll come on to that. Would anyone else—Deputy Fears, if we come back in and I won't any other comments from where we are just now in local place plans before morning comes back in? Yeah, we're just going to wrap that up. I take the points about, you know, are we trying to design a plan-led system or not? Petra, probably about 10 minutes ago you were talking about fusion, where you could have local place plans being proposed alongside a local development plan being taken forward. For me, as a former practising planner, that does seem a bit odd, because if we're trying to promote a plan-led system and we have a local place plan, which would have the status of a material consideration, already there's tension there in the system, the community has talked about some of our external engagement and we had an event in Motherwell in John MacNearney. The chief planner came along and addressed community groups in Lanarkshire. He gave the example of—we're shifting to at least a 10-year cycle of local development plans. Local place plans coming forward could indicate that the local development plan is in need of an update and a refresh. Is a local place plan an indication that the local development plan is out of counter with what local need is and what local people want? If the chief planner is saying that local place plans could indicate that the plan needs to be refreshed, does that not send off alarm bells that move into a 10-year cycle? Is maybe not the best thing if we're trying to get that balance of community buy-in and involvement and trying to get certainty in the plan? I would see it as something that is giving us a democratic renewal, because if you're suddenly saying, yes, we want to move to a 10-year plan, because in Scotland we have been overwhelmed by constant plan preparation, you put it down and then you start the next cycle, and that can be quite taking away some of the vision, some of the aspiration and some of the delivery that we actually need to have. I would very much think that a local place plan has to be part of the local development plan process. It starts off with what the community wants. It's also very helpful because don't forget that a lot of the local development plans are being signed off by the locally elected members, so there's a much better communication taking place than local development plan produced by the local community with their aspiration, with their vision for their place, and then being part of forming part of the local development plan process. Yes, if there are new sites we will always have changes within a 10-year, we have changes within a year, so if there's something that needs to be addressed again, again we have the opportunity to go back with the community, fostering a new kind of dialogue, a new kind of engagement, did we haven't seen it until now? Can I ask—the idea is that the local place plan is a really good way to inform the development of your local development plan. I'm thinking about South Lanarkshire where I live, so it's a big local authority, so at a neighbourhood level you'd be talking about dozens upon dozens of local place plans. If we were trying to get that at the right scale, that could quickly become quite expensive if all these community councils and groups are bidding in to get funds to do a local place plan. In terms of front-loading, is there just something missing in terms of how we do local development planning? Do we not need to direct resources to that instead? I don't know if planning democracy wants to address that point. I think that we would say that it looks like the changes to the local development planning process moving to a tenure cycle. The loss of the main issues report, the watering down of the very positive suggestion that came out of the review panel for a gate check process, which could have been a very interesting and deliberative opportunity to involve communities at the front end of the local development plan process but doesn't look like that's how it's being taken forward at present. It looks like the local development plan is becoming less accessible to people in relation to the changes that have been introduced. The rhetoric around empowering communities, I'm not sure that that's followed through in terms of the mechanisms and the ways that local development planning process is actually changing. One of the questions is where is the front end of that process for people to engage with and to input into? There's been a loss already following the 2006 reforms. There's a lot less now examination and opportunity to examine local development plans before they're approved. The local development plan and the capacity for people to engage with that and where those opportunities are is something that really needs to be looked at. Keep your powder dry and all of that. We've naturally moved on to development planning but can I just check nodding off heads in a quick yes or a no will be fine or a struggle of the shoulders but can I just check? We think that the promotion of local place plans is a good thing because I don't want that to get lost in all of this. Do we think it's a good thing? Vital. If you want to change it, it's vital. Right. Okay. We think it has to be strengthened. The devils have been in detail. Right. Is there a devil in this? I mean let's be careful with words here. Are local place plans a good thing Dr Inch? Should they exist? In principle yes but a lot of it will depend on the ways in which they're... Hold on to your optimism for a second here. Right. Okay. Right. I don't want to be wordsy again but I want to be clear. You think they should exist. Should they be strengthened and more meaningful for communities? Is that what we're saying? Right. And then after that it has to go further than just having a regard to in terms of development planning and the debate is now moved on as far as I'm concerned about whether you lift and shift and put it straight into the development plan or how it influences the development plan in a powerful and meaningful way. Is that a useful summary of where we are in relation to local place planning? Repeat the mistakes that we did in 2005-06 where we talked about community engagement but 10-12 years later we don't really have it. Now it's an opportunity and this committee, I think we need to give it real tease for the local place plan to actually work well. I'm really helpful. Alexander Stewart could you move us on? Thank you, convener. Thank you panel. We already touched on some of this but I think I want to try and expand a bit more. When we're talking about the potential removal of the requirements to produce a main issues report and what impact that would have in community involvement? Main issues report. Doctor, yes, you hand up first. Be quicker, guys, next time. I think, as I understand it, the main issues report was introduced to the 2006 act and the idea of that was very much in accordance with the principle of front loading and the desire to get people engaged early before a draft plan had been produced so that people could be involved in shaping the issues that would then influence a draft plan. I think the practice of the main issues report has been difficult and probably hasn't realised those aspirations. It's a difficult thing to get people involved in and I think that actually a very positive suggestion came out of the panel, the review panel that Petra was a part of which was the idea of a kind of evidence gate check and going back 50 years to 1969, the Skeffington report, the first time that public participation in planning gets mentioned, one of the things that they were interested in was front loading. We're still having the same discussion 50 years on, which suggests that we've not cracked that, but one of their things was to get people involved as far as possible in producing the evidence and in being a part of deliberating on the evidence that would form the local plan. I think that the ways in which that gate check looks at the moment, it looks like it's going to be a very a kind of rather technocratic tick box exercise looking at evidence handed down from on high rather than a chance for people to really deliberate about the kinds of evidence that should be taken into account in planning. So there's a need to get people involved at that initial stage before there's a draft plan produced and I think there's scope to discuss, I think, the expansion of the gate check would be a really interesting thing to discuss and how that could be made into a more deliberative and engaged process. I welcome the move on from Maynish's report because I think up and down the country it has not really worked. Most local authority produced something and then gave it out to consultation. That is not participation. That's and to some extent it's almost inviting almost those that already know about the system to then be informed and then to get involved. So I think for me the local place plan is a much better replacement of and a much stronger and it replaces the main issues report basically that early consultation which we know has not worked because 10, 12 years on we still have vast majority of people out there who don't know that there's such a thing as the planning system. Dr McLeods? The capacity and space for communities to actually be able to engage in this process with regard to identifying what the main issues are in relation to the planning process and where they sit within that is fundamentally important and I'm really interested in what Petra has to say that in relation to what seems to be almost an appropriation of expertise if you like on the part of professional organisations, professional planners almost and others as well in relation to actually shaping identifying what the main issues are in relation to an area and it's really important to make sure that balance actually helps to enable communities to identify and help to push forward what they think the clear issues are within their places themselves and that actually ties into broader issues which relate to expertise and the appropriation of knowledge in that sense too in relation to issues around landscape planning and the wild land aspects which I