Get ambitious

I agree with Cliff Hague: Why not aim for a world-class planning system (Scotsman 200, 17 July). As a planning student in the 1960s there was no doubt that our education was preparing us for a professional career in which our main client would be the public. Our experience here in East Lothian over the last decade has been that communities are allowed little influence over the processes which are shaping the county.

Developers select sites, prepare schemes which are typically banal and suburban in character, and the planning authority waves them through, in the knowledge that the Government’s obsession with housing numbers will prevail on appeal. There seems little scope for the public interest in this process.

The Civil Service-led reform process which led to the 2005 White Paper was a missed opportunity to reshape our system. Though heralded as a once-in-a-generation opportunity it turned out to be superficial and rushed in order that the 2006 Bill could be enacted before the change of government in 2007.

The latest review, now out for consultation just a few years later, seems bereft of the ambition which Professor Hague seeks. We have found in our meetings with local politicians, of all persuasions, a strong measure of agreement that our current planning arrangements are defective. They feel deprived, through centralised control, of the ability to act on behalf of the communities they represent.

The latest consultation by the Government, which closes on 11 August, states that “People are at the heart of the system and it must work effectively in all our interests”. I cannot see these proposals delivering this aspiration. ANDREW ROBINSON

Station Road Haddington, East Lothian