Exclusive by Martin Williams Senior News Reporter
A UNITED Nations body has begun a probe into whether the Scottish and UK
governments have broken international law through a failure to give the
public the right of challenge over planning decisions that would damage the
nation’s precious environment, landscape and wildlife, it can be revealed.
A coalition of campaign groups from Planning Democracy, Environmental
Rights Centre for Scotland, Friends of the Earth Scotland and RSPB
Scotland, submitted a formal complaint over the failure at the end of last
year about the Scottish and UK governments to the Aarhus Convention
Compliance Committee (ACCC), a United Nations body tasked with upholding
environmental rights saying there is a breach of international law.
They say that the general public should have the same rights of appeal over
planning decisions as developers. If successful it could give the public
the right to lodge appeals on everything from wind farms and major housing
schemes to the erection of a wall that is over two metres.
They believe that there has been a precedent set in Northern Ireland where
the ACCC found that an absence of equal rights of appeal was a breach of
the Convention and that recommendations made must be applied in Scotland
and the UK.
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