hope will come into in terms of the wild land map and how that ties into our ideas of landscape and the key issues with regard to that with regard to where we sit within so that's actually a broader but very important point which ties into the main issues identification and how that's communicated and mediated and a lot of these kind of broader issues which tie into some of our aspects of our submission as well I think. Other comments on that? Just very briefly as I said I'm not a sort of planning expert so therefore I don't know the sort of the detail of this but I suppose the kind of principles or the kind of issues that I would flag out where I think evolving people as early as possible with the process is really crucial as Petra said but it seems quite strange to me that we've got lots of evidence out there I mean there's lots of evidence that could be fed into the planning system that's completely ignored at the moment communities doing plans now a lot of these plans are more than just special plans they're looking at things like economic, social, environmental development etc but there's information in there that could be fed into to plans so on the one hand you've got a frustration that not that fewer people are involved in the planning process but people are doing things themselves in communities that could be brought across and so I suppose that's the whole it takes you back to kind of local place plans but it does seem to me that there's lots of information out there that could be drawn into the development of the plan. Any other comments on that Dr Lynch? I mean I'm broadening agreement I'm not quite sure how local place plans replace the the evidence gathering for the local development plan and which is I think Petra suggested I don't see how because you're going to have a very variable geography you're not going to have a take up across the area and that they're dealing with a very different geographical area so I think you need to think about two separate processes there and not see the local place plans as a replacement for the main issues report or that early engagement in the local development plan process I think that they're distinct. So Petra could that only happen where they were aligned with each other and dovetailing in the first place but where that wasn't happening that would be the case? There always will be a transition period I mean if we are facing out the MII if we are facing out the main issues report and obviously that will take some time but I should also alert the committee to a very good handbook that was created by NHS Scotland and A&S Scottish Government and that's on the play play play standard which gathers a lot of information around local place engaging the local community using wider than just about the it's about the well-being and how you feel about a place and that is by many by captures data that local authorities actually then can access to plan for the future so there are lots of different ways how we now in this digital age actually gather information around local communities and that aren't local neighbourhoods. Okay so we're still on the main issues report Monica I just want to make sure because the question was around you know the removing of it and so I just want to stay focused over getting the views and how you feel Petra was was fine with that Dr Inch what was your views on that I'm actually we we got concrete views so would you keep it? No I would be very interested in how you adapt and develop and augment the proposed gate check and turn that into a deliberative opportunity for people to engage so that's helpful so it's fine if it goes but we have to really beef up the gate check and make it more than a bureaucratic tick boxing exercise as you were kind and I see Dr McLeod nodding in that do you want to add anything to that? Yeah I mean that's absolutely critical these should not be technocratic exercises where the process is being shaped from the top down effectively but it essentially it needs to be something which is deliberative and enables communities to actually have a voice and help shape that process itself because ultimately you know what are the main issues that are affecting communities they have a real voice and an awareness of that and they need to have the capability and the roots in and the mechanisms to enable that to happen effectively. Claire Simmons? Yes you mentioned about alignment and I think you know the fact that the local place plans might have to align with what is in the development plan and that with the national planning framework becoming part of that development plan that creates a real tension for you know whether it's top down planning or bottom up and that's something that needs to be bottomed out and that's something that we've asked that you retain the national planning framework as a national level document because otherwise there's going to be a difficult tension between those. I promise you if I move things on a bit quicker we will eventually get to. Is there any other comments the main issues report than Alexander Stewart to finish off this line of questioning? Okay Alexander Stewart? Can I just tease a bit more about the gate check? You've identified that you believe that this is a potential that could be used quite extensively and the community involvement in that process is vital and what should evidence should the community be taking into effect and what should we be looking at if that gate check is going to be quite well advanced and can actually benefit in what you're trying to achieve? I love it when you're looking at each other and no one volunteers to answer. Can I possibly volunteer to answer that? I mean there are very many of course issues that could be taken into account in terms of evidence but things like housing need for example specifically affordable housing need scope to increased population within an area itself that we're talking particularly within an urban but specifically within a rural context so thinking about these kind of expressed and there are others as well in terms of services and various aspects with regard to types of development but actually these kind of express community ambitions and objectives that actually relate very clearly to their sustainable development and their cohesion so that that would be a pretty fundamental part of that I think certainly and there'll be others but it's about having the enabling communities to have that voice and capacity to do it. See if you'll want to answer a question and you've got to work out who it is the first person look at me gets to answer the question just as a real firm Dr Inch. I think there's also a question there about the form that I might take. I think we're very interested in the possibilities of that looking something like a citizen's jury for example or different models of deliberative innovation that could be brought in to enable different forms of hearing of evidence and taking of evidence and then as was pointed out earlier that there's existing plans and strategies and huge amounts of existing evidence which could be brought before a process like that and could be sifted to identify priorities and people could be taken through a process to identify priorities that would then feed into the plan I think there's a lot of different models and ways of ways of organising that that would be a lot more interesting than you know a kind of a checklist of of existing statistical evidence you know you've got to kind of try and enable people to engage with that. I believe that would probably engage much more and people would be much more alive to the whole process if they saw that as an opportunity for them to participate. I think the reason the gate check was proposed in the first instance was to allow greater community sign off basically of the local development plan. We also proposed a two-stage gate check because it is if you were if you're real about front loading then to give it time and you have to invest time in that because there will there are and that's the beauty about the planning system you have lots of different values you have lots of different vested interests and you've got to balance that. We also wanted to get away from the notion that it is a remote reporter that does the final sign off and really this is a driving democracy back into the local community so the the gate check is absolutely vital having mediation as part of that in order to then find out you know what is it the community wants over here and by the way very few communities speak in with one voice there are lots of different communities in lots of different interests in there and there's also the developer be it a small scale like the development trust or a larger scale housing associations gypsy travellers who are never in the process so we have to think very hard that we are resourcing that properly but the idea was to go hand in hand as this planning this new planning bill is to be more collaborative more inclusive we've got to find ways of doing that and we've got to invest time in that as well. Okay just make any other comments on that before move on to the next line of question just giving a heads up to Mr Whiteman who's got the next line of questioning there any other comments on on gate checks in the community? Thank you convener I want to ask about simplified development zones so we've had simplified planning zones of which I think there are two these are to be got rid of unword to introduce simplified development zones places where there will be a lot of upfront planning not just in terms of spatial dimensions but roads consents and infrastructure such that these areas become essentially development ready zones and no requirement to apply for detailed planning consent in them. I've got sort of two lines of questions I mean the first is the matter of principle should they exist and the second will be about you know some of the detail but on should they exist and I know I think evidence from Professor Cliff Hague who'll be coming in later basically saying that this is the ultimate in upfront planning and in a sense if it is upfront planning we should be doing it right across Scotland