Planning matters

This blog gives a flavour of the emerging discussions on housing delivery in Scotland, as the Scottish Planning Review moves towards a White Paper and Bill.

I was delighted to be invited by Kevin Stewart MSP, Minister for Local Government and Housing, to join the housing working group and have just spent two days “workshopping” the five recommendations for delivering more high quality homes.

Nineteen of us from planning, housing and development backgrounds in both the public and private sectors shared our experiences and while we perhaps didn’t conclude the debate, we did put forward a number of views to inform the next steps and the initial drafting of the White Paper.

Unsurprisingly, this elicited much debate. A key point was made that there is currently a disproportionate amount of time spent by local authorities debating housing numbers. Indeed, there was probably a disproportionate amount of workshop time spent discussing the numbers too!

It was felt that the removal of the housing numbers debate from the Local Development Plan-making process would free up time to concentrate on quality, place and deliverability. The importance of housing market areas was stressed, and of regional level planning. If housing numbers were set at a national level, it was felt that this would need to be done more regularly than the 5 year, wider National Plan-making cycle or there would need to be significantly better synchronising of plans.  Also, that any numbers expressed should be minimums using language such as “at least” rather than as targets which could suggest “up to” and perhaps constrain growth.

It was felt that it was not the “definition” of effectiveness that was the problem – the Scottish Planning Policy is really quite clear – but rather it was the interpretation of what was effective that was inconsistent.

There was a view that the testing of effectiveness needed to be improved, including the testing of the deliverability and viability of chosen sites.

It was noted that there had been some successes using Simplified Planning Zones (SPZs) in commercial areas and where zoning was used elsewhere in Europe, it brought certainty to the future developer. But, it was felt that scarce planner resources would be better spent on determining planning applications than on putting in place SPZs.

There was a good suggestion that perhaps a new, streamlined planning application process could be used for sites that have been debated through the plan-making process and that have an allocation.

Land reform proposals were debated and how to avoid state aid problems. Again, European models were debated and the need for significant financial resource to make them happen here.

The view was generally that some local authorities use available powers and mechanisms well but there is perhaps a skills shortage and scarce resources.

The sharing of best practice was recommended and also greater support from Scottish Government, financial and otherwise, to enable the better use of the powers that already exist - and for the provision of supporting infrastructure.

Time was running out by the time this recommendation was debated and it was not as fully discussed as others. However, the feeling of the group was that we should not rely on national solutions but rather local authorities should be supported to develop appropriate solutions for their areas.

There was a general feeling in the housing working group that further debate would be required, once Scottish Government had had time to digest the initial feedback from the first two workshop days.