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1a NOTE OF INTERVIEW WITH STIRLING COUNCIL

1. Audit period June - June. Liaison with HfS over the past two years has been good, with no need for meetings. Audits have been agreed by exchange of correspondence. The process to agreement has nevertheless taken 6 months. The main reason for this has been the lack of imperative to complete. It could be completed in less than 4 months.

2. The Council note inconsistency with its record of house completions and quarterly returns, which is thought to result from poor record keeping by Building Control. Although the Audit is mostly based on building control returns, inconsistencies are checked on site.

3. Windfall is only included in the audit when planning permission is granted. No assumptions are made in the Audit. The Structure Plan assumes a windfall contribution to its housing requirement.

4. Small sites of less than 4 units are not included in the Audit. The Council does not see a difficulty in including in future, but would be reluctant to also include full schedules. A summary table would be appropriate.

5. The Audit currently only provides 5yrs programming. The Council has no objection to including 7yrs programming, but questions the value of very speculative assumptions for later years.

6. In some cases the Audit does attempt to predict house types (e.g. flats/houses). However, this is quite difficult because the developers themselves cannot provide this information until planning application submission. However, it was agreed that there could be some degree of speculation. It was noted that the Council keep a record of house type completions. Perhaps this could be reported retrospectively.

7. The expected proportion of affordable housing is recorded. This is, however, based on the Council's definition of affordable housing and its policy requirement (in terms of percentage). The problem with this was noted as perhaps being optimistic due to future negotiations on number and percentage RSL.

8. Generally speaking, the Audit is not used in the Council beyond its primary function of assessing housing land supply against the structure plan requirement. In this respect, however, the information is clearly expressed within the Audit.

9. Relating to the above point, the Audit is fairly restricted in its use for forward planning of resource provision e.g.

• Communities Scotland are consulted but rarely respond. Forward programming of social housing and funding programmes are addressed through other mechanisms.
• Scottish Water are consulted but do not appear to have any regard for the document. They will only include developments in their forward planning programme if granted planning permission.
• Transport Scotland are consulted but make little input. They appear to rely more on discussions relating to the provisions of the development plan.
• More use could be made of the Audit within the Council e.g. Education, Housing, Waste Management.

In general it was felt that the Audit could be of greater use as the basis for infrastructure delivery.

10. The Audit does not specifically identify constrained sites - instead it does not indicate programming within 5 years for 'constrained' sites. It was agreed that the problem with this approach was that there was no distinction between sites that are 'time/programme constrained' and those which are physically constrained. It was agreed that the Audit could usefully note physical constraints and actions required to remove constraint. In terms of programming, the Council currently considers that if a site cannot produce completions within 5 years, it is 'potentially effective'.

11. The Council did not think it would add much value to the Audit, to include more detailed historical information on sites, as this would add to the size of the document and might require appendices. It was thought that the particular merit of the Stirling Audit was including most information on one page, making it an 'easy read'.

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