so I'm just wondering on the panel's views on the merits of these schemes and whether they believe that they have potential to deliver better outcomes for Scotland's communities. Dr McLeod. I think the answer to your question as to the merit of them I think community land Scotland would believe that there is merit in the model the approach depending on what they're designed to achieve and for whom they're designed to achieve it effectively so from to take the area of this that I represent obviously if you have a community land owner for example which has aspirations to see particular types of development be it more affordable housing be it other types of business development or so on if they are in a position where they can actually shape that process in ways which again to come back to the previous points about issues and identifications objectives if they are shaped in ways which enable the community to actually fit its aspirations with the type of development that's going on and can help to do that then clearly there's from our perspective some considerable potential merit in relation to what the zones actually achieve themselves if they are designed to actually contribute to the sustainable development economic socially and environmentally in relation to the communities themselves and within that context if we can just extend this slightly there's some considerable merit as well in relation to thinking about particularly within a rural scotland context where the potential for development that is sustainable economically social environmentally might actually be undertaken so that can include as we've suggested in our submission thinking about resettlement and repopulation of areas where there are no longer existing community so there's a potential application of these types of mechanisms within that context of thinking about how we can balance the renewal of rural scotland at the community level and how these sort of mechanisms can actually help to pursue that really and balance out in terms of competing at the so that local communities and people within landscapes and within communities actually have a clear and prominent position in terms of actually shaping what happens within the communities themselves. Thank you. Dr Inch. Yeah, I mean I think that we talked earlier about the plan led system and zoning is the sort of alternative to the discretionary planning which we have in Scotland typically where the decision doesn't necessarily follow what's in the plan. In zoning based systems which exist throughout most of the rest of Europe and US and sort of broadly around the world the what's zoned in the plan is legally constrains what can be built which is effective of what we're talking about introducing some zoning into the Scottish planning system which I think is potentially an interesting development of something that's worth experimenting with. I have reservations around the description of them as simplified development zones when why are they not just being called better planning zones, why isn't it about getting it right up front to ensure that you're getting the highest quality of development, that you're getting the highest quality of engagement, you're getting the highest quality of consideration of environmental constraints and factors and you're ensuring that what you're laying out is zones to produce really high quality settlements. I think that if you allied that to some other mechanisms around for example compulsory purchase and land assembly on the part of public authorities you could begin to think about zones to really innovate and produce the capacity to really deliver development. At the moment we have a very reactive planning system we produce plans and then wait for the market to decide if applications will come forward that will enable those plans to be implemented. That sort of more positive proactive zoning system we potentially also have mechanisms to ensure the implementation of those plans but it's really important to get that upfront process right if you're going to do that because the plan becomes much more definitive and if there's not proper engagement, if there's not proper consideration of all the factors and there's not a real drive for quality then they're not going to work and they're going to sell the future short. Thank you Petra. Just when we looked at in the review when we looked at the the zoning and I agree I don't like the terminology simplify development zones we did want to call it investment ready areas because it really is an area that has gone through all the all the discussions has had the community buy in in terms of it's been discussed with the community in this engagement around that and it's wider than just than just areas of land this also can be applied to struggling town centres for example so we have we only got two in Scotland where there are hundreds in England and there is a I think there is a need to think differently about how we again engage upfront with the the whole sort of dilemma of where we're building what we're building and again I think what the this areas the zoning allows us is also to be a bit more creative of the kind of housing that maybe we want to build have more varied housing models maybe invite more smaller and local developers to come forward so again it's it's a great opportunity and I think we want to see more of those happening okay other views around that anyone else aim to a more sort of proactive public sector led development then we would be we would be supportive but it's not an area that we have sufficient information around to make an informed comment Dr McLeod you want to add anything don't feel the need to add if you don't want to but opportunity Dr McLeod and it's really around particularly when you talked about the urban context that's obviously very important but when we're talking about the rural context something that seems quite clear from from this bill and certainly some of the the material containing the policy memorandum it's very urban focused there's a lot of focus on on town centres and urban context that's very important there's no no absolutely no getting away from that but what's also important as well is how we actually conceptualise and think about rural Scotland and the development of rural Scotland and where planning actually sits within that context and if we're thinking about development in a sustainable development perspective we need to think about how that sits in relation to where people and communities actually have a role to play in in relation to that so thinking about simplified development plans thinking about the kind of mechanisms and ideas for policy that we have in relation to rural renewal in Scotland what the planning process might play in relation to that is important with regard to ideas around where we want to have communities how we want them to prosper and how that sits and so thinking about resettling and repopulating and where mechanisms such as this plan this process might sit amongst a host of other issues is very important and worth not losing sight from of in the policy context broadly but also specifically in relation to this bill I think that articulation of you know urban and and rural is is best defined through a community owned local place plan so that we can distinguish between the different communities and the different drivers within it. Okay mr Heitman thank you very much thank you very much for that I was intrigued with your answer dr McLeod in the sense that the planning system is a system spatial planning but you represent people who also own land so can deliver so in a sense it is what you're saying that simplified development zones together with local place plan together with the fact that you own the land and can then deliver it is something that that fusion could work for you or are you saying particularly in that context are you saying that more broadly speaking in rural scotland simplified development zones could have a useful role to play as well? Certainly from a community landowner perspective that the combination of owning the asset and the other components that you mentioned there the land asset is an incredibly important powerful tool in relation to how you develop the sustainability of a community itself we've seen examples of that throughout Scotland certainly in the Highlands of Scotland elsewhere you can just go back go to where I'm from in in Harris and the West Harris Thurston how they've actually repopulated there how they've actually delivered jobs and employment opportunities and other kind of services as well so that combination of owning land being able to manage it for the community is fundamentally important in terms of unlocking opportunities for sustainable development in that way so that's a critical element but but also to come back to your second point there is potential elsewhere in Scotland and other contexts to think about how that mechanism can be used in a proactive sustainable fashion and a lot of that is stuff that we've already traversed in terms of the terrain of this discussion today around how your front load process is how you give communities a voice and the kind of practical elements of how you actually do that. Okay so my second line of question really is really about how the power is framed here so this is local authority planning authorities can introduce a scheme third parties can request a scheme if that scheme is refused by the authority the third party can appeal to ministers ministers can alter a scheme they can give directions how to formulate a scheme they can force a local authority to have a scheme do you think the balance of power here is correct with such powerful ministerial powers to deliver what is in essence a local zone of the plan I think broadly speaking that's one of a range of examples of quite centralising measures in the bill that take a lot of a lot of new powers for the Scottish Government to which already has really we have a very centralised planning system as it is and there's a considerable greater centralisation I think that if you're going to think about sensible planning you think about where it's where it's vested and