Articles by McGrigors
23 October 2006
Can culture change happen at the top?
(Published Scotsman)
The Executive's Planning Bill is making its way through the Scottish Parliament. By this stage, inevitably, attention focuses on the detailed wording of the bill's provisions. But is there a risk that we will fail to see the wood for the trees?
When the white paper which preceded the bill was introduced, ministers and officials were much in evidence, doing the rounds of seminars, conferences and so forth. There was much talk about the need for "culture change" to enable the amendments proposed in the bill to achieve their objectives.
The need for that change arises from two related matters. Firstly, a perception has developed that the planning system is often unduly negative in its attitude to development. Caricatures like the planning officer answering the phone with "planning department, how can I thwart you?" abound. Like all perceptions, those involved in the system will have a fierce debate about its resemblance to reality. Many developers would recognise the picture painted; planning officers will claim it is both an inaccurate reflection of their approach and fails to recognise the difficult nature of many planning decisions.
So far as the Executive is concerned, the white paper found it necessary to say that the aim in modernising planning was to "facilitate rather than obstruct" high quality development. It even proposed to change the title of much planning work from development control to development management - precisely to move to a new, more positive approach "in which the underlying objective should be to promote" such development.
Clearly, the material available to the Executive led to them concluding that the perception had at least some substance.
Secondly, (and in a sense more critically) the white paper restated, more than once, the Executive's top priority - promoting economic growth. As is then obvious - and as confirmed in the white paper - growth requires development; a planning system is needed to "facilitate rather than obstruct" that development.
Where detail has been short - and what none of the bill's provisions tell us - is just how this change of culture is to be achieved. A cynic might say that this is at the very least a challenging task; precisely the same people will be operating the system before and after the bill. Yet it is acknowledged that any number of amendments to legislative provisions cannot, by themselves, drive the system to make that key step from "obstruct" to "facilitate".
The point at which you start any process can make all the difference to the journey which follows. Admittedly, not all decisions will turn out differently. Planning has always involved hard choices.
However, starting with a "can-do" attitude seems much more likely to produce a result which facilitates development and meets the Executive's top priority. If all concerned are working with that same approach it also seems less likely that delay - much complained of by the development industry - will arise.
No doubt the Executive has at the forefront of its collective mind that not only must it get the Planning Bill through the Scottish Parliament, but also that it must achieve a much more challenging target of changing the culture which underlies the whole system.
Craig Connal QC, is partner and head of litigation at UK law firm McGrigors.
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