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GENERAL POLICY CONTEXT
Sustainable Development
4. The Scottish Executive - alongside the other UK administrations - has committed itself to working towards a sustainable development goal of enabling all people throughout the world to satisfy their basic needs and enjoy a better quality of life without compromising the quality of life of future generations.
5. To do so, it has signed up to five guiding principles for sustainable development, which can be paraphrased as protecting the environment and securing social progress by means of a healthy economy, participative governance and engagement, and the effective use of scientific evidence. To be sustainable, a policy must respect all five principles:
- Living within environmental limits
- Ensuring a strong, healthy and just society
- Achieving a sustainable economy
- Promoting good governance
- Using sound science responsibly
6. The Scottish Executive's strategy Choosing Our Future (2005) sets out at a high level what we are trying to achieve in Scotland to give effect to the principles, structured around 4 broad outcomes: the well-being of Scotland's people, supporting thriving communities, protecting Scotland's natural heritage and resources, and Scotland's global contribution. The strategy emphasises a number of areas where planning can contribute to sustainable development, particularly in the location, design and, in some cases, operation and maintenance of development.
Climate Change
7. Changing our Ways: Scotland's Climate Change Programme (2006) recognises the role of planning in responding to climate change and emphasises that the 5 guiding principles for sustainable development are also relevant to climate change. The programme, the first Annual Report on which was published in March 2007, indicates that planning policies must explicitly address the need both to help mitigate the causes of climate change, and to adapt to its impacts . Some climate change impacts are inevitable and the need to find ways to adapt will become increasingly important, given that climate change is increasingly being acknowledged as an economic as well as an environmental imperative. As a result, climate change should be seen as the principal challenge in sustainable development.
8. The likely implications of climate change for planning over the foreseeable future are likely to be:
- Coast - increased demand for coastal protection works and, in some areas, managed realignment.
- Flooding - more inland locations at significant risk of flooding, including sewer flooding, with increased demand for flood prevention schemes and greater development pressure on land least at risk.
- Storms - some upland and otherwise exposed sites may become uninhabitable; existing development may need strengthening or protection. More robust construction may be needed, especially infrastructure, with pressure for improvement/rebuilding.
- Landslips - likely to become more common, and threaten some existing developments, including roads and railways, and make some land undevelopable; in some cases engineering works will be needed to make sites developable.
- Waterlogged ground/rising ground water - likely to be a growing problem with some sites becoming undevelopable, leading to pressures in different locations and demand for retro-fit of land drainage systems.
- Natural environment - habitats and their associated designations may migrate northwards and upwards, some wetlands will be vulnerable, some new ones will come into being and ecosystems will change. Planning policies and designations will need reconsideration.
- Historic environment - important coastal sites will be vulnerable to erosion or flooding, masonry structures will be vulnerable to wind and water damage, and wetland and other below ground deposits may be damaged as a result of change to their environmental conditions.
- Rural areas - growing seasons will be longer, new crops will be possible, forests will mature more quickly, more land is likely to be capable of afforestation and cropping, all of which will have implications for location and nature of rural development.
9. Climate change is therefore likely to impact on existing development in a number of ways, resulting in demands for various forms of protection and improvement works, and fuelling changes in the location of development pressures.
10. Against that background, planning should:
- Set out and deliver patterns of urban growth and regeneration that help secure the fullest use of sustainable modes of transport and overall reduce the need for travel, particularly by private car.
- Promote low carbon and zero carbon buildings, particularly through the use of efficient, decentralised and renewable energy systems in new development.
- Seek to ensure that new development by its location, type and design contributes to climate change mitigation as well as adapts to an overall rise in temperatures and other changes in climate, for example, wetter and milder winters, rising sea levels and greater storminess.
- Seek benefits and environmental enhancements from climate change mitigation and adaptation, for example, green networks which allow for species migration and 'soft engineering' for flood defences which will support biodiversity and contribute to sustainable flood management.
Strategic Environmental Assessment
11. Strategic Environmental Assessment ( SEA) is a key tool for assessing the potentially significant environmental impacts of public plans, programmes and strategies ( PPS). It also extends the opportunities for public participation in decision making at an early and effective stage in the plan preparation process.