it's vested in local local democratic authority democratic elected authority seems like a good place to vest those powers and I think that that there's not necessarily any need for for all of that level of of central control and potential coercion to to designate simplified developments which should be seen as a part of the the the local planning process okay thank you other comments on that no other comments but we do have a supplementary in relation to that andy from Graham Simpson yeah um the flip side of that is if national government decides that we need more towns for example then the use of this method might be one way of achieving it and you could have councils all over the country saying not here but when we know we need more building is it not is is it not right that government should should be able to say well we need towns there there or there side of that but it's a related point and it we're flipped about round again yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely there should be lots of flip sides no absolutely so forgive me doctor McLeod certainly if there is a kind of aspiration to create new towns and there are there's there's seen as a policy need for that and it fits in in terms of of kind of clear policy objectives within sustainable development economic growth and so on and so forth then certainly there's there's potentially a case to be made with regard to that so that's answer to that question and and that's very important as well forgive me in relation to the rural context too so if there's a clear public interest case to be made in relation to uh repopulation and resettlement for the kind of cohesion and sustainability of rural Scotland north and south the highlands and and lowland scotland um the the powers to actually enable that to happen with regard to repopulation and resettlement is something that in our evidence we have very much advocated and if there's a kind of public good interest in doing that then that's certainly something that that should happen and and there's been a lot of kind of media attention around our um submission with regard to that particular aspect in terms of repopulation and resettlement um to be absolutely clear what we're not advocating from a community land scotland perspective is kind of pressing reset on the highland clearances what we are suggesting is actually thinking about ways that are imaginative and forward thinking with regard to how we conceptualise the planning process and planning policy with regard to thinking about the actual sustainability of rural scotland and where repopulation and resettlement and all the infrastructure and and kind of elements that go with that might actually sit in practice so i'm very glad that you raised that thank you a couple of other witnesses want to come on that dr Incher that was you wanting in on that no petra did you no okay i just want to say if we have to think imaginatively about about um simplified development zones and i mentioned earlier that we have one in town centre here in scotland currently and we were talking about new towns but currently we have over 30 000 empty homes most of them and their houses in some areas most of them are in town centres now we need to find some sort of mechanism to unlock them and to repopulate our our town centres which are increasingly struggling now again if we think imaginatively about how we apply that then maybe we can actually find a way of unlocking the potential that has that is already in scotland without actually building before we start thinking of new towns we have i think that the latest the latest statistics is 32 000 empty homes which is a huge number when you think about it okay i'm just wondering before we move on because it says give him your thought on that first of all it was i had another question on simplified development zones okay so at the moment simplified planning zones can't be built in certain areas they can't be set up in certain areas green belt conservation areas and national scenic areas the the bill as it currently stands doesn't specify that do you think it should you're all looking at each other again um dr enge i think what we said is that is that all the inputs to any designation of a zone need to to all be there before we'd have any confidence in the mechanism and one of those key inputs would be looking at existing constraints and designations um i think that uh you know there's so so yes i think that um drawing the power less broadly may may help to to limit the the remit of simplified development zones but the alternative would be as it is but ensuring that the more important ensuring that the inputs that go into the designation of any zone are are clear and we'd take that that into account anyway Dr McLeod designations and and where the the zone should actually be there's a real issue frankly particularly in rural scotland with regard to issues around wildland mapping in particular and where that sits and ties in with development there's a lot to be said clearly in terms of issues around wildland itself but what is is really important is that you don't actually as currently the wild mapping process i think has done airbrush peoples kind of people out of that process effectively so that ideas of kind of wild land are really socially constructed sort of approaches where you've actually had human populations and settlements previously so kind of changing that balance and getting that kind of balance correct or more appropriate in terms of the relationship and place of people in landscapes and helping to define landscapes is very important as part of that process and that's partly what our map of no longer existing communities is designed to help move along in policy terms. Graham, Ennis Reid? No. Can I just check because I thought Andy Wightman's question was really quite interesting in relation to the range of ministerial powers in relation to designation of of of these zones I'm just wondering is that a power that you would hope would never be exercised in terms of dictating but could there be an example of other things in the planning system we're not working like so local place plans haven't been able to influence a local development plan and the planning authority seems out of step with the needs of communities that there could be the need for government to exercise some of those powers that Mr Wightman understandably had concerns about is it the kind of power you'd like government to hold but not necessarily ever have to use if everything else worked out or does there have to be a bit more safeguards about when the powers would be actually be exercised? In that context it's potentially a sort of backstop power effectively and you get that actually in other areas of land-of-front community ownership for example where you have powers in relation to developing community ownership so the idea that if there's a policy aspiration within public policy arena to actually achieve particular objectives whether it's repopulation resettlement and all that goes with that and there's a community aspiration to do that that would be a potentially important kind of backstop power with regard to although in our submission we're obviously talking about some some other upfront powers as well in terms of compulsory purchase and so on with regard to land okay thanks for putting on the record doctorage last comment on this then we'll move on those backstop powers already exist to call in applications to to recall appeals there's oversight over local development plans and generally speaking some some of that central control is okay one of the other mechanisms i think of centralization that's proposed at the moment though is that the national planning framework which will be combined with the spatial planning policy will become a part of the development plan as we discussed earlier meaning the development plan will be that national planning framework alongside the local development plan now that considerably strengthens and changes the nature of the national planning framework actually in quite a worrying way which means a much more direct influence in planning decision making than currently exists in in so i think that there's there are questions around the kind of backstop powers but then there's also seems to be a creep towards more more directly interventionist powers within the bill which should be of concern some more of that just a time check we're probably another 45 minutes or so left for this evidence session we said we'd quite a long session we want to get through every area of the bill so thank you for for that just to give you an idea how long we have left Monica Lennon thank you convener well i think i'm looking at the clock we've been discussing the bill now for about 90 minutes and i guess we haven't really talked about what is the purpose of the planning system and possible that's because the bill doesn't actually say what the purpose of planning is so i know from your written evidence both past and planning democracy are calling for the bill to be amended to include a statutory purpose for the planning system can i put that to to planning democracy and past first of all but why you think that's important for the bill to be explicit about the statutory purpose of planning okay ever reliable dr inches is first to catch my attention so i think that when the planning system that we have is largely unchanged since 1947 when it was introduced there's kind of an assumption that the purposes were well the purposes were assumed to exist it was assumed to be a common purpose for what for what planning is and so it was never included in the legislation and the similar debates in in england as well around the lack of a purpose so when we talk about the planning system needs to deliver which is seems to comes up a lot in a lot of people's written evidence there's very much less discussion deliver what and so there's a kind of a missing element there which is well what what do we want planning for and and to have a really positive purpose for the planning system we enable all decision making to be tested against a clear idea of the kinds of positive place making purposes the