We invited Thomas Aubrey, Director of the Centre for Progressive Capitalism, and Alastair Parvin, co-founder of WikiHouse Foundation, to give their perspectives.

The evening was excellently chaired by Pam Ewen, Senior Planning Manager at Fife Council.

Thomas looked at how infrastructure could be funded through land value capture as happens elsewhere, necessitating amendment pf the Land Compensation (Scotland) Act 1961.

https://vimeo.com/203082834

You can read a full report from the Centre for Progressive Capitalism on Bridging the Infrastructure Gap and Thomas has agreed to model what his proposal would mean for the Edinburgh City Region. BEFS will be sharing the report when ready.

Alastair attempted to unpick the Gordian knot of housing issues, focusing on how more homes could be delivered through a number of means, particularly through co-housing and self-build. He also looked at the transformative role technology is having in the fourth industrial revolution, in construction and potentially in planning.

https://vimeo.com/203087287

The Q&A session that followed revealed an audience well versed in land and housing matters.

The following day Alastair and Thomas presented to civil servants from planning, architecture and housing divisions at Victoria Quay and to researchers and MSPs at the Scottish Parliament. BEFS is grateful to Andy Wightman MSP for hosting the latter even and it was encouraging to see cross party interest across the two days from national and local politicians. The audience for the topic was also diverse reflecting interests across heritage, volume housing building, landowners, architecture, planning, and both public and private sectors.

Was the housing nut cracked? Jemmied open, maybe. It needs political leadership to address the underlying land issues to make it affordable for individuals and communities to pursue alternative ways of providing homes in Scotland.

Historic Environment Scotland (HES) has recently published an interim policy on how it will facilitate Asset Transfer under The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 and would like to hear your views.

The Community Empowerment Act was created to provide community bodies with legal rights, including extending the right to buy land and buildings, participation in decision-making, and the right to make asset transfer requests to public bodies for land and buildings. HES is included in the Act as a public body with delegated responsibility for properties in care of Scottish Ministers.  As the lead public body for the historic environment, they also have an important role in utilising the new legislation to enable communities’ to engage with, celebrate, and protect their historic environment.

As of 23rd January, responsibilities under Part 5 of the Act – regarding Asset Transfer Requests (ATR) – came into force.  In support of this, HES have published Interim Policy, Procedure and Guidance as well as their Register of Assets (applicable under the Act) on the Community Empowerment section of the HES Website, which provides further information on their role in relation to community empowerment.

Historic Environment Scotland will be seeking views on the interim policy and guidance over an eight-week long a public consultation, which opens on Monday 30th January.

Further information on how to provide your views will be available on HES’s consultation webpage next week.

Details of the planning scenario are outlined below in a previous blog but it has taken 18 months for the decision to be issued. Briefly, permission for the the gravel quarry to extend into the buffer zone of the New Lanark World Heritage Site for a period of 8 years followed by restoration was deemed acceptable by South Lanarkshire Council and Historic Scotland (now Historic Environment Scotland) in the face of local and international opposition. The Directorate of Planning and Environmental Appeals also found the planning application to be consistent with national and local planning policies and recommended approval. The Notice of Intention to refuse permission was taken while Alex Neil MSP held the position of Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Communities and Pensioners’ Rights, but the deision was published with Angela Constance MSP now taking up that role, albeit with Kevin Stewart MSP leading on planning issues as Minister for Local Government & Housing.

The reason for refusal by Ministers given is:

For clarity, paragraph 235 of Scottish Planning Policy under the heading of Promoting Responsible Extraction of Resources reads:

235. The planning system should:

• recognise the national benefit of indigenous coal, oil and gas production in maintaining a diverse energy mix and improving energy security;
• safeguard workable resources and ensure that an adequate and steady supply is available to meet the needs of the construction, energy and other sectors;
• minimise the impacts of extraction on local communities, the environment and the built and natural heritage; and
• secure the sustainable restoration of sites to beneficial afteruse after working has ceased.

Scottish Ministers therefore found 8 years to be too long a temporary period of adverse disruption to the World Heritage Site’s buffer zone, part of the Falls of Clyde Designed Landscape, that was not outweighed by a slight shortfall in the supply of aggregates. It should also be noted that the western extension of the quarry would not have resulted in a significant increase in employment.

The question previously asked was why the local and national government agencies were at odds with Scottish Ministers in their interpretation of national planning policies? Perhaps they are best left to answer but 8 years of disruption is a long time to a local community and in politics, particularly when there is little wider economic gain.

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Scottish Ministers have published a Notice of Intention for the planning application to extend mineral extraction into the buffer zone of the New Lanark World Heritage Site. BEFS Director, Euan leitch, looks at how the decision was arrived at. First published 6th July 2015

Sand and gravel extraction has been taking place from a site east of New Lanark on the banks of the Clyde since the 1960s and in 2012 CEMEX UK submitted a planning application to extend operations 20 hectares southwards and 22 hectares westwards. The western extension would eat into the Bonnington Estate, part of the Falls of Clyde Designed Landscape, which is the buffer zone for the New Lanark World Heritage Site.

South Lanarkshire Council deemed the proposals compatible with the strategic and local development plan policies and Historic Scotland accepted that while it would have an adverse impact upon an inventory landscape it would not impact upon the outstanding univesal value of the world heritage site. Local people, Save Our Landscapes, the New Lanark Trust, the Garden History Society in Scotland (now Scotland’s Garden and Landscape Heritage)  and the UK Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites disagreed with these findings and asked Scottish Ministers to call-in the planning application for independant scrutiny. Scottish Ministers agreed to a call-in and two Scottish Government reporters were assigned to the case and a hearing held over 3 days in August 2014.

