WHATEVER the outcome of the latest planning rumpus at Aviemore and the "row over sleaze" (sic) – did ministers wrongly intervene to secure outline planning permission for the £80 million second phase of the resort – I do hope the First Minister will order an inquiry into what is threatening to develop into a national debacle for Scotland's planning system.
Labour has claimed that Alex Salmond acted "inappropriately" by phoning to discuss problems over the hotel development by Donald Macdonald. The SNP has retorted by pointing out that concerns were raised by an all-party group of MSPs and that their le
tters should be published, thus exposing Labour's hypocrisy over the issue.
Yet again a major development in Scotland – this one creating 400 jobs during development – has been caught up in party political shenanigans of exactly the type that acts to discourage development and drive investment away.
And if the prospect of an inquiry does not concentrate minds on whether this development should be allowed to go ahead, perhaps this will: I understand the Bank of Scotland, already near the end of its tether after years of delays, will review whether to extend its £50 million loan in June depending on progress being made. This loan, costing the developers £10,009 a day in interest charges, was close to being called in last October due to appalling delays in planning procedure.
No-one can accuse the bank or the developers of undue haste. This saga has been running for 11 years in total. Two previous developers have walked away in frustration. This particular phase has been six years in the pipeline. And at the heart of the problem is a distraught geometry of feuding competencies – the Cairngorms National Park, the Highland Council, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, the community council, Scottish Natural Heritage, the office of the rural affairs ministers and the chief planning officer. There is much talk of "streamlined" planning. The reality is a highly politicised planning process.
The latest row centres on the intervention of the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa). It was only late last year that Sepa decided to raise concerns. If that caused local MSPs to despair, it was nothing compared to the frustration felt by the developers who thought that, after six years, they were at last at the end of the tunnel.
Local MSPs called on the rural affairs minister, Richard Lochhead, to intervene to prevent the development from total collapse. Lochhead then rang Sepa to explain its concerns, and why it had taken so long to come forward with them. According to one account, Nick Kuenssberg, Sepa's part-time deputy chairman, "blew his stack, protesting that Lochhead had no right to intervene". While Sepa had indeed known of the planning application for some time, it appears to lack any facility for prioritising cases, so each case has to wait its turn in the queue.
The latest row can be seen as a fresh outbreak of hostilities between Labour and the SNP – indeed, the MacDonald camp fears it has been singled out because Donald Macdonald is an SNP donor and Kuenssberg is understood to have given £995 to Wendy Alexander's Labour leadership campaign. Others see it as a classic example of how public agencies can be blind to the real world pressures that developers are under.
The affair is already understood to have caught the attention of members of the First Minister's Council of Economic Advisers, concerned at the way Scotland's planning system may be discouraging inward investment. Certainly one question the FM will want to ask was why it took Sepa so long to come forward with its concerns.
Said a source close to the situation: "If this carries on, no-one will want to do business in Scotland. People are fed up with it. There is a complete and utter disregard of commercial realities. And for business, this is a huge problem."
"Aviemore" has come to typify everything that is wrong with our conflicted and confused planning process and one which has given rise to a rising chorus of complaints from the business community across Scotland. Six years in planning is a farce. We are heading, not to an enterprise Scotland, but a Sclerotic Scotland – planning agencies a-plenty, politics rife and quangos galore – but none with any grasp of business realities.
The full article contains 731 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