public interested purposes that planning should be serving and i think that could that could provide a really interesting power to test plans against and i think plans are currently do have the purpose of contributing to sustainable development i think under the 2006 act but only plans rather than the system as a whole and i think that having a very clear definition of what those purposes are would would would help to clarify how we understand planning and could create a very strong public interest purpose for the system in its operation so would you agree that it does seem odd that the bill doesn't articulate that and if we are trying to get more people the wider public involved in planning do we not have to really spell out the whole point of this and and what planning is is for and and why it matters to people i think it's really important and and we have made submission to that effect we need to know is it about sustainable economic growth is it about a place agenda where everybody has a right to be participating in it so the purpose has to be absolutely defined and i think that will help then to drive much more people's thinking around this is planning is just a regulatory function to planning is actually a visioning and you're part of that so definitely a strong statement as to what is the mission of planning thank you now petri you might have more insight than most on the panel because you were involved in the independent review but you know do you have any sense of of why the government hasn't included the status definition in the bill because it seems pretty fundamental to everything else that's been discussed today i think to some extent we didn't make a recommendation and because we were very much focusing on how do we better the the planning system as it was how do we ensure that there's more front loading how do we ensure that we have a more constructive and integrated planning system and one that can cover go with other policy areas so to some extent i guess probably in hindsight we certainly have submitted since then a from a past perspective how how we would like the vision of planning of the of the planning system to be articulated one thing that's very noticeable when you read through the bill and the policy memorandum is it's very process orientated and so the fact that there isn't actually a vision or a clear articulation of what the purpose of the planning system is on the face of that bill is in our view an omission because if you don't have that how can you expect when when the legislation goes out and all that comes with it beyond that actually goes into into the broader environment how can you expect people to have any purchase or traction in relation to how they relate to planning as a process and as a policy area itself and so it's really important we would argue from a community land scotland perspective to actually have that articulation with regard to what the purpose of the planning process is and well what is it it's about broadly making sure that rural and urban scotland are sustainable in their various aspects social economically and environmentally it's about giving committees a voice in terms of actually how that process works and making sure they're consulted with and actually have an opportunity to to achieve and shape their places themselves and it's about as well thinking innovatively we would argue imaginatively about the kind of the balance of development and sustainable development within particularly the rural context so clearly we've argued in our submission for a duty for ministers to have a regard as to the desirability for repopulation and resettlement within the future policy we think that would be really useful to have something that in relation to that in the face of the bill and also to tie that into the evolving kind of policy framework within the national policy framework in other areas as well and elements of that so keeping that front and centre in terms of what this process of planning is about and for helps to articulate and shape a lot of what what comes from that Andy wants to come back in but what I was going to ask Petra before Dr McLeod came in with another question was another reason why this might be important is the bill tries to address performance and has things to say about how we would get better at measuring the performance of planning if we don't really know what the value base is and what the vision is and what the purpose is this you know the measures are proposed on performance are they going to be meaningful and are they going to take us anywhere because we're still measuring how long things take but we're not really looking at outcomes and we've talked a lot about about place making I think Dr Inch was wanting to come in but I just wanted to absolutely explore that a bit further we've a variety of witnesses all wanting to come in Dr Inch will take you in a second but Petra you first and then Dr McLeod gosh so I think I think it's absolutely important that we set out the purpose and I think the people the alliance of people in places we have made submission to that effect we want to see a purpose of the planning system what is it all about so that people really right from the start understand that and the second part of the question in terms of sorry I forgot sorry Monica could you remind me the performance yes there's another very important point that we have made within the alliance we feel that the performance should be extended to how community engagement is taking place because I think it's really really vital that as part of the performance measuring we see a move towards engaging with community is absolutely absolutely important if we want to enshrine the spirit of the new planning bill so that needs to be part of it on that point because I'm a bit of a planning geek as people possibly know now earlier on Petra you said that the majority of people still don't know there's such a thing as a planning system I was looking back at your evidence on the 2006 act and you said more or less exactly the same thing so it's quite depressing to think that we haven't really seen progress so is there a way to better capture what's happening in a local area or a local authority in terms of what that engagement strategy is and are we able to really give a quantify what people know or don't know about planning we have a huge opportunity now for the first time to actually sit it right because in 2005 when evidence was gathered and when we were pushing for better engagement we got the main issues report as part of the early engagement and of course that is rooted in in a language that the average person out there just is not is not conversant with know how we have resolved what planning is all about is around the vision of a place and actually also addressing societal needs whether it's affordable home whether it's dealing with an aging population future proving our housing stock all of these are captured or now climate change of course all of these are really have to be captured by the planning system by the place agenda it's so important if we then start talking in the language of the ordinary person out there we're talking about place and everybody is passionate about place everybody's passionate about how the children go to school how we will age but in a in a healthy environment so we need to rethink almost the language of planning as well so that we can actually translate what it's what it's for everybody and that is about how do we deal with a good functioning place so yes 10 years on i 12 years on i'm actually really really frustrated that we still haven't got it right but we have an opportunity now really wanted to reiterate what other people have said and thank Callum for mentioning about it being process oriented the bill and i think that one of the purposes of planning to have a purpose of planning is is really important because then you can measure usual planning performance measures to measure outcomes not just about measuring process also to start measuring things more qualitatively rather than focusing on performance figures around speed and efficiency we need to see far more performance measures they might not be so easy to measure they're not so quantifiable perhaps but there has been talk in the past with the heads of planning about introducing measures to to assess performance on you know how well you engage your community and i think that needs to be thought about possibly not for the actual bill but later on in the you'll see that from our submission we didn't comment on this but i would totally agree with the need for the articulation of purpose i mean just seems to me an absolute kind of prerequisite if we want to actually engage communities more effectively and also want to measure performance that should be an and or situation but in terms of the purpose of planning i know that separately the royal time planning institute in scotland are advocating that there should be a chief planning officer so i'm wondering if part of this is there's maybe a lack of leadership within local authorities because you know it's not about just looking at individual planning applications but looking at planning strategically and the resource behind that for for infrastructure but we've seen between 2009 and 2016 in scotland a 23 percent reduction on average in the planning workforce and i think in terms of planning service budget on average it's in a third of a cut so there's a lot of high level talk about the importance of planning but are we seeing that backed up by resource and leadership at a corporate level and a political level locally and nationally and under the alliance again i've got to be a part of an alliance that has now 18 organisation ranging from play scotland to nhs we're always saying is we want to have a planning system that is really meaningful and within our submission we did say that we would like to see chief plan in each local authority but more than that actually a commissioner about planning in place so that we bring together the alignment between community planning and spatial planning if you look at the planning system as preventative spend or if you look at