Name: | Craig Adamson |
Organisation: | HBJ Gateley Wareing |
| Role / Daily Tasks: | Head of Planning Scotland - Principal responsibility for all planning advice and input. Responsible for co-ordinating the work of the Firm's Planning team in Scotland and liaising with colleagues in the Firm's English offices. |
| Time in post: | 3 years |
| Past Experience: | Working as a solicitor in house in local government since the early 1990s - latterly as a solicitor specialising in planning, roads and road traffic legislation with East Lothian Council and the City of Edinburgh Council. Joined HBJ Gateley Wareing in January 2008. Accredited by the Law Society of Scotland as a planning law specialist. |
February 2010
Any new system takes time to bed in. We're now six months on from 3rd August 2009 and I'm continuing to get requests from clients dealing with planning authorities still wrestling with the new provisions. The transitional rules have proved problematic - not so much in their content which is, in the main, straightforward enough. The difficulties stem principally rather from the fact that there are so many statutory instruments with which to get to grips. The amended 1997 Act is only the starting point for research. The answer to most procedural problems is usually to be found in the secondary legislation. Help has been at hand from the Scottish Government's own planning web-pages which, through the course of the roll-out, have provided helpful advice regarding the effect the new provisions, of the dates they take effect and regarding transitional arrangements. In the last few years most Council websites have also been improving in content and functionality and professionals are relying more and more on the information electronically available on local authority portals. City of Edinburgh Council's planning portal is an excellent resource although recent problems with data protection legislation have resulted in a good deal of information on decided cases no longer being made available. Meantime as I write this, Glasgow City's Council Online Planning project is still under development. Glasgow however has comprehensive and searchable committee information pages so it is possible to find a good deal of planning information there.
One other thought….
In November 2009 the Scottish Government announced that in the previous 6 months more than 80% of written submissions planning appeals were being dealt with in 12 weeks. Given that we're only now (perhaps) emerging from the recession and also given that the number of applications in the system in the past year has been markedly down on previous years, we'd really be in trouble if the system hadn't able to deliver against that background. The real challenge will be to maintain, and possibly to improve, on the 80% figure as the economy recovers - without compromising on the quality of decision making .
April 2010
Readers may recall the Scottish Government's consultations in the run up to introducing its still relatively new planning hierarchy. The thresholds differentiating major from local development were debated at some length. It had been proposed initially that for major housing development the threshold should be 100 or more units or where the area of the site exceeds 2 hectares. The hierarchy regulations ultimately retained the 2 hectare reference but the threshold relating to number of units was reduced to 50 in response to comments received during the consultation process. The threshold for major business and industrial development was similarly lowered from 20,000 sq metres of floor space to 10,000 sq metres, whilst for "all other development" (including retail floor space) the figure was also halved from 10,000 sq metres to 5,000 sq metres.
In fixing limits which would apply across Scotland the Government's stated intention was to set clear measurable thresholds to help ensure clarity about which subsequent procedures a particular development should follow. This was a laudable aim. The retention of a right of appeal to the Scottish Ministers in the case of the refusal or non-determination of major development applications has undoubtedly been having and will continue to have a significant influence on how development proposals are shaped.
As regards local developments however, planning authorities have, in view of differing local perceptions and concerns, adopted widely differing individual schemes of delegation. Close scrutiny of the applicable scheme of delegation is essential when seeking to advise prospective applicants of the procedures which they will face as regards local developments and in advising as to whether a right of appeal (rather than review by a committee or panel of the planning authority) is likely to be available. In this respect the Government's web page providing links to all such schemes of delegation is proving to be extremely useful.
August 2010
The Scottish Government has been consulting recently on its proposed replacement regulations relating to the procedure for making tree preservation orders (TPOs). The existing TPO regulations, which are due to be replaced by the new regulations, date from 1975, 1981 and 1984 and refer to provisions in the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1972. The 1972 Act was, of course, substantially amended and, ultimately, revoked and replaced by the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997. It is the 1997 Act which is now, by and large, the principal point of reference for planning practitioners.
The 1975 TPO regulations contain a model form of TPO which currently requires to be followed. The 1975 model contains now long outdated statutory references. From previous experience of working in-house for planning authorities I am aware that a great deal of work requires to go into the process of ensuring that TPOs contain the correct up to date statutory references.
In the new regime the Scottish Government is proposing that there should still be a model form of TPO but is intending that the model form should be contained within the accompanying guidance rather than within the new regulations. This will provide greater scope for flexibility as the law develops in future and, no doubt, when the model form requires to be updated due to the eventual revocation of the 1997 Act in the years ahead. The 1997 Act has already been substantially modified by the Planning etc. (Scotland) Act 2006.
The difficulties posed by outdated statutory references are not however confined to the arena of TPO procedure. Now that the Government is finally proposing to revoke the 1975 TPO regulations I'm looking forward to the Government now proceeding to deal with the numerous instances of outdated statutory references in planning legislation and guidance with which planners (and planning lawyers) require to wrestle on a day to day basis.