Author: Falkirk Foundation

Falkirk Foundation, the charity arm of Falkirk Football Club, is pleased to announce that an outline agreement has been reached to progress towards the Community Asset Transfer of Woodlands Games Hall & Pitch to a new community enterprise called Woodlands Community Sports Ltd.

The proposal will see the Foundation working in partnership with Comely Park Parent Council to bring the under threat facility back to life with an initial £200,000 grant investment secured from the Landfill Communities Fund. This initial investment will see a brand new 3G pitch installed to replace the existing surface together with upgrades to floodlighting, fencing and equipment.

A second round of fundraising is now underway to secure the full asset transfer. This will involve investing in the games hall building to replace and modernise existing facilities and upgrade for a range of community uses.

The upgrades will secure the future of the games hall and pitch for the long term provision of physical education at Comely Park Primary School, who utilise the facilities during term time, provide a new venue for delivery of Falkirk Foundation’s Community Football programme and provide a modern and openly accessible facility for a range of sporting and community users in the Falkirk area.

Craig Campbell, Chief Executive of Falkirk Foundation said: “This is a brilliant example of true partnership between the local council and the local community, working for the benefit of local children. The new investment we are delivering will create a first-class facility for young children to play sport and will bring fresh energy to a facility right in the centre of Falkirk. We believe this will inspire other community organisations throughout Scotland to look at how they can secure the long-term provision of facilities in their own areas through Community Asset Transfer.”

Doug Henderson, Chairman of Falkirk Football Club commented: “This is an excellent example of the Football Club and the Foundation working with Falkirk Council and the local community to preserve and extend vital services. This will be a good boost for the local community in the Woodlands area and the wider community in Falkirk.

“I have always believed that preserving local sporting facilities is a vital part of promoting activities that are important for health and fun.”

Mel Brookes, Joint Chair at Comely Park Parent Council added: “After many months of hard work, we’re delighted to have been able to secure the future of sports and activities for the children of Comely Park and the local area.  We’re convinced this project will provide a blueprint for other community groups to follow in future years.”

Author: Will Humphries The Times

Life on the tiny island of Kerrera is rarely dull but can mean overcoming a north-south divide that has left two communities isolated from each other, despite the short distances involved.

Gill Vollum has a red Royal Mail off-road vehicle to make her deliveries across deeply rutted farm tracks

The postwoman has to drive into the sea sometimes to make deliveries, while attending parties may mean yomping over miles of bog in the dark

That may change when the local council discusses plans to build the island’s first road — linking the opposite ends of the four-mile-long Inner Hebridean island, in Oban Bay, for the first time.

There is a catch — the council is only likely to approve design work to the road if islanders lead the effort to raise the £500,000 cost.

Argyll & Bute council members say that they may have to sell land for housing plots and find funding grants themselves to make the dream a reality. In turn, islanders are insisting that officials help to fund the project.

Martin Shields, chairman of the island development trust, said its status as a charity meant that it “might be able to access pockets of funding that council or government cannot” but that responsibility remained with the council.

“The island is not looking to fund the construction of this road but we are more than willing to help where we can,” he said. “Everyone knows that councils are struggling, nevertheless it is their responsibility to lead on finding funding and bring together partners in the hope that we can finally connect the island.”

Kerrera, where parrots outnumber people thanks to its exotic bird sanctuary, has enjoyed a revival in recent years, with families returning from the mainland.

However, with islanders roughly split into two communities at either end of Kerrera the lack of a connecting road means that simple tasks such as travelling to a Christmas party or delivering the mail take on epic proportions.

“Trying to get up to the north end of the island is very hard,” she said. “It’s not really a track to the north — it goes through fields and the middle bit is really a great huge bog, and at some point the sea goes into that bog and you go wheel-deep in seawater.”

She added: “We have our community Christmas party on Saturday and getting half the children to meet Santa is a complete logistical nightmare.

“There are only 45 people on the island and some haven’t met each other since the last Christmas party and it’s not because we are miserable so-and-so’s.

“There is one mum with an 18-month-old son who is having to put him in a backpack and walk through the bog for two and a half miles to make the party.”