it as an investment tool then really the planning the planning system is incredibly important preventive spend if you're building the right kind of houses in the right location we're actually staving off loneliness and we're currently in discussion with nhs scotland if we look at it in terms of an investment plan then you really goes back to the simplified planning zones that we mentioned earlier this is about attracting investment of the right kind into scotland so planning is much much more but it hasn't been seen in that entirety and it's it's uh it's aspiration and what it actually can do to help scotland to meet its ambition as a nation does anyone else who wants a comment on that absolutely please come in and we'll move on to the next line of questioning just for time constraints clear summons have been indicated you want to make a comment on that yeah it was just a it was just a short point about you know resources and um yeah as you said monica the reduction of planning officers and the impact that that has also the way you measure things um for example participation statements um that the local authority have to write before they carry out their engagement activities and they are measured on whether or not they comply with that participation statement not whether or not that what they did was useful and meaningful um and so a lot of the planning officers in a meeting that I went to have said that they keep what they say they're going to do in the participation statement to a minimum because they know that they're not going to achieve it if they if they do something more ambitious and creative so you're stifling creativity by the old performance measure if you saw what I mean so just to make that point any other comments on that before we move on I don't recognize that sort of negative approach I do recognize that serious resource constraints but I think up and down local authorities have been especially in recent times been incredibly innovative to engage with a much wider community and want to be seen to be doing that we'll move on now the event in Stirling I referred to oh some two hours ago now I did find myself saying I never thought I'd stand on a platform says what we need in this country is more planners but I did see it I've now put it on public record I may retract that at some point Graham Simpson so one of the issues in the planning system is that people communities however you want to define that feel that planning is done to them and not with them and not not not by them and this has led to immense frustrations this is just a fact it's not an opinion immense frustrations with the system and particularly with the system of appeals now the bill currently makes no mention of that but you know we've we've had a lot of comment on that so this is your opportunity to tell us what you think about the current appeal system and the you know if the bill stood that would remain as it is do you think it's right as it is ie only one side can appeal or should you have something something new okay this is opening up the discussion which i'm sure there's some strong opinion on relation to equal right of appeal let's expect clear Simmons I saw your hand go up lightning speed from that was mentioned well let's face it that's what we're here for um as I as I mentioned in the in the beginning it era is or equal rights of appeal is presented as a blunt instrument and it is seen as slowing things down and polarising people and creating a divisive system and and so it was somewhat hastily dismissed but I do think it is possible that if we could look at it as a way of using it to design a system that encourages people to frontload and get engaged at the beginning of the system because as Andy said earlier we have been trying to do front loading for 50 years and we've got to think about how we do something differently also making a plan led system a reality we can use this mechanism in our highly discretionary planning system and Andy has talked about the the gap between the the plan led system and the plan plans that we produce and the decision making that happens at the end of the process and we want to bring together those two things and that we think will create public confidence in the planning system why else would you want to get engaged at the front of the system if the decision making at the end of the system goes against or could go against what you've worked hard to get at in the front of the system so we think we very much see equal rights of appeal as a means of improving front loading engagement and getting people involved because they will it will incentivise better behaviour we also think it will incentivise developers to perhaps work harder to get people involved in in public engagement as well because there is a a stick at the end of the process they they might have to you know if there's going to be an appeal process at the end and they might make work harder to a get their plans getting people involved in planning and the application right at the beginning but they'll also maybe work harder to improve the make sure they put in a really good application at the beginning so the evidence from Ireland is that equal rights of appeal do improve the decision making and that's something that I think we've all been discussing in about the purpose of planning and having a much more positive planning system and one that delivers good development and we think that appeals should in in a system that is the main outcome is getting good decisions and good development then it shouldn't be afraid of having an appeal system where that is that is the purpose of trying to achieve it is to get people to be able to ensure that the development that they're getting is the best that they possibly can and why why should there be a reaction to that sort of mechanism okay thank you other views from the panel anyone's like to come on that uh Petra Garnley your thoughts Ian Crook caught my first we'll take Ian Crook in first and then we'll come to you next Petra I think as the question is that there is a perceived inequality in the in the planning process and there's a power dynamic which needs to be addressed by the planning bill I think if we're looking as we all are for a greater community involvement in the planning process then the community need to have confidence that that intervention that them get involved in that is actually going to make a difference and that doesn't I don't think exist at the moment and that that ultimately this will need to better place making um we've got a strong view me I suppose we we do agree with the principle of equality um so feel that there should either be an equal right of appeal or that the current right of appeal for developers is removed so we are looking for a level playing field which might help to address that power inequality that I mentioned okay thank you Petra um first of all I want to say that uh the review panel took does not took a lot of time to listen to evidence from across different uh groups uh organisation we looked at the most recent debate that happened in at that time and in the belch assembly uh we looked incidents of of third party right of appeal across across um Europe and beyond and the reason we came down to to say not to suggest a third party right of appeal was simply because we wanted to create a new planning system that was truly empowering individuals and community groups that truly fostered a dialogue between all the groups and all the interests and let's face it it's often seen as a Goliath versus David Battle it's not we have developers small scale house builders we have developers who are individual housing units we have developers who are putting up a shop they are all developers and we want to bring together a kind of uh I suppose a kind of dialogue that really can imagine what we want for our place and what we want for for the nation and they are often very often they are kind of views that we have to exercise and we have to tease out and that can be best done in a dialogue rather than saying oh I don't want to be inching in a local place plan because I know I have an exercise later on to exercise a right of appeal I do agree that the appeals right seems to be overdue for reform because it was in 1947 for just a 10 year period to help smooth the uh the the new town and country planning act at that time so maybe there are opportunities and and I have discussed with some of you there might be opportunities to look at it again however I have three points to make I would say that it exacerbates conflict and I think it undermines the point of very early engagement which is what we want to see between all factors and I think also it would undermine a plan led system and bearing mind that we're adding another layer of local place plan into the plan led system and I think it's also it feels to me that it's um it's it's it's quite a challenge I mean island is very different in terms of a planning system and in terms of its uh politics and it how it is constructed so I wouldn't want to look at island and say we can do it in Scotland because in island the local uh elected members has no role in the planning system so we need to be looking very differently at at there's no like for like I think for me it's about it's about bringing in the various people that we don't hear enough and the fact is currently and the um um Chris Oswald has written to this to the submission to say that currently they're finding it extremely challenging to find and allocate sites for gypsy travellers equally and because they're always objected to by the local community as bad development equally community housing association and housing association in general find it very difficult to get the appropriate land in the right location again because it's viewed by some groups in the community as bad development so we need to try and square the circle here and have a society in a debate that actually the planning system facilitates a better debate and for for that reason I would say that third party right of appeal is not helpful in the in this current traction of the planning bill thank you for putting on the record dr mclewds