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REVIEW OF GREEN BELT POLICY IN SCOTLAND

DUNDEE AND ANGUS

Evolution of the Green Belt

5.25 A Green Belt for Dundee was first mooted in the 1952 City Survey and Plan by Dobson Chapman and Partners. This proposed a belt of open space around the city which would fix the limits of its expansion, as well as safeguard land for outdoor recreation.

Functions of the former Green Belt area

5.26 A statutory Green Belt was established in 1962 by the Secretary of State's approval of a modification to the Angus County Council Development Plan, in the light of national policy as set out in DHS Circular 40/1960. Implementation of a policy presumption against development within the green belt was via a tripartite agreement between the constituent local authorities of Angus County Council, Dundee City Council, and Perthshire County Council. However, it was not until 1966 that it became statutory within Dundee City, and 1974 in Perthshire.

5.27 The Angus County Development Plan, as modified in 1962, stated that:

'the object of defining the green belt is to assist in limiting expansion of the built-up areas of the City of Dundee and the Burghs of Monifieth and Carnoustie to prevent the merging of built-up areas in the County; to prevent the use of agricultural land for other development and to preserve and enhance the landscape setting of the City and the Burghs. The green belt is an area where the normal occupations of agriculture, horticulture and forestry predominate and in which townsmen may enjoy the pleasures of the countryside' (as quoted in Gateley 1983, p27).

5.28 The written statement of the First Quinquennial Review of the City of Dundee Development Plan 1966 (pp.20-21) states that 'the object of the definition of this Green Belt is to assist in limiting further expansion of the City; to prevent the use of agricultural land for development; and to preserve and enhance the landscape setting of the City'.

The former Green Belt regime

5.29 Both of these plans add that 'in the Green Belt, there will be absolute prohibition of the development except such as can be shown to be necessary and any planning consents given will contain provisions for the safeguarding of amenity' (Gateley, 1983, p27).

5.30 Within the inner boundary of the Green Belt, ie within Dundee, there was a substantial reserve of development land. The City had expanded its boundaries prior to Green Belt designation to provide it with a collar of 'golden land' on the city periphery. In addition, within the Green Belt itself, the policy in practice meant the prevention of sporadic development between certain villages, rather than a blanket prohibition of development. Perthshire County Council made provision for the expansion of the settlements of Longforgan and Invergowrie to the immediate west of the City, and in the Angus County Development Plan nine settlements within the Green Belt area were identified for "limited development" on suitable sites. This was taken to mean the infilling of gap sites and the rounding off of pre-existing settlement boundaries (County of Angus, 1973, unpublished report of the public inquiry into the 20 ^th amendment of the County of Angus Development Plan, Forfar).

5.31 After local government reorganisation in May 1975, strategic planning policy became the responsibility of Tayside Regional Council, with detailed local planning in the Green Belt area in and around the (expanded) boundaries of the new City of Dundee continuing to be shared between three District Authorities of the City of Dundee, Angus, and Perth and Kinross.

Figure 5.2

5.32 Prior to 1975, around 75% of Dundee's green belt fell within the administration of Angus County Council. After reorganisation the vast majority of the green belt fell within the boundary of the City of Dundee District Council (see Figure 5.2 above).

Abolition of the Green Belt

5.33 At the strategic level, Tayside Regional Council initially acknowledged the value of Green Belt policy to both the urban and rural areas in the 1977 Regional Report, which stated that 'the Regional Council supports the maintenance of the Dundee Green belt as an aid to orderly development of the City' (Tayside Regional Council, Regional Report, Dundee, para 33.8).