The reporters submitted their report to Scottish Ministers in February of this year but it has just been made public along with Ministerial direction on June 26th. The report agreed with South Lanarkshire Council and Historic Scotland:

Having regard to the provisions of the development plan, and other statutory duties, the reporters’ conclude that there is a shortfall in the 10 year land bank of minerals in South Lanarkshire, and that the proposed development would:

• contribute to an identified shortfall in the supply of minerals;
• preserve, protect and enhance the character, integrity and quality of the NewLanark World Heritage Site and its setting (and its Outstanding Universal Value);
• protect, preserve and enhance the Falls of Clyde Designed Landscape;
• safeguard listed buildings, their settings, and any features of special interest they possess;
• preserve or enhance the character or appearance of the New Lanark and Falls of Clyde Conservation Area;
• protect scheduled ancient monuments and their settings;
• not adversely affect the overall quality of special landscape areas;
• not harm flora and fauna;
• stimulate the rural economy; and
• provide an acceptable restoration scheme.

Overall, the reporters’ find that the proposed development complies with the provisions of the development plan. They considered all the material and arguments submitted (as outlined in the summaries of case) but find that none lead them to a different recommendation.

The reporters therefore recommended that Scottish Ministers grant planning permsion subject to conditions.

The Notice of Intention finds otherwise. Scottish Ministers agree that the southward extension of the mineral workings would not impact upon the setting of the world heritage site (as did the other objectors) and is in line with planning policies but:

Turning to the western extension, Scottish Ministers note the reporters’ assertion in paragraph 9.38 that even if there was to be an impact on the WHS’s setting that it would be for a temporary period (up to eight years) while operations were carried out in the western extension, during which progressive restoration would be undertaken. Scottish Ministers are, however, of the view that disturbance of at least 8 years before positive restoration in the western extension (largely within the World Heritage Site buffer zone) is unacceptable and is not outweighted by the need for a supply of minerals, which is only marginally short. On that basis, Scottish Ministers consider that development in that part of the scheme should not be approved.

The report has therefore been returned to the Directorate for Planning and Environmental Appeals “so that the reporters can advise them on what conditions or legal agreements would be appropriate in respect of a permission granted on that basis.” The option of only granting the southward extension had been considered by the reporters but they recommended that refusal would be preferable allowing CEMEX UK to apply for that seperately.

The planning application garnered substantial public interest with several thousand objections both online and through a petition, recieving extensive media coverage over the past couple of years. The outcome does raise some interesting questions: if the local authority, the Scotttish Government’s heritage agency (Historic Scotland) and the Scottish Government’s reporters (DPEA) all agreed that the planning application met with Scottish Planning Policy, the Glasgow and Clyde Valley Strategic Development Plan and the South Lanarkshire Local Plan, are the policies flawed? If not, why is their interpretation so at odds with local and international opinion? As the Scottish Government has signed off on the policies in these documents why is their interpretation also at odds with their own agencies?

Or is it just evidence that planning is political?

You can find full details of the appeal here.

Responding to archaeologists’ strong feelings about the referendum on UK membership of the European Union, the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA) wishes to emphasise its status vis-à-vis nations, states and unions.

CIfA is the leading professional body for archaeologists. Its accredited members have agreed to subscribe to the Code of conduct and to follow its Standards and guidance. This obligation applies wherever they live and work, as does their requirement to comply with all relevant legislation and regulations. CIfA therefore operates without national borders: it is not and never has been a UK institute. While the majority of its members practise in the UK, and the attentions of the Chartered Institute are hence focused there, a growing cadre is based elsewhere (we are distributed across 32 countries).

CIfA does not have formal position on the UK’s membership of the European Union: that is a matter for the constituent parts of the UK and the EU to resolve through appropriate democratic processes. CIfA commends the thoughtful analyses of The Archaeology Forum and the Heritage Alliance of the potential impacts of a separation.

CIfA’s Board of Directors has reaffirmed its commitment to working with archaeologists from around the globe to promote professional standards and ethical behaviour, to maximise the benefits that archaeologists bring to society. One of the great benefits that archaeologists offer is the power to help different people understand the great variety of cultures and traditions of humanity, to recognise how civilisations can thrive on cooperation and how conflicts can arise where cooperation is absent, and to realise how socio-economic problems are generated within societies as often as by outsiders.

Above all, archaeology shows the mobility of our species. We are all of migrant stock: some have travelled from choice and in hope, others from danger and in distress. All have left their mark on the environment; and researching that mark through archaeology shows how these new peoples flourished or faded, whether their cultures stayed separate, integrated and retained their heritage or were absorbed almost without trace. The knowledge of how societies have adapted to and benefited from interactions between peoples helps us understand why the world is as it is today and gives us privileged insights into how to handle some of the challenges and chances it faces. Those challenges are very noticeable in today’s Europe, just as there have been magnificent examples of generosity and hospitality.

The job of work for archaeologists to do will be discussed in depth at CIfA’s next annual conference: CIfA2017 Archaeology: a global profession, to be held 19 to 21 April 2017, at the University of Newcastle. CIfA will also take an active role at the annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists later this year.

CIfA website www.archaeologists.net