As the header suggests, I am pleased to report Highland Planning has been able to turn around another house refusal on appeal to the Council's Review Body. The case involving a house outside Wick had been refused on Settlement Boundary and Housing in the Countryside Policy issues. So, of the five Reviews conducted on client's behalf since the new system came into play, three have been won. Not quite as good yet as the DPEA Appeal record but beginning to come close. Each review case has its individual merits and though, no doubt refused with the best of intentions in terms of consistency and adherence to the Develoment Plan on the part of the Appointed Officers, the latest positive result proves the flexibility of policy interpretation and the ability and preparedness of elected Members to look at proposals in a fair, reasonable and balanced manner. It all represents an encouraging sign of local democracy in action. I still have many doubts over the basic principle of the new system and, possibly unfairly, cannot help but maintain comparison with the conventional DPEA appeal system.

However, the latter is not always perfect as the recent approval of the Waste Incinerator Plant at Invergordon has proved. Whilst strictly falling in line with planning policy, I believe there has been a failing somewhere along the line in the construction of that policy at national, maybe even local level. The Reporter too I think might have made more of the material consideration that was the public interest and arguably too much weight was given to the roads officials and SEPA opinion that all would be 'alright on the night'. I remain inconvinced !

After seemingly never-ending niggles with trying to post on my blog...and not much in the way of assistance from the web host provider..Register.com (not recommended by the way), the Stateside gremlins appear to have gone for now...fingers crossed.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since the last posts.... some new Scottish Government advice on HMO's and Planning Agreements to name but two. Scottish Planning Policy introduced in February this year replaces a whole raft of SPP's and NPPG's and essentially reaffirms the purpose of planning, sets out the core principles of Development Plans and Development Management, and offers broad policy objectives for nationally important land uses. 

The biggest innovation of course has been the Scheme of Delegation and Local Reviews which came into effect towards the end of 2009. This gives individual planning officers the power to refuse applications for planning permission without requiring to go before Committee. Rather than appealing such decisions to DPEA, requests for review are made to a Council Review Body comprising in Highland's case, 9 elected members.The process has been evolving, I would like to say improving, since its inception but the jury is still out on that ! The time and effort in seeking review is little different from a conventional appeal and the only opinion I can express so far is that decisions are less predictable than DPEA appeal. In % terms, my success rate is 50% as opposed to 75% with DPEA. Hopefully, however, that will improve over the next month or so. Suffice to say its easy to be critical of some of the decisions so far but I think that reflects the lack of training afforded the members and the demanding responsibilities placed upon them....all symptomatic of a system foisted upon us with little warning or funding and for the wrong reasons.

Locally, Highland in September published its Interim Supplementary Guidance on Housing in the Countryside. I have described that exercise, maybe unfairly, as the Council being dragged kicking and screaming to the table to review and relax its housing policies. I dont think it has gone far enough and gets its emphasis wrong in places but is a step in a new direction and for now will have to see us through to the preparation of the Highland Wide Local Plan. There are changes though and it allows for some development where it didnt before....so well worth a look.

Section 75 Agreements continue to trouble many housebuilders and recent times has seen serious problems arising for mortgage applications, despite official views to the contrary. At least the situation has been addressed recently by the Cairngorms National Park Authority who appear to be a step ahead of Highland in appreciating the difficulties posed by these, in my opinion, draconian controls.

I'd best stop before the bullets start flying !

The blog is back up and running though....and hopefully trouble free !!