There is no pub, church or general store and all supplies come from Oban two miles away on the mainland. A main ferry terminal serves the south and a road would remove the need for the two smaller ferries serving the bay near Ardentrive Farm to the north.

Susan Rimmer, 68, who moved to Kerrera from her native New York two decades ago, said: “You really have to go out of your way to meet friends. They have to go by quad bike or tractor or by boat.”

In his report to the council’s policy and resources committee, Jim Smith, head of roads, said: “Residents view the provision of a road as a lifeline link due to concerns regarding existing access for emergency services and medical staff to the island.”

Author: Dunblane Community Council

                                                    DUNBLANE COMMUNITY COUNCIL.                                                                   

                                        Dunblane – Park of Keir – Tennis Centre and Housing 

Dear First Minister,

As the chair of Dunblane Community Council I am writing to you about the proposed development of a large tennis centre and housing at the Park of Keir, Dunblane, which is currently being considered by Kevin Stewart, Planning Minister (DPEA case PPA-390-2042).

Last week, it is reported that John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, has written to you in support of the development, and that his representation ‘will be taken into account’ by the Scottish Government. 

It is regrettable that the Speaker of the House of Commons should seek to intervene in a Scottish planning matter, and for him to press such a strong case for a commercial development is deplorable.

However, as the Scottish Government has said that it will consider additional representations about this planning appeal, I would be grateful if you could take into account our updated view of this development, which follow from a number of recent announcements.  

Dunblane Community Council welcomes the Scottish Government’s plan to give communities a more active role in planning their future. Kevin Stewart’s announcement on 22 December 2016 on the extension of the Community Empowerment Act stated that “When people have greater control of their own future, they are more engaged and are able to tackle barriers to making their communities wealthier and fairer.”  We agree completely with that sentiment.

The subsequent launch on 10 January 2017 of a consultation on the future of the Scottish planning system entitled “Places, people and planning” shows the desire to seek greater involvement from communities in the planning process.  We not only support this desire, we intend to participate fully.

Our decision to oppose this particular development at Park of Keir, Dunblane, has been informed by a full analysis of the facts and reflects the views of the Dunblane community.

In our full participation in the Local Planning Inquiry, we based our case on two fundamental points: the damage to our community by the scale of the development, especially the housing, and its location in the green space which separates us from adjacent communities and which maintains the identity of our town with its own 1,000 year history.

Park of Keir is a precious site, critical to the special identity of our community, which would be changed beyond recognition if the proposal is approved. Yet this major facility is being proposed without a viable ongoing business plan and on the basis of the information presented will probably need on-going financial support. 

Our analysis clearly established that the twelve-court tennis centre and the accompanying golf facility require an unrealistically high level of utilisation just to approach a break-even operation.  The proposal is reliant on users coming from a wide area of Central Scotland – as Judy Murray’s description of the site: “at a roundabout slap-bang in the middle of Scotland” indicates.  The site is only realistically accessible by car, which renders it unusable by large sectors of the population, especially the very people that the centre is intended to help. 

The ‘enabling housing development’ offers little real financial support to the tennis facility, once the landowners and development costs are paid. 

Judy Murray admits that the tennis facilities will run at a loss, but the six hole golf course, which is included to provide ongoing financial support is using an untried, large hole, format with no certainty that it will produce the income necessary to support all the other aspirations.

The Local Planning Inquiry closed in September 2016, almost five months ago. 

On 20 December 2016 the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) and sportscotland announced a ground-breaking £15 million ?joint-funding agreement to start in 2017. Their ambition, in partnership with Tennis Scotland, is to transform tennis in Scotland by doubling the number of covered courts from 112 to 225 over the next 5-10 years, with the objective of significantly increasing participation. They are looking for local partners who can bring a financial contribution to make the investment more sustainable. The full application plan for community led bids will be established by April 2017.

This is exactly what Judy Murray has been seeking: as she said about the £40m LTA facility at Roehampton (which has since closed down) “If someone had given me £40?million I would have built 40 £1?million centres.”

This announcement by the LTA is critical to the outcome of the Park of Keir appeal, as had it been confirmed prior to the Local Planning Inquiry we would have been able to demonstrate that the Park of Keir proposal is even less financially viable than we demonstrated at the Inquiry.