well community land scotton has a position that really echoes that with regard to third party right of appeal we are not in favour of its reintroduction for precisely those kind of reasons broadly in relation to what peth is articulated and we do see the importance of actually front loading the process so that we get that working effectively to to ensure that community voices are heard within that context and mr simpson you mentioned just at the very start of as a preface to your question around communities having things their voices not being heard in part of that process and being a given i think that's true and i think it's echoes it actually echoes some some research that community land scotton has commissioned from inherit which is a consultancy company based in in glasgo which has been doing some work for us on the place of people in landscapes and particularly thinking about how wild land designations interact or intersect with people's views of how they view landscapes themselves and one of the kind of comments we're very tellingly which comes through from that almost echoes your own whereby we had a respondent speaking to inherit saying we've got people doing things to us rather than with us and having that dynamic out of kilter is is a pretty critical point i think in terms of how we think about community's voices within this within this context so getting that balance right thinking about how we can incorporate community's views and wild land is one important but kind of example of that process in terms of how the balance of that sits with regard to communities themselves is a good example i think of of how we need to change and shape the planning process and think about this bill with regard to front loading that so that that these kind of tensions are ironed out and and people's voices actually are heard a little bit more likely than they have been okay thank you dr inch yeah i just like to obviously come back from a sort of a in favour of of your position or equal rights of appeal i think the point about trying to get people engaged early in the process is the right one and and it's important to get that upfront engagement right but at the moment because of the very discretionary nature of the planning system in scotland you can do all you like to get that upfront engagement right but the decisions subsequently may well depart from what's been engaged in that process and decisions about the use and development of land entail conflict so it's it's it's a it's a positive idea to get people together in in agreement and to try and shape agreement about how the future places should develop but ultimately you're going to be making hard decisions where some people are going to be winners and some people are going to be losers and so it's not realistic to expect that you can dissolve that conflict by through through front loading mechanisms and that's why you need to think about the end of the process also if you want really effective front loading engagement you have to offer people incentives to get involved if i'm a community and you tell me to prepare a local place plan and we devote hundreds of hours of our evenings and weekends to produce a local place plan with very very little resource and input we get that local place plan agreed and then six months a year down the line two years down the line the local planning authority is making decisions which completely overturn all that work that we did that's does nothing for public trust it's hugely undermining of effort it's hugely undermining of front loading and in those circumstances which is a stark and clear example that inequality becomes glaring and it's very problematic it's problematic for the legitimacy of the planning system and it's problematic for the future of front loading and of positive engagement in planning and that's why an equal right of appeal which would involve restricting developers right of appeal and introducing as we would argue a limited right of appeal for communities could really reinforce the plan led system insofar as appeal rights would only apply where decisions were made that went contrary to the development plan so Petra's point that people can just sit back and wait they don't need to get involved in the plan because they'll get a second chance at the end of the system that doesn't apply if you don't get what you want in the in the agreed into the local plan at the start you won't have those appeal rights so that provides a very very powerful incentive for people to get involved in the production of their plans it doesn't mean they can sit back and say i'm just going to wait and have a fight at the end of the process and that applies to developers and applies to communities and if we want to be serious about a plan led system that's a very powerful mechanism which is not being taken advantage of to really create that plan led system and i think that it's it's kind of disappointing that that's been very hastily dismissed because these arguments haven't really been looked at or debated in full and you know frankly you know that the number of submissions that are mentioning this show that it's an issue which people care about and are concerned about and i think that's partly because the inequality is very glaring and it's something that's very obvious to people it's not a panacea it's not going to resolve the problems of planning overnight but it's potentially a very positive mechanism that doesn't have to be a blunt instrument as Clare said so any other comments from the panel before all ms bill actually mr simpson back in to follow up the another msp to vid for supplementaries any other comments from the witnesses i have to say like i don't know where this phrase comes hastily dismissed because it was not hastily dismissed we had looked at it in a lot of detail over months and months gathering evidence i do think the spirit of this planning bill in front of you is is one that wants collaboration and is one that wants early engagement and the earliest opportunity and safeguarding that safeguarding that is by bringing a duty to having local place plan rooted in the development plan i think that's the importance is to find the right kind of mechanism where you protect that but at the same time and it's absolutely true planning has always got to compete different demands what we feel with many communities that we work with as long as you explain and as long as you let people understand and be transparent in the decision-making process even if people don't get what they actually want it's to treat people with respect and with with the giving them the information is much much more powerful give you just a recent example we've been working with a community down in Dumfries and they wanted to put forward certain amounts of development which wasn't actually happening but at the same time explaining why the process wasn't possible at this time round actually helped so i don't agree with your view that third party right of appeal will actually help the system here okay let's follow up with some of our msps now give them something to ask the question so any supplementaries on on that you don't want to follow up on some of that yeah so i've got different questions which i'll i'll put to yourselves at planning democracy and pass because you've made different points and you come from a different perspective so to planning democracy obviously one of the one of the arguments against introducing any any kind of right of appeal for communities or people is that it could slow down development it could frighten developers away um and already um i certainly i certainly hear the developers say that what we don't want to do business in scotland the you know the landscape here is is worse than it is elsewhere this would make it even worse um so what would be your answer to that because inevitably it would slow down the system now before you come back um i've got a question for sort of paz as well i'll let you back on that if you want just so you will be able to tune it there's a different question we could allow dr inch or clear to answer that and we'll definitely let you back in to follow that up okay yep yeah no i think um that's based on a blunt instrument interpretation of how an equal right of appeal would work i would suggest my view is that if we want a plan led system development which is designated in a plan should have a smooth process through if development is coming forward which meets the agreed terms of a development plan that won't be subject to appeal that won't be slowed down that will be enabled and facilitated and that's proper and correct if development comes forward which is not in accordance with that development plan i think it's right to say that in that circumstance we might want to take a second look at that we might want to have the capacity to take a second look at that that's going to be a decision which is controversial it's out with what was the parameters of what was agreed and expected and in that situation it's right and proper that we might take a bit of extra scrutiny and yes that may lead to to a slower process for those developments what that does is creates an incentive to make sure that the development that comes forward is in accordance with the plan and strengthens the plan so i think that uh and and it also means that it's it's much more marginal in terms of the developments which are slowed down are the ones which are coming forward which are out with the plan and where it seems fair enough to have a second that we're not saying that those decisions should be necessarily dismissed out of hand and refused it might well be that situation changes and that development should be approved but it it's not unreasonable to say that there's there's a good reason for taking a second look okay good i'm something you wanted to come back in are you once again yeah i just i just wanted to also suggest that any marginal decisions or potentially controversial decisions would also be subject to a right of challenge or appeal and i think again that it might produce some sort of delay in those sorts of processes but i think it's important for democracy and