12. It is a requirement of the Environmental Assessment (Scotland) Act 2005 that significant effects on the environment including on air, climatic factors, soil, water, cultural heritage, population, biodiversity and landscape must be assessed. Importantly, where SEA identifies significant environmental impacts, the Act requires that measures are considered that can, as fully as possible, prevent, reduce or offset these impacts. However, it may not necessarily follow in every case that the identified environmental effects and any associated mitigation measures can be given precedence over social and economic factors within a development plan. Instead, the primary benefit of SEA lies in the fact that it is an open and transparent process that ensures the environmental effects of PPS, including reasonable alternatives, are properly examined and that findings are conveyed to those that will be, or are likely to be, affected by the PPS.
13. It is clear that planning authorities have to balance the full range of economic, social and environmental factors when drawing up development plans. Those who opt to undertake a broader Sustainability Appraisal approach when preparing theses plans, will have to ensure they are fully compliant with the requirements of the Act, as this focuses on the environmental provisions of the SEA Directive and does not promote assessment of social and economic policy impacts beyond this.
14. Further advice on SEA can be found in Environmental Assessment of Development Plans (2003) and in the SEA Tool Kit (2006), which includes SEA templates. Wider guidance and examples of good practice in SEA are also available, including work focusing on particular environmental topics, such as the UKCIP sponsored advice on assessing climatic factors and guidance focusing on specific themes such as transport, minerals and waste plans and policies.
"The Executive's top priority is promoting sustainable economic growth to create a modern and vibrant Scotland. A modern, up to date planning system is critical to achieving that objective. Sustainable growth requires development, and the role of planning is to ensure that this development is encouraged and managed in a sustainable way." Jack McConnell, First Minister & Nicol Stephen, Deputy First Minister, Scottish Executive, Modernising the Planning System, 2005
Planning Modernisation
15. As well as introducing a new requirement for the National Planning Framework and development plans to contribute to sustainable development, the Planning etc. (Scotland) Act 2006 introduces a package of reforms to the planning system. The 4 objectives of modernisation are to deliver a system that is efficient, inclusive, fit for purpose and sustainable. The last objective seeks to ensure better outcomes from the planning process. The White Paper Modernising the Planning System (2005) states that for development to be sustainable, 'it must be the right development, in the right place, of the right quality and at the right time.'
16. A key element of modernisation has been to place the preparation of the National Planning Framework on a statutory footing. In addition to setting out a long-term spatial development strategy, the framework will identify national developments. This will ensure that key decisions about significant projects - essentially in the areas of transport, energy and environmental infrastructure, which may impact on the future sustainability of Scotland - are taken at the national level, following widespread engagement with communities and other stakeholders. A participation statement setting out how stakeholders and the public at large will be involved in the preparation of the second National Planning Framework was published in January 2007. The framework will be subject to strategic environmental assessment, ensuring that issues of environmental sustainability are specifically addressed.
17. Crucially, the reforms put new emphasis on building trust with communities, by listening and taking their views into account. The aim is to enable communities to engage early in the planning process, guaranteeing that people have their voices heard while proposals are still at an early stage. The reforms cannot guarantee that decisions on planning and infrastructure will meet with universal support but they will put in place arrangements for more inclusive, transparent and accountable decision making.
Building Standards
18. To deliver sustainable development in an effective way there should be close, collaborative working between planning authorities and those responsible for the building standards system. The Scottish Building Standards Agency ( SBSA) is responsible for the standards for buildings in Scotland. SBSA's report Sustainable Development Policy into Practice - New Buildings (2006) describes progress in furthering the sustainable development of new buildings, both domestic and non-domestic. While the sustainable development of new buildings is already encouraged by current building regulations, further amendments to the standards, for example, on access, energy, heating and ventilation, take effect in May 2007. These changes, and future amendments beyond 2007, will continue to improve the performance of new buildings, towards the goal of sustainable development. Further advice on the application of the standards to traditionally constructed buildings is due to be published shortly by Historic Scotland, to help facilitate the re-use of existing domestic and industrial buildings.
19. Applications for building warrants are made to local authorities, all of which have been appointed as 'verifiers' for the building standards system. There is also optional certification for certain aspects of design and construction by approved certifiers. The SBSA website ( www.sbsa.gov.uk) gives information on the certification system.
Personal Responsibility
20. Essentially the role of the planning system is to ensure that, in the location and design of new development, individuals including developers, operators and users of buildings have a framework to make choices about how their behaviours and actions can contribute to sustainable development. For example, a new development which, because of its location and design, has limited opportunities for public transport, cycling and walking, will encourage patterns of travel and movement which are inherently unsustainable and increase carbon emissions.
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