We are delighted to see that Judy Murray’s persistence has been rewarded by the LTA and that communities all over Scotland will be able to benefit from the Murray legacy.  Judy Murray presented the Park of Keir project as the only way she could achieve a lasting legacy, but the funding to start the creation of another 113 indoor tennis courts across Scotland removes a major part of the justification of this big central tennis facility, as many of the projected users will have local indoor tennis facilities much nearer to their home.  Therefore, even fewer people will need or want to spend time and money driving to Park of Keir, and the justification for such a facility on this site will have gone.

The LTA Chief Executive Michael Downey stated in this announcement “this investment will bring certainty of play to a climate that sees on average 200 days of rain a year”.  We agree with this, which is why we argued that the Park of Keir’s six planned outdoor courts will be unusable for large parts of the year, although they add significantly to the capital and ongoing cost requirements. 

In effect, the LTA and sportscotland have now found the funding to deliver Judy Murray’s preferred solution.  We consider it is doubtful that Judy Murray would have embarked on this controversial and strongly opposed course of action over three years ago, if the LTA/sportscotland funding had been available then.

To sum up, we feel it would be a travesty if the Murray legacy programme, which is focused on community involvement and community led bids, resulted in their home town of Dunblane becoming the one place where a tennis centre was imposed on the community against its wishes.

We ask that you show decisive leadership, ignore the pressure from the celebrities, politicians and sports writers, and reject this expensive, high risk and divisive development. That would allow us to work with the LTA, sportscotland and the Murray family to find a community-led solution to the provision of tennis facilities in Dunblane – a solution that is appropriate to the size of the town and to its place at the heart of the tennis revival in Britain.

Yours sincerely,

Terence O’Byrne, Chair Dunblane Community Council

Author: Oliver Escobar

Is it time for a Citizens’ Assembly in the Scottish Parliament?

When: 3-4:30pm, Monday March 20th

Where: University of Edinburgh – Room 1.18, Paterson’s Land, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8AQ

With the seemingly unstoppable rise of populism and the word “post-truth” being nominated as the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2016, is it time to re-imagine democracy? Would incorporating ordinary people into government take the sting out of the populist appeal?

Join us to deliberate together on the merits of adding a Citizens’ Assembly as a second chamber to the Scottish Parliament. This chamber could be composed of 73 representative, randomly selected citizens (one from each constituency, balanced to be gender and age representative) who deliberate upon and review proposed government legislation and pass informed judgement upon it – it would be an institutionalised jury of the people. Whether they would have the power to reject or only delay legislation is an open question.

A panel of four critics and proponents will present arguments for and against the idea and join in small-group discussions – come to listen to others and have your own say on the proposal to have a Citizens’ Assembly in the Scottish Parliament.

Panel: Brett Hennig (author, director of the Sortition Foundation), Robin McAlpine (director of Common Space, Scotland), Angela Haggerty (journalist, broadcaster, editor), Marc Geddes (Lecturer in British Politics, University of Edinburgh). Hosted by Oliver Escobar from University of Edinburgh.

Author: Brian Wilson, The Scottish Review

When I first became interested in the Crown Estate Commission, more than 30 years ago, I could hardly believe my luck on reading Section 1, Clause 1 (5) of the Crown Estate Act 1961 – the legislation which, to this day, governs the workings of this curious organisation.

It states: ‘The validity of transactions entered into by the Commissioners shall not be called in question on any suggestion of their not having acted in accordance with the provisions of this Act regulating the exercise of their powers, or of their having acted in excess of their authority, nor shall any person dealing with the Commissioners be concerned to inquire as to the extent of their authority or the observance of any restrictions on the exercise of their powers’.

I doubt if there is another catch-all clause like it on the statute book, effectively giving the Crown Estate Commissioners the power to do exactly as they saw fit and making it illegal for anyone to question their behaviour. What an open door this presented for law-breaking on the cheap, since it was scarcely credible that anyone in breach of Clause 1(5) would be prosecuted or placed in the tower for such an act of lese-majeste, while the off-chance of such martyrdom offered a journalistic bonus.

