This is the APRS response to a call from the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, for views on the implementation of NPF4 and the progress made over the past year. Our response touches on issues of biodiversity, energy, the Housing Land Audit and community benefit.
Scottish Government’s Fourth National Planning Framework – Scottish Parliament – Citizen Space
APRS Response to the call for views
In the two years since NPF4’s adoption we have seen some positive effects and an increasing awareness and attention given to some of the framework’s key policy areas such as climate impacts, halting biodiversity loss and local living. However, actual implementation appears patchy and inconsistent, hindered by lack of national guidance, sufficient resourcing for planning and related services and perhaps the time-lag in the planning system whereby sites and applications that do not seem consistent with NPF4, but which were identified or submitted before its adoption are still going through the system.
Implementation of policy 3 Biodiversity
Whilst we recognise that in someways it is still early days in the implementation of NPF4, we are also dismayed that some irreversible decisions are being made with what seems to be inadequate guidance available, a lack of understanding of biodiversity, and sometimes relying on incomplete baseline data.
The fact that we are two years into NPF4 and the national guidance and biodiversity metric work required to support the policy implementation are still not complete, highlights that this work has not been given the resources required.
Uncertainty has been raised in some planning cases as to whether Biodiversity in Policy 3 refers to resident biodiversity within the ‘red lines’ of development or also to habitats and biodiversity beyond the ‘red lines’ but that will be impacted by development.
Other concerns raised include:
– the inadequacy of some ecological surveys to gauge existing biodiversity on a site, especially if carried out mainly as a desk survey with a brief site visit on one day of the year.
– inability of the system to engage with local people’s biodiversity knowledge at an early enough stage in the planning process. – concerns over use of a metric – lack of understanding of how it works, and a tendency to focus on a speculative positive ‘biodiversity figure’ and overlook gaps or uncertainties.
– a kicking of the can down the decision-making line to just covering biodiversity with conditions, rather than “giving significant weight” to the nature crisis. – concern that those conditions won’t be monitored or enforced due to lack of resourcing for enforcement within planning teams. – the difficulty for communities to engage with the system to get their knowledge of local biodiversity into the system in a timely and effective way – even where it involves recordings of protected species or surveys carried out by professional ecologists for community groups.
An additional resourcing point that seems less frequently mentioned is that if we are going to remedy the lack of biological data that exists in many areas of Scotland, we need much more recording to happen, probably much of it on a volunteer or citizen science basis. But importantly, we also need continuing and enhanced resourcing of the biological recording system to ensure the records are as reliable, complete and up-to-date as possible and that the system could process any increase in records being provided.
Policy 5 Soils
We have noted a number of decisions where applicants have contended that because a site was not actively being used for agriculture the limited protection against development for prime agricultural land in policy 5(b) should be disregarded. Upholding the protections for these soil types rightly recognises the longterm resource value of these sites, rather than basing a decision on a short-term state of use.
Policy 11 Energy
The planning system as well as many communities seem overwhelmed by the number and scale of energy related proposals. Whilst policy 11e) contains a long list of types of impacts that must be addressed in proposals there is concern that a great number of developments are being permission before national biodiversity guidance has been finalised to ensure the requirements of policy 3 are achieved.
“Cumulative impacts” are included in the list of impacts at 11e)xiii but we feel further clarity and guidance is needed on how this can be assessed and addressed.
The wording of 11e)ii) on significant landscape and visual impacts seems to play down those very real impacts by saying they are “to be expected for some forms of renewable energy”. It goes on to suggest that if appropriate design mitigation has been applied, they will generally be considered to be acceptable”. Many communities across Scotland would take issue with both the idea that appropriate design mitigation is possible , especially of very big structures or ones that require lighting 24/7, or that the impacts are “generally considered acceptable”. We suspect guidance on the cumulative landscape and visual impacts needs to be revisited given the current scale of infrastructure.
Implementation of policy 16
The delivery of the Mossend judgement has resulted in better clarity in how some aspects of policy 16, particularly 16(f), are to be interpreted, which is welcomed.
It is still too early to judge how new delivery programmes and deliverable housing land pipelines will operate. We were glad to see that the Scottish Government has now published new guidance on Housing Land Audits which should help standardise methodology for producing HLAs. However, this wasn’t subject to public consultation and there hasn’t been an obvious opportunity to raise concern that some inconsistencies or ambiguities in it, and between it and NPF4, could be exploited in future. Examples of this are references to the Local Housing Land Requirement (LHLR) as a “housing target” rather than a housing land requirement. The LHLR, is required to be at least as large as the MATHLR which itself includes a “flexibility” (of an additional allocation of at least 25%), to allow for the eventuality that some of the allocated land turns out to be constrained and not deliverable. There also seems to be a potential discrepancy between the definition of ‘deliverable’ in NPF4 and how it is used in the HLA guidance. The concern would be that such inconsistencies could be used to unnecessarily push for even more land to be added into LDP allocations. This would potentially reduce the effectiveness of Scotland’s plan-led system and one of NPF4’s key policy outcomes of delivering the “right houses in the right place”. Resulting in weaker ability to deliver on a range of policies relating to the environment and wellbeing such as climate and biodiversity, soils, brownfield, local living, and infrastructure first.
Community benefit statements
The function and effectiveness of Statements of Community Benefit (Policy 16b) were the subject of a discussion hosted by Scottish Government in November 2024. This highlighted the lack of input communities have into the contents of the statements, or any chance for communities to critique them or indeed of there being any means of ensuring the stated benefits are actually delivered. The current purpose of the statement seems to be as an easily digestible summary of the developer’s view of the benefits of a proposal, without any eventual checks on whether these are delivered, or any acknowledgements of ‘disbenefits’ to a community as a result of a proposal. It has been suggested that a template is produced to allow for standardising of the statements but the concerns remain.
About APRS
APRS, Action to Protect Rural Scotland, is Scotland longest established environmental charity (Scottish Charity Number SC016139) having been founded in 1926 to protect Scotland’s world renowned landscapes and the amenity of the countryside. We have three part-time staff and volunteers and members throughout Scotland and beyond. We are funded by membership subscriptions, donations and grants from charitable foundations. We changed our name from the the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland in 2023.
APRS’s objectives include: to protect and enhance Scotland’s rural landscapes for future generations; to promote effective planning and landscape protection systems; to encourage genuinely sustainable development; and, to raise awareness of the importance of Scotland’s landscapes to its people and economy. Our work includes involvement in national policy development and advocacy and advising members of the public on how to respond to proposals which affect their local landscapes.