Enquiry by Design in the news again

A keen eyed contact spotted this item in the Times:

"Prince’s Foundation causes alarm with close links to housebuilder"

The Times article continues:

"The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment has embarked on a ground-breaking mission with Scotia Homes, a family-owned housebuilder, to inject model urban communities into five settlements in Scotland."

"The developer commissions and pays for the foundation to go into towns and villages, carry out consultations and prepare master plans for the local communities, as well as to help to persuade authorities of their merits."

"The Prince’s Foundation begins by going into each community and conducting a procedure that it calls “Enquiry by Design”.

The Scottish Government also appears to be quite keen to work with the Prince's Foundation. According to the Scottish Government web pages:

"A seminar was hosted by the Scottish Government and the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment at Holyrood Palace on June 3, 2009. The event was designed to inspire Scotland's young talent who will be involved in the future place making agenda. "

"As a pre-cursor to the Holyrood seminar, a study trip to Poundbury was organised by the Scottish Government. It took place on May 13, 2009. Noel Isherwood from the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment and Simon Connibear of The Duchy of Cornwall Office provided presentations, a tour and a masterplanning masterclass.

Everybody who attended the Poundbury study trip has been invited to the Holyrood Seminar (approx. 40 guests). The other delegates who have been invited to the seminar include a mixture of Scottish representatives from some local authorities, developers, house builders and transport engineers."

APTSec has stated previously that I personally was not left with a warm fuzzy feeling by the Enquiry by Design process that was carried out in Nairn, although I am aware that other attendees were impressed with the process and stated this fact.

Under the new planning system here in Scotland, applicants will have a statutory duty to consult local communities before an application is made for certain types of developments (likely to include all major development proposals; those that are significantly contrary to the development plan; those requiring an Environmental Impact Assessment ( EIA) and proposals for larger scale bad neighbour developments). Pre-application discussions between the planning authority and the applicant may address what form the Pre-application consultations should take and what is considered to be acceptable in the spirit of openness and transparency.

Whilst it is important for members of the public to engage with the planning system and be aware of all changes that affect their area; it will also, of course, be in the best interests of applicants (putting forward developments which fit the above criteria) to engage as fully as possible with the public as a way of gathering support for and speeding up the processing of their applications. Indeed, the Local Authority could reject any badly done public consultation submitted with an application.

Public support is therefore a very valuable asset, as is, I imagine knowledge of who or which group or section of the public is likely to object to any large proposal and what their grounds for objections are likely to be.

The more worrying thing though is whether or not it is appropriate for the Scottish Government to be closely involved with an organisation who conducts events sponsored by developers with respect to large applications that may well become the subject of planning appeals if planning permission is refused by the local decision makers.