Comment – Planning for Sustainable Places (Scotland)

The Scottish Government has published a new consultation document introducing a Presumption in Favour of Sustainable Development. Is it structured in such a way as to create more sustainable places?

On 28 October the Scottish Government published a new consultation document introducing a Presumption in Favour of Sustainable Development.

The consultation ends on 16 December so there is still time to submit your views.

As a practice, Turley Associates has supported many applications in England utilising the ‘Presumption in Favour of Sustainable Development’ within the National Planning Policy Framework. Where plans are out of date, the presumption can be a powerful tool to promote good development.

Interestingly, while the Scottish Government appears to be aiming for a similar policy goal, the method to secure a consent would appear to be different.

The proposed policy is intended to replace the previous Draft SPP principal policies on ‘sustainable economic growth’ and ‘sustainable development’ with a principal policy on ‘Sustainability and Planning’ and introducing a presumption in favour of sustainable development.

It would appear that this new policy is giving greater weight to the environmental and social aspects of sustainable development, although the need to secure economic growth is still of paramount importance.

The policy introduces a number of principles which decisions on applications should be guided by. In summary these are:

In England the Presumption is tested against the policies of the NPPF as a whole, ie if you can demonstrate you comply with the policies then it is regarded as sustainable development. Here, the Scottish Government has gone so far as to list key principles within the policy which they believe, collectively represent sustainable development in the built environment.

The Scottish presumption is rebuttable and therefore any application that seeks the presumption must be supported by ‘good quality and timely supporting information which describes the economic, environmental and social implications of the proposal’ which should be proportionate to the scale of the application.

At a recent conference in Glasgow we discussed this presumption and a number of interesting questions were raised on the nature of reporting necessary to form the evidence base to support a presumption application. The debate was wide ranging and informative, but our views are based upon our experience of applying the presumption elsewhere and also on our knowledge and experience of creating sustainable places in Scotland.

In practical terms, and in proportion to the application, the proposed development must demonstrate where it has taken all reasonable measures to promote the principles of the policy and ideally at all stages of development. It must demonstrate where negative impacts have been mitigated and of course where the proposals make a positive contribution to the key principles.

Such an approach is not an alien concept, in fact one could argue that this has been the cornerstone of ‘good development’ for many years. Good planning, design, stakeholder engagement and technical input are key aspects of creating sustainable development and already form an integral part of most design teams. Capturing this process and clearly demonstrating how it meets the policy is a process we have used many times before.

If adopted, this policy will form a key part of future plan making and decision taking.

For those applications that can clearly and succinctly demonstrate they secure an overall positive benefit when tested against the 12 principles, there is potentially a lot to gain!

For further information please contact:

Colin Morrison
Director of Sustainability
07827 352 711
[email protected]

Colin Smith
Director
07947 692 042
[email protected]

 

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Planning for Sustainable Places Comment December 2013