The problem at that time was that the Crown Estate Commissioners acted with all the arrogance that the legislation encouraged. Most people outside of London’s most elegant squares and thoroughfares had never heard of them. They managed most of the foreshore and seabed and a scatter of rural estates including a few in Scotland but, overwhelmingly, the value of their portfolio lay in lucrative metropolitan property and attracted little interest from persons ‘concerned to inquire’ about anything.

From my perspective, it was the advent of Scotland’s salmon farming industry which changed all that. It came to my attention that whole sea lochs on the west coast were being leased willy-nilly to multinational companies by the Crown Estate without any consultation with local communities or elected authorities. At that time, there was a reasonable prospect that this new industry might have developed through small-scale, locally-owned businesses, consistent with the pluralistic economy of the crofting counties.

Instead, in total secrecy from an office in Burlington Place, the Crown Estate had pre-empted that possibility by doing deals with Unilever, Booker McConnell and the like. At that time, the Scottish interest was exclusively represented by the 8th Earl of Mansfield, who acquired the rank of First Crown Estate Commissioner. The more one delved into the Commission’s role as owner of the seabed round most of the Scottish coast, the more local scandals emerged about its high-handed and capricious behaviour.

Throughout the intervening years, I have taken some satisfaction from breaching Section 1, Clause 1 (5) of the Crown Estate Act 1961 as often as possible. It would be disingenuous to pretend that nothing has changed in the interim and, I hope, in part as a result. The Crown Estate has been pushed gradually into greater accountability and, in 2007, was relieved of its regulatory function over the seabed. It has grudgingly given some money back to the aquaculture industry by funding research and since 2012 it has paid into a Coastal Communities Fund which dispenses grants to local projects.

None of this, however, goes to the root of the offence which is that a primary natural resource, the seabed, is owned by an unaccountable body for which ‘the marine estate’ is a minor sideshow in financial terms, compared to the onshore property empire that it manages. The net revenues which flow from the Scottish end of the Crown Estate to the Treasury are relatively minor but would still be better spent in coastal communities than subsumed into the great maw of the consolidated fund.

There is also the chimera of marine renewables to be taken account of. Even though the rhetoric has by far exceeded the reality, there is still the potential for substantial revenues from such projects as ever materialise. Is the role of local communities to be restricted to watching the lights on offshore windfarms or tidal arrays twinkling in the distance, or will there be revenues accruing – just as there would be, as of right, if the developments took place on land under crofting tenure?

As the aura of unaccountability around the Crown Estate has gradually broken down, the case for democratisation and devolution has grown. Both the Calman and Smith Commissions recommended that the Scottish Estate should be devolved. This principle was incorporated into the Scotland Act of 2016 and in future revenues will be paid into the Scottish consolidated fund. Earlier this month, the Scottish government initiated a consultation on how the Scottish Estate is to be managed.

On all past form, the preference of the current regime would be to create a Scotland-wide body as close to ministerial control as possible, with the money staying in a central pot to be branded as their own munificent largesse. Fortunately, the Smith Commission very deliberately set out to pre-empt this approach. Following the precedent set by Danny Alexander when, as chief secretary to the Treasury he established the coastal communities fund, the Smith Commission made clear that it saw Edinburgh only as a bureaucratic resting place for the powers and funds which are to be devolved.

It stated: ‘Following this transfer, responsibility of those assets will be further devolved to local authority areas such as Orkney, Shetland, Na h-Eilean Siar or other areas who seek such responsibilities’. Unless the Scottish government accedes to that very specific direction from the Smith Commission, this will be the central area of contention when legislation eventually appears. To people living in Scotland’s coastal communities, entrusting control and revenues to a quango in Edinburgh would represent little if any improvement.

There is nothing in the consultation paper which suggests that devolution of the land-based Scottish Estate will amount to anything much more than a change of brass signs on the Dean Village office. Yet here, surely, is the opportunity to create a vehicle which can play a major role in the process of Scottish land reform – if, indeed, there is any serious interest in that cause. When all the Crown flummery is stripped away, this Estate is a repository for publicly-owned land and an objective of those charged with managing the Scottish Estate should be to extend it, not least by testing current assertions of private ownership.