5.34 However, by 1980 the Regional Council's view had changed. It then considered that:

the success of the Green Belt in saving agricultural land is not clear since no other town in Tayside was subject to the same control and some housing developments have leap-frogged the Green Belt and have used good quality agricultural land on the edges of surrounding towns and villages. The Green Belt has not stimulated the development of policies and proposals to assist the townsman to enjoy the pleasures of the countryside and although it could be argued that it has prevented the physical coalescence of Dundee with Monifieth and Invergowrie the designation of a blanket Green Belt does not seem necessary for this particular purpose. (TRC, 1980, Tayside Structure Plan Report of Survey, April, Dundee, para 6.12)

5.35 In the 1980 Tayside Draft Structure Plan, the Regional Council proposed to remove the anomalous situation where no settlement other than Dundee is contained by Green Belt (despite similar pressures for development and need to protect landscape settings which are at least as those around Dundee), and therefore to replace Green Belt designation and objectives by general principles for development in the countryside. Against a context of the need for additional housing land in Dundee, and rural population decline, the intention was to give support to local community services, help support the maintenance of local post offices or retail businesses, support existing public transport operations, whilst at the same time avoiding development of good agricultural land and protecting landscape and nature conservation sites. Protection of the visual amenity of the countryside was seen as best being achieved by the District Councils setting appropriate design standards. Construction of second homes was seen as having a beneficial effect by increasing tourism potential and removing inflationary pressures on the existing housing stock.

5.36 When the Green Belt was first devised, the boundaries recognised that substantial areas on the perimeter of the built-up area would be required for industrial development, housing and open space. Most of this land had been developed by the time of the draft Structure Plan, and it was seen as being necessary to amend the Green Belt to allow development to proceed. Land needs projections to 1986 indicated the necessity to identity further development land on the periphery of the city.

In such circumstances, it is misleading to retain the present blanket Green Belt designation with its connotations of permanency. ( Tayside Structure Plan Consultative Draft Written Statement, March 1979, Dundee, para 7.16).

5.37 At the Examination in Public, there were differences of view presented by the District Councils, which to varying degrees distanced themselves from some of the arguments used by the Regional Council. Broadly, the Region's thinking seemed more appropriate to a remote rural area suffering decline than to the hinterland of a major city. None of the parties disputed the proposition that marginal rural communities would benefit from an increase in population, thus safeguarding essential services, but many felt that this could be accommodated within existing settlements under existing policy. However, it was also recognised that Green Belt policy had failed to prevent the spread of the city into surrounding agricultural land, since whenever it had been demonstrated that the need for such development was paramount, the inner boundary of the Green Belt had been amended.

5.38 The EIP Chairman concluded that, since the aims of Circular 40/1960 could be achieved in other ways, primarily through Local Plans, the continuance of the Green Belt was not essential in the particular circumstances of the Dundee city region, and recommended that the Regional Council's policy should stand. However, in the light of evidence presented by the District Councils, he further recommended that the statutory Green Belt should be replaced by the principles for development in the countryside.

Nature of the replacement regime

5.39 Since then, the population of Dundee and its remoter hinterland has been in decline, whilst there has been overall growth in the surrounding lowland settlements. In the period 1971-2001, the population of the city declined by 30,000 (Dundee and Angus Structure Plan Written Statement 2002, para 2.6). The focus of the 1988 Tayside Structure Plan was to continue with the strategy of providing for development opportunities throughout the region, but with increased emphasis on urban renewal and measures to combat rural depopulation (TRC, Tayside Structure Plan 1988, approved June 1989, Dundee). A further review of the Structure Plan was finalised in 1993 and approved in 1997.

5.40 As a result of local government reorganisation in April 1996, the administrative boundaries of the City of Dundee were contracted to align with the boundaries of the built up area of the City ( see Map 5.2). This, once again, returned much of the immediate (former green belt) hinterland to the north, east and west of the city to adjoining local authorities. The former Tayside Structure Plan has now been replaced by separate Structure Plans for Dundee and Angus (approved October 2002) and Perth and Kinross (approved June 2003).

