The planning system is now run for the benefit of developers, not citizens

Cliff Hague writes perceptively on the progress of the Scottish Planning Bill (Scotsman, 2 July),but Ifearhisunderlying, if qualified, optimism takes little account of a historic trend which has witnessed a realignment of planning’s core philosophy as a citizen-centred function to a developer-led facilitator.

The alienation of the citizen from a once democratically accountable planning process began with the downgrading of city planning departments around half a century ago when many of them becamesubsumedineconomic development super-departments with developer-friendly growth agendas. Edinburgh, in particular, has been thrown to the wolves, with increasingly disastrous results.

The city has been reduced to a profit-driven development opportunity for global corporations and short-term letting investors, while the interests of residents and businesses are ignored. In the case of the St James Quarter, a US pension fund with $1 trillion under management was given a $100 million subsidy by the council and the Scottish government.

As co-investors in a scheme which will further undermine struggling retail outlets on Princes Street and George Street they have effectively forfeited their impartiality as planning authorities – particularly unfortunate in this case, since the development includes a “copper” hotel which would probably have trouble getting planning consent on a Las Vegas Strip. The council have also obligingly agreedthatthelegallyrequired affordable housing contribution can be built on cheap land about three miles away.

At she same time, every available city centre site which could provide housing for citizens is being purloined by developers of student accommodation blocks which won’t even provide a revenue stream, since students are exempt from council tax.

Then there’s the small matter of the legally questionable seizure of common good land which had been reserved for an extension to the city library, but will now house an 11-storey hotel block for a Florida-based operator.

Edinburgh’s planning tradition stretches back to the days when the burgesses of St Mary’s Chapel could settle disputes and the Dean of Guild Court was a power to be reckoned with. It was also the city where the acknowledged “father of town planning”, Sir Patrick Geddes, perfected his folk-centred philosophies of urban improvement.

I note with interest that objectors to the plan for a Flamingo Land leisure development in the Loch Lomond National Park are prepared to resort to civil disobedience. Isn’t it lucky for the authorities that Edinburgh people are much too genteel to consider such things!

DAVID J BLACK Glanville Place, Edinburgh