CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 4 25^th March 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DECISION

Title: CNPA CON­SULTA­TION RESPONSE TO DRAFT NATION­AL PLAN­NING FRAME­WORK 4

Pre­pared by: GAV­IN MILES, HEAD OF STRA­TEGIC PLANNING

Pur­pose

This paper provides a brief over­view of the draft Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 for Scot­land and sets out the pro­posed CNPA response for agree­ment by the Board.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Board is asked to:

a) Note the scope of the draft NPF4; and b) Endorse the pro­posed CNPA response to draft NPF4 con­tained in para­graphs 4 – 15 of this paper.

Back­ground

1. The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment pub­lished a draft ​‘Scot­land 2045 – the Fourth Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work (NPF4)’ for con­sulta­tion in Novem­ber 2021. NPF4 will be a long-term plan that will guide spa­tial devel­op­ment, set out nation­al plan­ning policies, des­ig­nate nation­al devel­op­ments and high­light region­al spa­tial pri­or­it­ies. It sets out the Scot­tish Government’s pro­posed approach to how plan­ning and devel­op­ment will help to achieve a net zero, sus­tain­able Scot­land by 2045. The NPF4 will replace both the third NPF and Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy (SPP) that were adop­ted in 2014. The con­sulta­tion on draft NPF4 runs until 31 March 2022.

Implic­a­tions for CNPA

1. The adop­tion of NPF4 will mean changes to the way the plan­ning sys­tem oper­ates in Scot­land. It will lead to changes in the devel­op­ment plan and devel­op­ment man­age­ment decisions and have ongo­ing resource implic­a­tions for the CNPA. The Scot­tish gov­ern­ment has indic­ated that it intends for plan­ning author­it­ies to be able to achieve full cost recov­ery in time. Of par­tic­u­lar note for the CNPA is the fact that it is likely that NPF4 will be adop­ted before the CNPA adopts a new Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and so policies in NPF4 will over­ride policies in the cur­rent adop­ted LDP.

Over­view of draft NPF4

1. Draft NPF4 has five sec­tions sum­mar­ised below:

Part I — Nation­al Spa­tial Strategy

The nation­al spa­tial strategy sets out a shared vis­ion where each part of Scot­land can be planned and developed to cre­ate: Sus­tain­able, Live­able, Pro­duct­ive and Dis­tinct­ive places. Under­pin­ning the nation­al spa­tial strategy are a series of spa­tial prin­ciples. The spa­tial strategy also high­lights five action areas, with the Cairngorms Nation­al Park loc­ated mostly in the ​‘North­ern Revital­isa­tion’ area.

Part 2 — Nation­al Developments

Nation­al devel­op­ments are sig­ni­fic­ant devel­op­ments of nation­al import­ance that will help to strongly sup­port the deliv­ery of the spa­tial strategy. Des­ig­na­tion as a nation­al devel­op­ment estab­lishes the need for it, but does not remove require­ments for rel­ev­ant con­sents to be obtained before devel­op­ment can begin.

Part 3 — Nation­al Plan­ning Policy

The fourth Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work (NPF4) will incor­por­ate Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy which will con­tain detailed nation­al policy on a num­ber of plan­ning top­ics. For the first time, spa­tial and them­at­ic plan­ning policies will be addressed in one place. It is struc­tured with four sec­tions of: Sus­tain­able Places (Uni­ver­sal policies); Live­able Places; Pro­duct­ive Places; and Dis­tinct­ive Places

Part 4 — Delivery

Deliv­er­ing the NPF4 strategy and real­ising col­lect­ive ambi­tions will require col­lab­or­at­ive action from the pub­lic and private sec­tors and wider com­munit­ies. Actions will range across dif­fer­ent scales and include a mix of stra­tegic and pro­ject invest­ments. This sec­tion will be developed into a stan­dalone, live deliv­ery pro­gramme once NPF4 has been approved and adopted

Part 5 — Annexes

Annexes provide inform­a­tion on how stat­utory out­comes are being met, Min­im­um All-Ten­ure Hous­ing Land Require­ment (MATH­LR) for each plan­ning author­ity in Scot­land, along with a Gloss­ary of terms

CNPA response to the consultation

1. Each of the five sec­tions in the draft NPF4 has ques­tions about the con­tent, inten­tion and dir­ec­tion of the indi­vidu­al points, state­ments and policies with­in it. There are 70 ques­tions in total. How­ever, there is sig­ni­fic­ant over­lap in both con­tent, ques­tions and the points or issues that appear to officers to be sig­ni­fic­ant to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. The fol­low­ing para­graphs con­tain officers’ recom­men­ded response to the consultation.