This issue was signposted in 2000 when John MacLeod, an opera singer, tried to sell a large proportion of the Cuillin mountain range for £10 million in order to fund the restoration of Dunvegan Castle. I was in the Scotland Office at that time and asked the Crown Estate to test Mr MacLeod’s legal title. Quite simply, if it did not exist, then the mountains in question would belong to the Crown (or in future, The Scottish Estate) rather than to him.

The Crown Estate sought legal advice which produced ambiguous conclusions. Mr MacLeod’s ancient titles were ‘capable of including the Cuillins’ but there was no conclusive evidence that they did so. However, there was also insufficient evidence for the Crown to mount a claim of ownership. At the time, I said it had been a worthwhile exercise: ‘This is the first occasion on which such a claim of ownership has been subjected to this kind of scrutiny. The conclusions highlight the fact than any meaningful challenge to such claims of ownership will only come through legislative change rather than interpretation of existing Scots law’.

Vast areas of Scotland are held on assertions of ownership which are as flimsy and untested as the MacLeod claim to the mighty Cuillins. If the appointed managers of the new Scottish Estate were let loose with a brief to test such claims – in the name of the Crown and backed up by modern Scottish legislation on proof of title – we really would have the prospect of something radical happening in Scotland.

But then, as the indefatigable campaigner on such matters, Andy Wightman, has pointed out, Scotland suffers from an excess of lawyer-politicians whose instinct on matters like this is rarely to challenge the text-books from which they have learned. Compared to persuading Holyrood that devolution of the Scottish Estate could actually represent an exciting political opportunity, moving the Crown Estate from where it was 30 years ago to where it is now has been the easy bit.

Author: Carnegie UK

Scotland has potential to become a world leader in how it uses evidence to inform participative policymaking

A new report from the Carnegie UK Trust and the Alliance for Useful Evidence says that Scotland has an opportunity to become a global expert on how to deliver participative public services that focus on real quality of life improvements. In a discussion paper launched today the Trust and the Alliance highlight there has been shift in Scotland in recent years towards an approach to public services that focuses much more explicitly on outcomes and participation. This shift is not unique to Scotland, but the consensus for this type of approach to service delivery appears to run more deeply a across Scotland’s public and third sectors.  This places Scotland in a strong position to develop high quality evidence about how to improve lives through more joined up, participative public services.

Report co-author Jenny Brotchie explains: ‘Governments across the world are acutely aware that we need to find new ways of tackling complex social problems. Many have expressed a clear ambition to redesign their public services to engage more openly and directly with people and communities. As is usually the case when new approaches are being trialled the evidence base lags a little behind the policy. Gathering and using robust, useful and accessible evidence about what works in relation to this new way of delivering public services will be challenging. New tools and methods will be required. Scotland is in a good position to play a leading role in tackling some of these challenges and developing innovative new tools, methodologies and research that will be of interest not just in Scotland but across the UK and indeed the world.’

Jonathan Breckon, Director, Alliance for Useful Evidence said: ‘The big social challenges that we face are the same whether we are located in Scotland, England, Wales or Northern Ireland. While this paper focuses specifically on Scotland, policymakers and practitioners across the UK and beyond are facing the same challenges and have much to share with and learn from Scotland’.

The paper sets out 5 steps that Scotland should take:

•             Step 1: Strengthen the outcomes approach and promote the use of the National Performance Framework at local level

•             Step 2: Build a strong evidence base for the Scottish approach

•             Step 3: Develop robust and appropriate methodologies

•             Step 4: Help decision-makers, at all levels, identify and use a mix of high-quality evidence

•             Step 5: Learn from policy and evidence developments across the UK and share the Scottish experience.

You can read the full discussion paper here.

Author: The Eden Project

To see the whole of the Executive Summary of the report The Cost of Disconnected Communities

·         Disconnected communities could be costing society a potential welfare improvement valued at £32 billion and about £12 billion of this could be realised as a net economic gain (a boost to GDP) through improved productivity.

