Group 1: Purpose of planning

HFS supports the Purpose of Planning as described in Amendment 114.

Group 2:  National Planning Framework:  preparation and content

HFS supports the Government amendments in this group, noting Amendment 173 which gives due prominence to the national challenge of meeting the housing needs of people living in Scotland. This amendment also links the NPF with any future national strategy and action plan for housing. HFS looks forward to participating in the preparation of the next NPF on behalf of a key stakeholder group: those delivering new homes across all tenures? in Scotland.


Group 9: Strategic development and regional spatial strategies

HFS agrees that long-term strategic planning is an important component of the planning system. Strategic Development Planning in its current guise does not work.

Provided Regional Spatial Strategies are prepared in an open, transparent and collaborative way, these documents have the potential to make a positive influence on the new system of development planning.  It is important that the authors of these documents learn from the past mistakes of Strategic Development Planning and engage meaningfully with all parties including HFS from the outset.

Only last week, UK Finance highlighted the extent to which planning restrictions fuel wealth inequality, disproportionately benefiting existing homeowners in sought-after areas.  

We note the new Regional Spatial Strategies which afford each planning authority a continuing and specific role in envisioning and articulating the long-term future of their area. We agree these should be flexible tools with the potential to inform the National Planning Framework but not to rival it in a way which would cause confusion in practice.

Amendment 54 sees local authorities retain their due role in envisioning the future of their area but guards against the recent legacy of unsatisfactory and ineffective strategic planning in Scotland’s city regions.

Group 11:  Protection of cultural venues and music venues

HFS has no objection to the premise of the Agent of Change principle but the ‘Culturally Significant Zone” provisions added at Stage 2 would place huge burdens on planning authorities and have a prohibitive impact on efforts to deliver much-needed new homes.

HFS strongly supports amendments 121 and 127 which would remove these troublesome provisions.

The edits suggested in the remaining Group 11 amendments would still result in an unnecessarily elaborate set of provisions.

Group 14:  Local development plan: examination

The recent succession of LDPs failing to make adequate provision for new homes has hugely discredited Scottish planning. It has left parts of Scotland dependent on windfall development to meet the needs of its people and made the job of infrastructure and utility planning almost impossible.

HFS has campaigned for stronger powers to Ministers to intervene where a planning authority’s own attempts to prepare an enabling plan have fallen short. Two amendments in this group provide alternative remedies in such a situation. Both leave the responsibility for preparing a good plan with the planning authority but provide examination reporters with new powers to ensure the problems flowing from a deficient plan will be addressed.

Amendment 119 is very strongly supported by HFS. It gives due prominence to one of the biggest unresolved challenges in planning in current times: the growing shortfall in the supply of new homes which is fuelling wealth inequality and making Scotland increasingly dependent on affordable housing. This amendment applies only where a planning authority has fallen short in its role of identifying the land needed to ensure enough new homes will be provided in their area. We strongly support the sentiment expressed by the Minister in his recent communications with SESplan: adopting an inadequate Local Development Plan is not in anybody’s interests.

Amendment 99 offers an alternative route to resolving the issue of a plan with too little provision for new homes. Using this power, an examination reporter could recommend that a deficient plan be adopted (despite its issues) but that the issue(s) be addressed once it has been adopted. Coupled with the new power for the Scottish Ministers to direct that a plan be amended, this would also ensure the deficiency was addressed – and that the responsibility for how to do so remains with the planning authority. 

Looking at amendments 119 and 99 as though they were alternatives to one another, amendment 119 clearly offers the biggest incentive for each planning authority in Scotland to endeavor to prepare a good plan at the first attempt. The risk of being required to revisit the Proposed Plan before it can be supported is just the sort of strong incentive missing in the current system.

If amendment 99 is also supported by Parliament, HFS would hope to hear a strong public commitment from the Scottish Ministers on their appetite for using their new powers of direction.

Group 16: Land value capture / sharing

Amendment 112 is strongly supported. The provision it removes would have put the owners of land in masterplan consent areas at an unfair disadvantage and would have been the wrong way to further envelop the concept of Land Value Capture (LVC) in the planning system.

We object to amendment 212 as it would create the same unfair dual land market scenario. If planning reforms do flow from the work of the Scottish Land Commission (SLC), this should be preceded by public consultation through the Scottish Government. This Bill is not the right vehicle and the SLC itself has not sought to use this Bill to introduce new means of LVC beyond section 75 agreements and the provision of a new Infrastructure Levy.

Group 22: Determination of applications: brownfield land

We strongly support amendment 130. This removes a Stage 2 provision which would have the effect of removing the planning authority’s discretion in looking to Green Belt sites if ever this is necessary to deliver the new homes or other development required in the long-term public interest. It would be inappropriate for primary legislation to dictate precisely what must happen in that circumstance.