Part I — Nation­al Spa­tial Strategy (rel­ev­ant NPF4 ques­tions 1 – 6, 10 – 11)

1. The CNPA wel­comes the shared vis­ion, stra­tegic con­text and dir­ec­tion to sup­port the cre­ation of Sus­tain­able, Live­able, Pro­duct­ive and Dis­tinct­ive places and the spa­tial prin­ciples. They provide a sens­ible and flex­ible over­view for NPF4 that recog­nise the glob­al pres­sures of cli­mate change and the biod­iversity crisis in an appro­pri­ate way. How­ever, we don’t con­sider that they are suf­fi­cient in their own right to deliv­er what they seek to. The remainder of draft NPF4 con­tains more spe­cif­ic spa­tial strategy, policy and dir­ec­tion that will need to be effect­ive in order to deliv­er the Nation­al Spa­tial Strategy effectively.

2. The CNPA under­stands the rationale for the action areas iden­ti­fied but con­siders the sec­tion most imme­di­ately rel­ev­ant to the Cairngorms Nation­al Park (North­ern revital­isa­tion) to provide more nar­rat­ive than real dir­ec­tion. It appears that in select­ively com­bin­ing dif­fer­ent plan­ning author­it­ies’ indic­at­ive Region­al Spa­tial Strategy thoughts, this sec­tion has little impact, with some of the estab­lished region­al dis­tinct­ive­ness in issues and care­fully con­sidered responses to them being lost. The region­al actions sec­tion seems to lack strong dir­ec­tion and con­tain what are already broadly accep­ted gen­er­ic pri­or­it­ies. We are not con­vinced of the value of this sec­tion of the draft NPF4 as it is cur­rently presen­ted (rel­ev­ant ques­tions 10 &11).

3. The CNPA also con­siders that this sec­tion of NPF4 should provide stronger rein­force­ment about the role of Nation­al Parks in Scot­land. While the two cur­rent Nation­al Parks are places for some people to live and work, they are also a sub­stan­tial area of Scot­land with an import­ant role in Scotland’s vis­it­or eco­nomy, in provid­ing places for people to enjoy their spe­cial qual­it­ies, in con­serving and enhan­cing biod­iversity, mit­ig­at­ing and adapt­ing to cli­mate change, and are exper­i­enced by many more people and vis­it­ors to oth­er parts of Scot­land passing through on nation­al road, rail and cycle networks.

Part 2 — Nation­al Devel­op­ments (rel­ev­ant NPF4 ques­tions 19 – 21).

1. The CNPA has few spe­cif­ic com­ments on this sec­tion apart from the obser­va­tion that the import­ance of Nation­al Parks could be strengthened here and that the way rur­al Scot­land is addressed is very gen­er­al. In real­ity rur­al Scot­land is very diverse with mul­tiple chal­lenges and often requir­ing bespoke solu­tions or invest­ment to address them. We agree that the ​‘All Scot­land’ Nation­al Devel­op­ments are import­ant pri­or­it­ies, but the sec­tions don’t seem to reflect the dis­tinct­ively dif­fer­ent routes they may be delivered in dif­fer­ent parts of Scot­land. We con­sider that there is a case for identi­fy­ing Nation­al Parks as nation­al devel­op­ments in this sec­tion, high­light­ing their role in Scot­land both because of their import­ance to Scot­land and as examples of places where loc­al cir­cum­stances can mean dif­fer­ent solu­tions. It would help if the sec­tion also reflec­ted the role of Nation­al Park Plans in set­ting the stra­tegic con­text for the devel­op­ment plan and man­age­ment strategy for the Nation­al Park.

