Council plans to write to Holyrood to change planning regulations

Councillors are being urged to support plans to give communities an equal right of appeal on planning.

As the regulations stand, developers can appeal decisions to refuse their applications but residents don’t have similar rights.

The Planning (Scotland) Bill has recently completed stage two at Holyrood, but amendments in support of equal appeal rights have been unsuccessful.

At next week’s Perth and Kinross Council meeting, leader Murray Lyle will be asked to write to the Holyrood minister for housing, local government and planning, as well as members of the Scottish Government’s local government and communities committee, ahead of the final stage of the bill.

Conservative councillor Callum Purves, who will propose the motion, said: “The Scottish Government and others advocate more front-loading of the planning system, which, put simply, means giving communities more of a say in the creation of local development plans. While this is welcome, the problem is that these plans are not always followed.

“Most people are not against development but when these plans are flouted, communities feel that their genuinely-held concerns have been completely ignored. This only fuels an already fundamental lack of trust in the planning process.”

He said it was unfair that developers have the right to appeal when applications do not go their way, while communities do not have that right.

He added: “If development plans can be cast aside with no right to review, why should communities even bother engaging with the process in the first place? We need an equal right of appeal for communities to redress this imbalance.”

Councillor Colin Stewart, who is backing the motion, added: “For me, this is overridingly a matter of fairness, and I hope that colleagues across the council will feel able to support this motion and in doing so stand up for the communities they represent.”