Group 25: Conditional grant of planning permission

HFS objects to Amendment 3. Home builders are of course keen that the occupants of new homes benefit from good broadband without delay. However, amendment 3 is redundant as broadband provision is already routinely put in place for new housing developments, often to a higher specification than the technology favored by this amendment. 

If there are issues in practice whereby broadband providers are not delivering their services to new build occupants in a punctual manner, this can only effectively be addressed through the broadband providers. Home builders do not have any power to control these third parties and this provision could not, therefore, be enforced.

Group 29: Right to appeal against planning decisions

HFS strongly objects to all amendments in Group 29. 

The arguments against changes to appeal rights were strongly presented at Stage 2, with HFS and a diversity of other organisations outlining the stark economic and other public-interest consequences that would arise under a third party right of appeal, a provision to ‘equalise’ rights of appeal or a provision to curtail the applicant right of appeal. 

Fairness in planning does not stem from who has the right to appeal against the decision of the planning authorities but from whether the planning system delivers the things that are needed in the long-term public interest. Frustrating or preventing the delivery of much-needed new homes that have been supported by the planning authority is simply not in the public interest. 

The amendments would permit appeals by third parties who had objected to an application if the application was not in accordance with the development plan. If such an application has been approved by a council, it will only be because something so significant has arisen since the development plan was approved that it justifies granting planning permission. It is impossible to predict what that might be but typically it will be something that brings significant benefit to the area or, indeed, to Scotland as a whole (e.g. major job creation or a new cultural venue). These decisions involve careful balancing of all the evidence and the policy documents that are relevant.  

Decisions by Councils to grant planning permission contrary to the Development Plan are not taken lightly and are not made often. It would be a backwards step to allow a third party who might have a very specific and personal reason for trying to prevent or delay development that would benefit a much greater section of society.  

Similarly, removing an Applicant’s right to appeal in situations where a Council considers the development is not in accordance with the development plan ignores the flexibility that is inherent and important in our planning system.  Under the new system of development planning in Scotland, plans may only be updated once a decade and it is essential that the planning system remains flexible enough to allow Applicants to protect their Human Rights by having their proposals considered by an independent impartial tribunal in circumstances where they consider the Council has not taken an appropriately balanced view.

Group 30:  Meaning of "material considerations"

The scope of material considerations is flexible and gives decision-makers the ability to consider the broad range of factors that merits of a development or land use proposal. Planning policy and the courts highlight specific considerations that are material (or which are not). This aspect of planning requires to remain dynamic and cannot be articulated in the form of a list without limiting the decision-makers’ options and risking newly arising but relevant considerations being left out of scope unless there is resource to go through the administrative process of amending regulations.

Group 32:  Promotion and use of mediation etc.

HFS supports more collaborative forms of planning, especially in respect of plan-making. If that is the intention of this amendment and it is successful, guidance will need to be provided to clarify that mediation is not intended to imply intervention in a dispute in order to resolve it, or arbitration. This being its OED online definition. Given the wording of subsection (7) of proposed new section 268A of the 1997 Act, this provision is likely to be interpreted as such.

HFS could not support a provision that implied conflict resolution was the method of collaboration in planning which should be given top priority.

Group 34: Training requirements

HFS supports the premise that elected members should be appropriately trained in relation to their role in the planning system and so supported fairly in taking on those responsibilities.

Group 35: Performance of planning authority functions

HFS supports the introduction of a National Planning Improvement Coordinator as a new actor in the Scottish planning system with a unique ability to bridge the current divide between those who operate the planning system as a public service and those who rely on it, including the paying customers who are increasingly called upon to fund it. Under current arrangements, planning authorities decide for themselves how their performance should be measured and how well they are performing. Customers and other stakeholders are excluded from current structures designed to monitor performance and have no independent person to whom they can take their concerns or suggestions. This significantly undermines goodwill in the system from a customer perspective. Planning fees are often increased with no clear link to improving performance or investing in planning services. A Planning Improvement Coordinator could break this impasse and enable collaborative ways to improve the performance of Scotland’s ailing planning services.

Group 40:  Infrastructure levy

HFS strongly supports amendment 150 which removes the power to allow planning authorities to require any future Infrastructure Levy payments to be made prior to planning permission being issued. Because of the way in which the ownership of land transfers from the original landowners to the home builder or other implementing party, this would not work in practice. Until planning permission is issued, transfer of title does not take place.

For questions or further information, please contact:

Tammy Swift-Adams - Director of Planning

t.swift-adams@homesforscotland.com / 0131 455 8350