Part 3 — Nation­al Plan­ning Policy (rel­ev­ant NPF4 ques­tions 23 – 53)

1. The CNPA wel­comes the broad con­tent and inten­tion of the four sec­tions here and the intro­duc­tion of some new top­ic areas such as the nature crisis and biod­iversity enhance­ment, human rights and equal­ity, com­munity wealth build­ing or cul­ture and cre­ativ­ity. Our com­ments with­in this part of the draft NPF4 are gen­er­ic and can be applied to many of the top­ic areas.

2. The sec­tions cur­rently com­bine text relat­ing to devel­op­ment plans and to devel­op­ment man­age­ment decisions which is con­fus­ing. Sep­ar­at­ing the sec­tions that are for devel­op­ment plans and for devel­op­ment man­age­ment decisions would improve the doc­u­ment. We also con­sider that the sec­tions relat­ing to devel­op­ment plans should be clear that devel­op­ment plans should be able to cre­ate plan­ning policy that reflects loc­al cir­cum­stances and dis­tinct­ive­ness appropriately.

3. As an example, para­graph 121 of the cur­rent SPP con­tains an expli­cit recog­ni­tion that Nation­al Parks have some flex­ib­il­ity in meet­ing the hous­ing land require­ment iden­ti­fied through Hous­ing Need and Demand Assess­ments (HNDAs). Although this flex­ib­il­ity has not been used to date, it reflects the unique cir­cum­stances of Nation­al Parks and the poten­tial for dif­fer­ent approaches with­in them. We con­sider this flex­ib­il­ity should be main­tained, par­tic­u­larly giv­en the top down approach the Min­im­um All-Ten­ure Hous­ing Land Require­ment (MATH­LR) pro­posed. We have made a fur­ther com­ment on this under the Annexes section.

4. The lan­guage used in many of the policies and some sup­port­ing text is vague or uses words with mul­tiple or con­ten­tious mean­ings. In some cases this appears to be an expli­cit way of indic­at­ing gen­er­al sup­port and in oth­er cases it may simply be the way lan­guage and term are used. While we expect plan­ning author­it­ies will under­stand the inten­tion of most sec­tions and the policies with­in them, we con­sider that oth­er stake­hold­ers and act­ors in the plan­ning pro­cess may inter­pret in oth­er ways because the lan­guage used appears to sug­gest more open policy than has been the estab­lished in the past. We con­sider that on a wide range of policies, this would unin­ten­tion­ally lead to appeals, reviews and chal­lenges to decisions where people con­sider NPF4 policy has pos­sible altern­at­ive interpretation.

5. Bear­ing in mind that NPF4 will be part of the devel­op­ment plan, and that at least for a time, will be more recent than many devel­op­ment plans, we con­sider these policy sec­tions should be tightened up to reduce unne­ces­sary debate and delay in the plan­ning pro­cess. We assume that in using NPF4, decision-makers will be able to apply some dis­cre­tion in the weight they give policies to reflect loc­al cir­cum­stances. How­ever, as it is cur­rently writ­ten, some policies cross ref­er­ence oth­ers, while oth­ers appear to give primacy to one object­ive over oth­ers. This should be clarified.

Part 4 – Deliv­ery (rel­ev­ant NPF4 ques­tions 54 – 55)

1. The CNPA wel­comes the inten­tion to devel­op a sep­ar­ate live deliv­ery programme.

Part 5 – Annexes (rel­ev­ant NPF4 ques­tion 57)

1. The CNPA has one com­ment on the Min­im­um All-Ten­ure Hous­ing Land Require­ment (MATH­LR). We agree with the num­ber cal­cu­lated for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park because it is com­par­able to the hous­ing land require­ment cal­cu­lated for our recently adop­ted LDP. How­ever the route to cal­cu­lat­ing the MATH­LR was sub­stan­tially dif­fer­ent and could lead to dif­fer­ences in num­bers in future cal­cu­la­tions. We con­sider the flex­ib­il­ity in rela­tion to hous­ing land require­ments in Nation­al Parks referred to in para­graph 121 of SPP should be main­tained in rela­tion to MATH­LR numbers.

Next Steps

1. Sub­ject to an changes agreed by the Board, the pro­posed con­sulta­tion response set out in para­graphs 4 – 15 of this paper will be sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment by officers pri­or to 31 March 2022.

Gav­in Miles 16 March 2022 gavinmiles@​cairngorms.​co.​uk