SWEEPING CHANGES NEEDED TO IMPROVE PLANNING SYSTEM
As was evident at last week’s Heritage Hustings (19.4.17), there are currently widespread calls for thoroughgoing reform to Scotland’s Planning system.
Both the New Town & Broughton Community Council and Leith Central Community Council have recently submitted thoughtful responses to the Scottish Government’s consultation paper ‘People, Places and Planning’, which are available in greater detail by following the links just given.
Here, we summarise their contributions, using asterisks to indicate where the two community councils more or less share common ground on particular issues.
In general terms, NTBCC criticises the Scottish Government for sloganeering, vagueness and over-centralisating tendencies in its reaction to earlier independent consultations.
More specifically, NTBCC suggests:
- improved formal status for community councils in the Planning process
- safeguarding existing townscapes by ensuring new developments are in keeping and of comparable quality*
- re-assessing the effectiveness of pre-application consultations, and lowering the threshold for what constitutes a ‘major development’
- addressing questionable appeal decisions and ‘attritional’ resubmissions of plans, recording how individual councillors vote,* improving Enforcement,* and improving transparency when local authorities are also applicants
- extending the right of appeal to objectors*
- increased Planning fees for use in improving the Planning service, including proper training and resourcing*
- introducing an infrastructure levy for certain developments*
- better resourcing of the DPEA and allowing third-party participation in appeals*
- increased, and locally set, Planning fees to fund improved service*
- more emphasis on design/build quality*
- associated infrastructural improvements to be delivered in advance or in parallel with large developments*
- better IT standards and improved funding (from fees) for Enforcement*
- more rigorous self-assessment of professional standards by Planning departments
- firmer rules on start dates for approved schemes
- annual/biannual assessements of existing infrastructural capacity.
Further consultation will follow, with the Scottish Government expected to bring forward a new Planning Bill early in the 2017/18 session at Holyrood.
In the meantime, NTBCC and LCCC deserve thanks for their painstaking and considered work on this.
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