for um people to have confidence in the system that a that for example if a decision that is made by the um council on its own land or its own application should be looked at um and that and that only can provide confidence and yes it might perhaps delay for a few weeks but you know the the wider benefits is what we're trying to ask people to look at it look you know not not just looking at the process elements so pas um i have to say petra um your your submission uh we we say the provisions of the bill will promote stronger public involvement um and your your view that this appears to be the case um i don't see that in the bill uh at all um i think um it actually could end up with less public involvement i think that's maybe what you want to be in the bill but it actually isn't um now you said that you thought the system of appeals was right for reform but you didn't suggest any reform perhaps you can do that now it's two parts first of all i think the bill has got i think we in the in the review panel i would say we were more ambitious there was more in there certainly because of the local place plan and giving it properties i think that can really lead to this democratic addressing the democratic deficit and actually leading to a more engaged public which currently is not the case yes we have the same groups that know around how the planning system works engaged again and again and again but the vast majority are there is not involved and we want to see that happening in terms of the appeal right well i've been looking at what's happening in most of continental europe where we don't have an appeal right and where on both sides and i think this is maybe an opportunity to look at what's happening what can we do in simplified planning zones in areas of where we are front loading where we have the developer where we have everybody sitting around a table there may be opportunities maybe some further work is required on that so he's suggesting removing appeal rights in simplified development zones i'm just saying there may be opportunities to look at something fresh okay what's the bids of supplementaries from from from msp so just so they know that i've got my eye and i'm only going to bring Kenneth Gibson in but Andy Wightman and Monica Lennon have also asked for supplementaries on this Kenneth Gibson yes that's it a couple of questions i would want to put to the panel first one with regard to the island situation that was actually mentioned early on by Claire Simmons the Irish situation means that infrastructure projects and specific developments are actually excluded from third party right of appeal which shows them surely to shows that there is clearly a need to protect some developments from not being delayed such that it would impact on islands competitiveness if the third party right of appeals introduced here in Scotland what exemptions should there be from it if any the reason what to go i supposed to remain advocates of that from our witnesses so doctor ensure Claire Simmons we have set out in our evidence that we think that there should be a limited right of appeal which would be that we'd only apply in situations for both developers and communities where decisions will be made that were departure from the plan another limitation would be situations where local authority had an interest in the land another is where decisions were made against an officer's recommendation purely because that seems to be an indicator that there's some controversy or something that might be worth having a second look at i think that there are examples of planning systems in in australian states also and stuff where third party rights because are suspended on certain kinds of priority projects and it might be that national developments could be looked at in that way i think that there's a much broader question there around how you enable engagement in big infrastructure projects and i think that that's a very big and separate issue to a right of appeal to some extent and i mean in scotland we already have a complex consens regimes so energy consents and other things go through different regimes and aren't fed through the planning acts so there's a whole set of questions around how you would align those different regimes and how different types of infrastructure development might be subject to our subject to proper public scrutiny and engagement and input which includes national developments in the npf so it opens up a much broader range of issues i think that in general terms for the last 20 to 30 years there's been this idea that planning is a source of delay has been something which has been repeated around the world actually it's been a very powerful argument for reform of planning systems around the world the evidence for it if you look at big infrastructure projects and the lifetime the life cycle of a big infrastructure project the length of time spent in planning and is thinking here of a recently published paper last year by colleagues oxford brooks and cardiff universities which looked at big infrastructure planning in england which shows that the planning process hasn't really changed over time that those delays are often as likely to be caused by developer commitment wavering or by a political commitment wavering and if you look at the the amount of time spent in planning and making that decision against the life cycle of a development it's not very great and when you think about the impact of those developments environmentally socially and economically it's right that we that we have a democratic process of scrutiny and you've got to think about how you're going to include that and enable that process so big infrastructure projects i think are a somewhat separate issue or a debate worth having as a separate issue but the same principles apply that scrutiny is very important and even more so in fact on those kind of developments any other witnesses want to put on that before mr gibson follows up mr gibson yes we heard from mr cook i quote the community needs to have confidence and we've just heard we've heard about from all witnesses about the need for community engagement throughout this morning's session but what is interesting is that i mean mr engineer was was talking about councillors views being overturned will they be overturned by elected representatives i would have thought who actually have a have a direct link to communities one of the things that you put in your submission plan democracy is he's talking about the right of appeals for communities would create a powerful incentive for individuals community groups and developers to get involved in production of plans but who actually are these communities i mean the communities themselves is it is it the how would a community be involved my experience in many cases having been elected first in 1992 is that community engagement often extends to seven or eight people who turn up at a meeting and claim to represent the community but they don't actually themselves actually liaise with other people in the community they don't do newsletters might not have a website they might not even have a collective email address whereas elected representatives do actually have to standard fall by their decisions so how do we ensure that this group which everyone seems to talk about this community is actually representative of the people in an area and if we're designing the local plans how do we exclude the issue of Nimbia as we've heard about you know if we put together a plan and as long as the plans are tiered to there wouldn't really be an issue but third party right of appeal but i've got communities in my constituency i know everybody else does who point blank don't want any development full stop they don't want housing they don't want winterbinds they don't want economic development often they're retired they've got reasonable pensions so the issue of economic growth sustainability is a matter for somebody else how do we counter those issues and ensure that we actually do move forward and just the last point i would say that is in the session that myself and alexander were at on monday of two sessions we'd 19 organisations who represented a host of groups who were involved in development and none of them supported third right of appeal because they all felt it would put scotland at a competitive economic disadvantage indeed because i probably wouldn't have another shot yeah that's probably true because of time so who wants to petra there's a really important debate here and that is about the generational imbalance as well a lot of people who are involved in the plan in the current system and i think this is a challenge we are talking about the current system which also fault but we are also looking towards a new system for me very fundamentally we need to bring in much much more young people i mean at this moment in time scotland has signed up to the UN child of the rights of the child to be involved in decision that affect them place affects young people whatever age it affects everybody but young people disproportionately are not involved and if we are talking about who needs the housing of the future if we are talking about what kind of infrastructure do we need we need to have all of the people involved in this debate and i know i mean for me it's not about being punitive it's about being proactive engaging and actually listening to everybody's view we have just recently completed another charrette and not far away from here where we really got out and brought in the young people we brought in people who don't normally have the time to get involved we brought in people who are in care homes and wanted to have a discussion with young people it's very very important that that kind of debate is being had because if we're really talking about a new kind of planning system that is inclusive and collaborative and that actually also facilitates development of whatever size and kind then i think we need to have everyone involved and that's not naive i see that happening on the continent and it works well and it speeds up not absolutely going to find democracy in a second i promise you you'll absolutely have