Between the lines: Consultation is fine until it is put into practice

Published on Tuesday 31 March 2009 21:15

FOR years business has been demanding a reform of the planning laws in Scotland in order to speed development and reduce investment costs. Having myself acquired a sore bottom sitting on a local authority planning committee, and chaired a property development company, I understand the frustrations.

The Planning (Scotland) Act 2006 was designed to address some of these concerns. The provisions of the new legislation have been dribbling into law over the past few years. As of 6 April, another tranche of changed regulations come into force. Expect a surprise.

The key innovation is the introduction of a statutory obligation to consult the local community on a development before lodging the planning application. A developer will now need undertake (and pay for) a formal public consultation process before even getting around to putting in for planning. If you don't carry out the Pre-Application Consultation (PAC), you won't be allowed to lodge your planning application, never mind having it determined.

The new rules apply to applications for all "major" and "national" development projects to be lodged after 3 August 2009. A prospective developer must give notice to the planning authority that an application is about to be submitted. A period of at least 12 weeks must then elapse between giving notice and submitting the actual application (which must now include a report on the consultations that took place).

Is this reform a good or a bad idea? The upside is that many developers plunge into projects and only get round to consulting the local community as an after-thought. The developer is not necessarily being duplicitous or manipulative; it's just that commercial pressures often push the design team to work out the scheme in detail before revealing it to the public. At that point, the horse manure hits the fan, as local interest groups react in panic to the computer-generated pictures of some 14-storey development that are published in the local paper.

The developer feels proud of the concept and the jobs it will bring, and can't understand why the locals are so upset. The locals feel aggrieved that this is the first time they have heard of the scheme and turn defensive. The architects fight to retain the "integrity" of their design. As the Scottish planning system is based on tortuous negotiations rather than agreed rules, the scene is set for years of wrangling, recrimination, grudging compromises and local councillors looking for headlines.

In theory, a structured consultation process should go some way to removing these development roadblocks. It is also useful that the regulations will help inform just who is supposed to be consulted, as inevitably someone always complains they were left out. The minimum requirements stipulate consultation with the relevant and any adjoining community council, plus a public event.

But there are downsides: PAC adds to the up-front development bills, even if there are savings in the long-run by shortening the average planning process. There are obvious implications for commercial confidentiality. Developers who "consult" and then whack in the scheme unchanged may run into prejudice from the planning authority. But if the developer stops to modify the scheme as a result of the consultation, that will add further delay.

And what happens if the locals are divided in their views? Does the developer take a chance in responding to one group and not the other, knowing full well that the planners will still insist on another round of tortuous local negotiations during the formal application process?

Initially, the new consultation regulations cover major developments – housing schemes comprising 50 or more dwellings and commercial property schemes on a site exceeding 10,000sq m. But as time goes on, we can expect PAC to be extended to other developments, so it is no use thinking it does not affect the entire development process.

There is no point in getting hot under the collar about this initiative. Instead, developers need to find a way of getting it to work to everyone's advantage. In my experience, consultation works best if it is not seen as a way of getting local interest groups simply to agree to what the developer wants. That mindset is fatal. Besides, locals often have a degree of tacit knowledge about their area and its social and economic dynamic that can inform a property development in a positive way. The trick is to start the consultation process by giving local people some background knowledge and training in the development process, perhaps through a masterclass with the architects.

That said, the greatest difficulty in consultation on major development schemes is that local communities often see matters through the prism of their tenement or street. Yet there are wider needs that must be met by providing hotels, offices, shops and infrastructure. Guiding the consultation process through that mismatch of interests requires an input from the politicians – sadly such local leadership is often lacking.