·         The welfare improvement that could be realised includes our estimate of the implicit value of neighbourliness that could be gained through better connected communities. This is based on a £15 billion valuation of the resources shared and help provided between neighbours today and a £29 billion valuation of the resources that could be shared if neighbourliness (catalysed by things such as involvement in community initiatives like The Big Lunch) was more widespread. The difference between the two (the £14 billion) featured in Table E1 is equated with the cost of disconnected communities.

·         We estimate that, based on our assumptions, involvement in community activities and initiatives like The Big Lunch and Big Lunch Extras is currently delivering reduction in the demands on the health services that can be valued at £2.7 billion. This has the potential to rise to an estimated £7.9 billion if there is more widespread involvement in community initiatives like the Big Lunch and Big Lunch Extras. The £5 billion difference between the two can be interpreted as an indicative estimate of the burden on the health service that probably arises as a result of the lack of more widespread involvement in the community – and thus as part of the cost of disconnected communities.

·         According to evidence revealed through our desk research, the increased sense of community that arises from greater social cohesion can be associated with a 1% reduction in crime. See Wedlock (2006). If community activities and initiatives like The Big Lunch and Big Lunch Extras, and others like Neighbourhood Watch schemes, can be associated with greater social cohesion and increases in this sense of community, this relationship can be translated into the potential resource value of the reduction in the demands on policing services. Using the Home Office’s economic cost of crime, this figure would amount to £205 million.

·         A detailed study by Oswald (2009) estimated that happiness could be associated with a 12% rise in productivity. We estimate that the productivity benefits associated with the happiness improvements that might be associated with current levels of community involvement at £6 billion. This is put forward as an indicative value of the productivity benefits to employers as a result of their employees being more community engaged. This could well be a net economic gain, in the form of a boost to GDP, arising from the levels of happiness being derived as a result of current level of engagement with community activities and initiatives.

·          Extrapolating to a scenario in which all of those not currently engaged become engaged in their communities, the estimated productivity boost that could be realised rises to £18 billion. Again, the difference between these estimates is interpreted as the cost of disconnected communities, which we estimate at £12 billion. This is a productivity boost, and thus a net macroeconomic gain that could be realised through better connected communities.

·         Another £0.4 billion of productivity benefit could be realised through – The health and lifestyle improvements that can be associated with involvement in community activities and initiatives like The Big Lunch and Big Lunch Extras. – The lower stress and higher self-esteem that can likewise be associated with community involvement.

·         We find that the cost of disconnected communities can be attributed to the UK nations in the following way: England at £27 billion, Wales at close to £3 billion, Scotland at £0.7 billion (£700 million) and Northern Ireland at almost £2 billion.

Author: Matt Ritchie Charity times

The public are more likely to trust local community organisations than national or international charities, according to new research.

An online survey of more than 2,000 adults found 56 per cent of respondents trusted local community charities. National charities were trusted by 29 per cent of respondents, and international charities were trusted by 17 per cent.

The Vitreous survey for the Open University Business School’s Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership (CVSL) found local community charities were second only to doctors in the list of organisations or professions respondents trusted.

Forty-two per cent of respondents said they were likely to volunteer for a small and local community charity, compared to 29 per cent who would volunteer for a national charity and 19 per cent who would give time to an international organisation.

Forty-three per cent would donate to small and local community charities, while 17 per cent would donate to national charities and 14 per cent would donate to international charities.

Author: Planning Democracy

Extract of a blog from Planning Democracy in response to the Scottish Government launch of Places, People and Planning : A consultation of the future of Scottish Planning System

Getting More People Involved in Planning.

This section starts out by recommitting to the goal of ‘front-loading’ or early engagement. This is unsurprising since the Government have consistently promoted the idea. It’s also a decent principle but the debate about it is infuriatingly evidence-free: this is another example of a change that has been consistently promised for nearly fifty years but never actually delivered, and yet there is no attempt to question what might be learned from all of that experience or what might need to change to make it a realistic goal.

The most broadly positive suggestion is to develop a system of local place-plans capable of being afforded statutory weight as part of the development plan. This mirrors provisions for ‘neighbourhood planning’ in England and could, as the consultation suggests, provide a proactive way of engaging people in the development of their local area, in keeping with the wider community empowerment agenda.

