Time for major planning reforms
THANKS to Jamie Mann for his brilliant article exposing the scandal of the wholesale transfer of assets worth huge amounts of money into private hands by our public bodies (“Scotland for sale: How public land is being sold to luxury developers”, May 9). Now that these assets have gone, they’ve gone forever and we can’t get ever get them back. We used to know these things.
This is yet another depressing and disturbing example in the ancient story of the tragedy of the commons right here today, on our doorstep. It’s the institutionalisation of very clever, highly-sophisticated low-cunning methods in business practices, deployed against the community by public bodies.
Without exception the justifications
used by the public bodies quoted all show their reference to legal procedures in order to convince us they were in the right and, in this way, subtly shift the blame on to communities and systematically deprive us of agency.
There is not a scrap of recognition, far less acknowledgement that what they are doing is in any way wrong. They are either totally ignorant or flagrantly disregarding of the social contract that sits between the people and those in power that underpins the law, and it encompasses their activities too.
There is now something rotten at the core of the social contract in Scotland. Inexplicably, at Holyrood the Scottish Government actively enabled these practices when SNP MSPs joined forces with the Conservatives to block the equal right of appeal with developers’ section of the Planning Bill being brought forward into law. So much for community empowerment and Scotland Loves Local. We all need to waken up and stop this right now.
It is a bleak outlook, with little hope of a solution unless there is a change of political will. Solutions do exist to these problems. East Dunbartonshire Council has already undertaken consultations using the fairer methods of place standard and co-production but for some reason is highly resistant to using them with the more leafy places where land values are higher.
For some time now communities in East Dunbartonshire have been ignored by the council and Government when in calls for review of:
Reinstatement of equal right of appeal with developers for communities in Scottish Government planning law.
Communities to be involved in local authority strategic planning at the concept stage.
Legal stakeholder status for development trusts and residents associations in local authority strategic planning.
The place standard used by local authorities in planning, administered by a community representative organisation.
Implementation of planning decisions to be undertaken on co-production principles.
Margaret Whitelaw, Lenzie.