POWER STRUGGLE

Alan Cochrane is worried about the removal of planning power from local communities

‘Public bodies are not exactly known for being critical of this government’s policies’

I t is not quite a unilateral declaration of independence, more a case of the mouse that roared, but as it approaches its twentieth birthday in the New Year it would appear that the members of the Scottish Parliament have at last got the hang of what they’re supposed to be doing.

And that, of course, is representing their constituents by holding the First Minister and her cabinet to account. Such oversight has been vanishingly rare in the devolved parliament, but now the all-party local government committee has served notice that the Scottish government’s new planning bill will not do. Every opposition party has criticised the measure with some of the most trenchant language I can remember.

This development has come about because the planning bill, as currently drafted, removes planning power from local communities and transfers it straight to ministers in Edinburgh.

However, perhaps as significant as the MSPs’ words of warning to the Scottish government, has been the shot across the bows fired by Simon Skinner, chief executive of the National Trust for Scotland. The latter body went through a torrid time a few years ago, plagued by financial worries and forced to move its headquarters from Edinburgh’s poshest address in Charlotte Square to the less salubrious Hermiston Gait.

Skinner is concerned that commercial pressures are threatening to affect Scotland’s greatest treasure – its countryside. He cited planned developments around the Culloden battlefield, as well as plans for a golf complex in Sutherland, as giving cause for concern.

With a membership well in excess of 300,000, as well as the guardianship of 130 properties and 180,000 acres, a wise government should not take lightly the views of the NTS. It may not be responsible for as many or as spectacular a range of properties as Historic Scotland but where the Trust scores over what’s often seen as its rival is that it is wholly independent of government.

I’d like to think that Historic Scotland’s high heidyins would, as a matter of course, state publicly their views on planning matters but in today’s Scotland public bodies are not exactly known for being openly critical of this government’s policies.

That said, ‘openly critical’ is precisely what MSPs of all parties are being about this planning bill in an almost unprecedented manner. Graham Simpson of the Tories says it’s ‘completely unacceptable’. Monica Lennon for Labour says the bill needs to ‘rebalance the planning system so that genuine community participation can thrive’. Andy Wightman of the Greens claims the measure ‘concentrates further power in the hands of ministers and pays lip service to genuine public engagement’.

But perhaps Alex Cole-Hamilton of the Scottish Lib Dems best sums up the situation by throwing one of Nicola Sturgeon’s favourite phrases back at her, describing it as nothing short of a ‘pathetic power grab’.

Thus, whilst it’s good to see that our MSPs are doing what we pay them for, it’s massively re-assuring, also, to see the NTS banging the drum for Scotland’s great outdoors. Our countryside and the best of our city-scapes are our most precious assets and we must unite to protect them. If this bill really is a powergrab in favour of the men from the ministry then it must be stopped in its tracks.