The details of any such scheme will matter a great deal. In England more legal boiler-plating (there’s another theme emerging there) has produced a long, slow and expensive system that is inaccessible to many communities who do not have the requisite levels of social, cultural and financial capital to last the course. This needs somehow to be avoided. Likewise, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that local place plans would be better as a single expression of a community’s aspirations, rather than land-use plans duplicating existing and emerging processes in relation to community planning, community land rights etc.

Throughout, there is a distinct and disappointing note of skepticism about the role that community’s play in the planning system. This is evident when the consultation talks of avoiding ‘unreasonable protectionism’, and only welcoming the engagement of those who back development and growth. This smacks of a willingness to get people involved provided they agree to pre-approved answers: a strangely bowdlerized version of public participation and democracy.

Another potentially promising commitment, to community capacity building and innovation in engagement techniques, does little more than reiterate existing government support for the charrette programme. Charrettes are not necessarily a bad thing. They are, however, expensive, principally expert-led and were developed to find design solutions (less ‘do we need a power station?’ and more ‘would it be better if we used a different render on the façade of the power station?’). There is a real danger that continued commitment to charrettes is blocking wider experimentation with alternative deliberative and participatory techniques that could be both more effective and better value for money.

The third proposal in this section is entitled ‘getting more people involved in planning’ which would obviously be a great thing. Oddly the consultation tells us we need to wait for the results of recently commissioned research into barriers to engagement before saying too much- if this research and the issue itself are important why didn’t the consultation wait until it was complete? Beyond that there is a strong and slightly peculiar focus on how to engage children better in the planning process. We have nothing against this aspiration, but it seems like a potentially nice extra rather than a core issue and does nothing at all to address the huge inequality of arms that exists between concerned citizens and the highly-professionalised planning and development processes. It also distracts from the massive challenges involved in empowering people to understand and engage effectively with how plans and decisions affect their lives. Sadly such issues are barely even acknowledged, let alone seriously addressed.

Suggestions for increasing public trust in the system offer some welcome acknowledgement of the problems communities face when trying to engage in plans, including when faced by repeat applications or failures of enforcement. These are both issues PD raised during the review. Having said that, the proposed solutions don’t suggest any desire to radically improve accountability to the public or the accessibility of planning processes. Moreover, the consultation goes on in the next recommendation to reject the introduction of an equal right of appeal – the key mechanism PD and others have campaigned to see introduced.

This was not unexpected. The Government already took the extraordinary step of listing a commitment to not introduce ERA as one of the ten key ‘actions’ promised in their initial response to the panel’s report last July.

Familiar and entirely unevidenced arguments are trotted out to support this position: ERA will undermine frontloading and the role of locally elected decision-makers; lead to delay and scare off investment; centralize decision-making. We have consistently presented evidence and arguments that illustrate why these claims are without foundation. We won’t repeat them here, you can read them for yourself if you haven’t already done so. Interestingly, the consultation goes on to immediately propose a means of dealing with its own objection about centralisation of decision-making by proposing to extend the use of Local Review Bodies (though it stops short of considering how community representatives might be incorporated into such bodies, or even into nationally heard appeals). 

Ultimately what all of this serves to reveal is an underlying view that people get in the way of planning decision-making and the workings of the development sector and should not be given equal rights to participate (meaning PD’s work is not yet done and our volunteer staff aren’t going to be able to take early retirement any time soon).

Author: The Guardian, Tracy McVeigh

Dylan Thomas had one. So did Roald Dahl, Arthur Miller and Norman MacCaig. Virginia Woolf wrote her last words in one and Gabriel Oak had one in Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd.

Fishermen and shepherds have long recognised their value and between the wars they were promoted as boltholes, a means for the working classes to escape toxic cities for the good of their health. In Scotland, the hut, whether a mountain bothy or forest retreat, has long been part of both the scenery and the cultural landscape, immortalised in the “but an’ ben” of the Broons cartoon strip – a tiny two-room, one-storey holiday cottage.

But a toughening up of land access rights and a change in attitudes by landowners led to the tradition of the rustic getaway almost disappearing, leaving just sheds for those with gardens, and holiday lets for those who could afford them.

