Planning decisions for projects such as windfarms are being taken out of the hands of local authorities because Scottish Government ministers “believe they know best”, it was claimed yesterday.
Deputy Conservative leader Jackson Carlaw accused SNP ministers of increasingly centralising power instead of devolving decision-making to councillors. He said the planning system was the area where centralisation was most “consuming in its suffocation of local determination”.
Referring to the windfarm campaigners who gathered at Holyrood for Wednesday’s appearance of Donald Trump before the economy, energy and tourism committee, he said: “Just yesterday, outside parliament stood many who have become exasperated with the physical consequences of the Scottish Government’s seemingly insatiable appetite for wind turbines.
“Councils are now overwhelmed with applications fuelled by subsidies and find that whatever their own local determination the likelihood is that a refusal will be overturned.”
Local Government Minister Derek Mackay said the suggestion was “nonsense, inaccurate and untrue”.
He argued that ministers agreed with decisions taken by councils on wind turbine applications in two-thirds of appeal cases.
Mr Carlaw also called for a change to “insidious and ridiculous” rules to allow councillors to speak up for communities without fear of being banned from voting on the fate of applications. “We believe being elected to office is in itself a commitment to act in the public interest and a ‘forced objectivity’ in planning decisions is unnecessary.”