5.41 The strategy for the Dundee and Angus Structure Plan 2001-2016 reinforces aims since the 1980 Tayside Structure Plan, though with explicit reference to sustainable development. There has been continuing population decline within the Structure Plan area, greatest within Dundee city (-30,000 1971-2001; -10,000 or -6.5% in the period 1991-2001 ). At the same time, there has been 2,945 (6.7%) household growth in Angus and 6,525 (12.5%) in Perth & Kinross, against static household numbers in Dundee. Strategic concerns include maintaining links between city, towns, villages and remoter areas for access to services and employment. The Plan proposes: strategic land releases on the west side of the city (exploiting redundant hospital land within the former Green Belt area), to avoid cross city commuting and extend locational choice close to the trunk road network; opportunities for rural diversification, and encouragement of development which supports rural population and local services.

5.42 The strategy includes enhancing Dundee as the regional centre, promoting and enhancing the identity, quality and prosperity of the network of the Angus towns and villages, supporting development in rural areas which sustains viable communities, protects and improves the countryside and maintains the quality of valued landscapes and the natural and built heritage. Most new development is to be accommodated within existing settlements and planned extensions. This includes accommodating sensitive residential development in the countryside. The strategy promotes: additional land release on the west side of the city; but controls the amount of greenfield land for housing development in other sectors of the city and in the wider Dundee and South Angus Housing Market Area. It also guides the majority of development in South Angus towards the larger settlements with the capacity to accommodate it, requiring it to be well integrated with transport infrastructure; to support diversification of the rural economy; and maintain the population and services in rural communities. The Dundee and Angus Structure Plan thus continues the broad development strategy first established in the 1980 Structure Plan, but within an explicit framework for sustainable development.

Urban Form

5.43 Since the abolition of the Green Belt in 1980, the physical separation of the city with Monifieth to the east and Invergowrie to the west has been lost, primarily to residential development in both cases, but also as a consequence of the development of the Dundee Technology Park to the west. Physical coalescence has occurred as a result of land release for planned developments rather than through the appeals process. In the current Dundee Local Plan, further developments of former Green Belt land within the present city boundary are planned to the west (western villages, former site of Liff hospital) and the north and north-east through a policy of promoting infill of settlements. Otherwise, the boundary of the built-up area of the city has not moved appreciably northwards in the period since 1980.

5.44 For the area of former Green Belt included within the Angus Local Plan, development policy differentiates this area from the remoter hinterland of North Angus. Whilst in the latter, individual new houses will only be acceptable if they are on sites that are identifiable with an existing housing or building group, in the former there continues to be a policy of providing for a range of development opportunities in towns and villages throughout the area. All allocated housing land lies within an identified settlement. Again, this continues the policy since the abolition of the green belt of encouraging development in towns and villages, and has resulted in significant expansions of many of these (see Figure 5.3).

Figure 5.3

Comments

5.45 The original justification of the Dundee Green Belt rested quite heavily on agricultural land protection, which was already becoming an obsolete purpose by the mid-1980s. Landscape setting and prevention of coalescence seem to have been seen as functions as well, but the large scale of the Belt was a sledgehammer to crack a nut as far as the two settlements mentioned were concerned. Subsequent decisions suggest that this was not a very strong concern locally. Urban regeneration did not feature in the debates, somewhat surprisingly in view of Dundee's subsequent performance in this regard, and neither did sustainable transport. The substitution of general policies for development in the countryside and protection for particular sites may be seen as a more 'modern' policy approach. However, the main justification for removing the Belt was the need to allow growth within the villages it contained, and yet the original policy appeared to make provision for precisely this. The need to identify land for future development needs on the city fringe was also a factor, however, but associated with an assumed 'permanency' of Green Belt designation. In practice, both before and after 'abolition', there was a willingness to allocate former Green Belt sites to support strategic developments. Where Green Belt abolition probably made more difference was that it was associated with the institution of a relatively liberal regime on residential development in and around villages in the Dundee hinterland. This has probably contributed in some measure to the decentralisation of population and household numbers out of the City. However, the overall impact of policy has not been dramatic because of the relatively low prevailing level of demand in this City region.

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