Now a ‘hutting’ revival is predicted after the Scottish government signalled that later this month it will change legislation to exempt huts from building regulations, allowing people to put up these most simple of second homes in the countryside wherever they can rent or buy a plot of suitable land, subject to planning permission.

It is the end of a long campaign by enthusiasts and conservationists, who have been battling for years to re-establish the hutting tradition in Scotland. Karen Grant, from environmental charity Reforesting Scotland, has been working to promote the group’s Campaign for a Thousand Huts which has attracted interest from people all over Scotland and beyond. The group is working on good practice guidelines for the burgeoning trend. New groups of enthusiasts are springing up and architects specialising in small eco-buildings are reporting high levels of interest.

“Some people will just want to quietly build their own hut using whatever they can reclaim in wood and materials,” said Grant, “while others will want to have something designed and built. I know one chap who built his for £200 while others will come in at £15,000 – it’s a sliding scale in terms of cost. And so is the kind of hutting people want – part of a community, maybe, or else out on their own. The important thing is that it’s a simple human dream, to have a place of tranquillity, close to nature, and it’s absurd that it has been outlawed.

 Richard Lochhead MSP, left, at the launch of Reforesting Scotland’s planning guidance for new hut developments, with Richard Heggie and Karen Grant of the Thousand Huts campaign. Photograph: Michelle Lowe

“We’ve got a great level of interest from people who have just been waiting for this move so they can go ahead and establish their hut. Building regulations are likely to be relaxed for huts designed for recreational use that are of 30 sq metres or less, and using low-impact materials, generally off-grid.

“If you’re going to want a flushing toilet you’ll still be looking to apply for the right permissions, but we’re hoping most people will be thinking of compost toilets or similar low impact ideas, in keeping with the ethos of hutting.

“We will have to be careful and make sure this freedom isn’t abused: but our primary goal is improving people’s relationship with the forest and the environment while improving mental health and wellbeing.”

Already a pilot project with the Forestry Commission has started in Fife, on Scotland’s east coast, while a community of hutters in Carbeth, which has been established since 1918, has successfully bought the land it occupies to be held in community ownership.

Richard Lochhead, the Scottish National party MSP for Moray, was the cabinet secretary for rural affairs, food and environment until last year and played a key role in pressing the Scottish government to act on easing regulations after meeting with diehard hutters and seeing the impact on their lives.

“A renewed hutting culture in Scotland would be hugely beneficial because it would encourage people, particularly in our towns and cities, to connect with the countryside and our spectacular natural environment. This can only help the nation’s health and wellbeing,” he said.

“There are clearly different models of hutting and we can learn from other parts of the world, such as Scandinavia, where having access to a hut or smaller countryside property is very common. In Scotland, there is potential for both private developers and community groups to play a role in establishing hutting communities, which would also help ensure their sensible use.”

And for those south of the border with a lust for a basic rustic retreat, there is no obligation to live in the country of your hut – “although we would hope their hut would be something people would use regularly, to build a deeper understanding of place, and so you’d maybe not want to live too far away,” said Grant. “It’s a lovely thing that many people dream of: we’ll just have to hope enough sympathetic landowners think so too.”

RAMSHACKLE SHELL TO GREEN GETAWAY

Chris Cunningham runs a guitar shop in Edinburgh during the week. At the weekend he is a hutter. He bought his getaway in a small off-grid colony of 23 huts on farmland near Peebles in 2011 when it was a ramshackle shell.

“It was a cold January day when my girlfriend and I went to look at it, it was falling to bits and had birds living in it. She turned to me as we were leaving and said, ‘you’d have to be mental to buy that’, but I was already sold. It’s given me something I never thought I’d have, I have a greenhouse and a little allotment there, and you have to constantly think outside the box about how to manage things off-grid. I’ve just devised a solar-powered watering system for the greenhouse.

“There is an ideology, the hutter growing veg and reading by candlelight, but also some who do use their huts as a bolthole for drinking and leaving rubbish about so I do worry there is a risk of how manageable sites will be if hutting is opened up to the masses. We’ll have to see how it pans out”

This article was amended on 18 January 2018 to make it clear that while building regulations are to be relaxed for huts, planning permission is still required