The decision by East Renfrewshire Council (ERC) to remove all representations to planning applications from their on-line portal last year, received harsh criticism from residents, community groups and many elected members dismayed that the new procedure would make it impossible to view certain documents without a trip to the Planning Office.
As expert reports commissioned by members of the public are classed as representations, these would not be made available for viewing, thus supressing any professional criticism of the development.
In an apparent attempt to secure a positive vote in favour of what is nothing more than a time and money saving exercise, planning officials misled Members into believing fifty per cent of Councils already followed this procedure. Sceptical about the veracity of this information, Scotland Against Spin decided to conduct their own survey. We discovered that only 8 out of the 32 local authorities did not publish representations on-line.
As openness and transparency are critical in all aspects of the planning process and public participation should be encouraged, we decided to expand the survey to find out which Councils allow third parties to address the Planning Applications Committee (on both local and major developments) before a decision on an application is made.
In answer to our two questions:
- Do you publish representations on-line?
- Are third parties allowed to address the Planning Committee?
18 Councils answered “Yes” to both questions
9 Councils answered “Yes” to one of the questions
5 Councils answered “No” to both questions (Aberdeen City, East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Inverclyde and Renfrewshire).
Together with the East Renfrewshire and Renfrewshire council areas, Inverclyde forms part of the historic county of Renfrewshire.
Edinburgh, Stirling, South Lanarkshire and Falkirk imposed certain restrictions but do allow either members of the public or groups to address the Committee.
As third parties have no right of appeal it would seem only fair they are given a hearing at a Planning Committee meeting to correct any inaccuracies in the Officer’s Report of Handling or counter belated attempts by the applicant to sway the Committee’s decision.
Unfortunately, although e-planning best practice advice encourages representations to be online for a specific timeframe it is ultimately a decision for each planning authority and the same applies to the right of a third party to address the Committee. It’s a postcode, or should we say, local authority lottery!
So what does this mean to those of you fighting wind turbine applications?
Energised Environments have produced an extremely useful report on renewable energy development planning decisions in Scotland, which examines local authority policy and consenting trends. Researched in 2014, the figures should be fairly up to date and the document can be downloaded at
http://www.energisedenvironments.com/sunshine-showers-occasional-gale-report/
We can see from Appendix B on page 33, that East Renfrewshire (one of the five “double negative” councils) has the highest density of turbines (over 225Kw) in Scotland with one turbine per square kilometre (three times more than its nearest rival). They are not all in one place at Whitelee Windfarm as some planning officials and politicians would have us believe, as only 65 of the 215 Whitelee turbines are within the ERC boundary. ERC’s policy of giving sympathetic consideration to renewable energy developments on its Greenbelt (unheard of elsewhere, as far as we know) is undeniably largely to blame for the total desecration of the local landscape, once described as the recreational lung for those living on Glasgow’s southside but denying its citizens the right of audience at a public meeting and easy access to public information via it’s website, has possibly played its part in making East Renfrewshire a no go area for those of us who don’t have turbines high on our list of preferred views!
The four other local authorities that appear to discourage public participation in the planning process are largely out of bounds to turbine development. Aberdeen City for obvious reasons and Renfrewshire, Inverclyde and East Dunbartonshire due to restrictions imposed by Glasgow Airport.
We should surely all be enjoying the same rights wherever we live. Time to start lobbying your local councillors and politicians if you are not happy with what is happening in your own area.
Please click on Survey below to view results.
Update: After many years of lobbying, ERC finally agreed in 2019 to publish representations on-line.
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