Planning, Practice & Research

ISSN: 0269-7459 (Print) 1360-0583 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cppr20

New Labour and the Planning System in Scotland:

An Overview of a Decade

Greg LLoyd & Deborah Peel

To cite this article: Greg LLoyd & Deborah Peel (2009) New Labour and the Planning System
in Scotland: An Overview of a Decade, Planning, Practice & Research, 24:1, 103-118, DOI:
10.1080/02697450902742197

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02697450902742197

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Planning, Practice & Research, Vol. 24, No. 1,
pp. 103–118, February 2009

ARTICLE

New Labour and the Planning System in

Scotland: An Overview of a Decade
GREG LLOYD & DEBORAH PEEL

Abstract
This paper reviews New Labour’s planning legacy in Scotland to the Scottish National Party that
was elected to office in May 2007. It highlights the significance of devolution in providing the
political context and impetus for re-designing and reforming a more distinctive Scottish planning
system. Significant factors also include the influence of European spatial planning principles and the
technocratic–democratic tensions of the (New) Labour–Liberal Democratic coalition government
that had promoted economic growth in Scotland during this period. The paper speculates on how the
change to a Scottish National Party administration will take forward this inheritance.

Introduction
The period 1997–2007 was a dramatic one for Scotland; with consequences for the
design and implementation of its various public policy programmes, and
particularly for the shape and style of land-use planning. It would not be an
overstatement to say that material foundational changes have taken place, and that
prevailing and anticipated political and institutional agendas are now very different
from the beginning of that decade. Rather neatly, the beginning of this period
marked 50 years of the statutory land-use planning system. By the end of this
decade there had been significant thinking and debate around the spirit and
purpose of land-use planning in a modern society. Significantly, the Planning etc.
(Scotland) Act 2006 represents an important staging point in the continuing
development of planning ideas and practices. Indeed, this Act has been heralded as
the most fundamental change to land-use planning in Scotland. In terms of the
period under study, the principles underpinning the modernization of planning
were driven essentially by New Labour ideas; yet, in a twist of political fate, the
operationalization of the new planning system now rests with a different political
party and ideology—that of Scottish nationalism.
The changes that took place during this 10-year period hinge largely on the
thinking of New Labour in the UK. These directly, and indirectly, have triggered a
modernizing zeal in the public sector and in governance arrangements. A result

Deborah Peel, School of the Built Environment, University of Ulster, Shore Road, Newtownabbey,
Co. Antrim BT37 0QB, UK. Email: d.peel@ulster.ac.uk

ISSN 0269-7459 print/1360-0583 online/09/010103–16 Ó 2009 Taylor & Francis 103

DOI: 10.1080/02697450902742197
 Greg Lloyd & Deborah Peel

has been a number of changes in land-use planning practices, including the

introduction of spatial planning thinking and the redesign of the planning
infrastructure. In these circumstances, understanding New Labour’s motivations,
influences and measures in Scotland is important, particularly with respect to its
impact on public policy at large, and the form and nature of land-use planning.
Here, Powell (2000), for example, has argued that, whilst purporting to represent a
synthesis of earlier social democratic and neoliberal ideas, New Labour was in
reality dominated by the assertion of social-market economic influences and
priorities. In effect, its political agenda was characterized by an emphasis on
pragmatism and populism, and promulgated the promotion of a business model of
economic management and governance with a concomitant priority placed on
securing public-sector reform. This ideological context is crucial in understanding
the emerging relationship between New Labour and land-use planning.
Importantly, Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones (2000) point out that, when first
elected in 1997, New Labour’s attitude to the management of the environment and
to land-use planning was both ambivalent and suspicious. This was a result of an
intricate layering of earlier ideological, political and experiential influences that
reflected different economic conditions, local and regional circumstances, and land
and property development pressures at different times. For example, New Labour
was aware of its earlier attempts in government to address such agendas as
national and regional unemployment, social well-being, and the geography of
opportunity. In general, it had attempted to redress these through the deliberate
promotion of economic growth. In such circumstances, environmental and land-
use considerations inevitably tended to assume a relatively lower priority.
Moreover, when elected to office, New Labour inherited a Conservative legacy
of planning practices that were themselves relatively complex and layered
(Allmendinger & Tewdwr-Jones, 1997). Two broad influences are evident. On the
one hand, changes to the planning system had been inspired by social-market
ideological thinking. This had attempted to streamline statutory land-use planning,
had promoted the ‘plan-led’ system, and had sought to provide succour to private
property development interests. On the other hand, the Conservative planning
regime had been limited by external force of circumstances, specifically with
respect to the requirements to conform to increasing European Union
environmental regulatory standards.
Taking these endogenous and exogenous influences into account, it is, perhaps,
not too surprising that, upon election, New Labour responded by explicitly
considering the nature of land-use planning in its political agenda. This was a
response to the perceived weaknesses in planning and a resolve to use it as a positive
tool of governance. This emphasis was initiated through a wide-ranging raft of
measures that included constitutional reforms and devolution; institutional
innovation around regionalism and localism; and the modernization of the public
sector to secure technocratic efficiency gains and greater democratic civil legitimacy.
This paper concentrates on the specific implications arising from this thinking
and these measures for the design and operation of land-use planning in Scotland
towards the end of 2008. We examine the relationship between New Labour in
Westminster and political agendas in Edinburgh in order to explore the nature of
the land-use planning reforms, the advent of spatial planning, and the associated
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 New Labour and the Planning System in Scotland

civil engagement arrangements that have emerged under the aegis of New Labour
thinking. In concluding the paper, we turn to consider the implications of the
Scottish National Party (SNP), which, following its election to office in 2007, has
assumed responsibility for the detailed design and implementation of the New
Labour inspired planning reforms.

At the Outset?
The context for examining land-use planning in Scotland in this decade is
sharpened by its timing with another anniversary—the constitutional relationship
between England and Scotland. Although highly significant, the Act of Union 1707
between the two countries was, in effect, a partial arrangement in the sense that
Scotland retained control over key agencies—its legal system, the church, and local
government. Their subsequent development and behaviours proved critical in
influencing Scotland’s particular industrial, social and economic development
trajectories (Paterson, 1994). Notwithstanding its perceived status as a stateless
nation (McCrone 1992), for example, Scotland nevertheless enjoyed relative auto-
nomy in devising and implementing its own policies within the Westminster ambit.
This was noted with respect to the evolution of the Scottish land-use planning
system. Thus, it was argued that, whilst it shared the same purpose and design as
planning elsewhere in the UK, the Scottish system exhibited a very different spirit
of engagement (Rowan-Robinson, 1997). In particular, this may be held to reflect
the deep-seated ideological nature of planning and governance in Scotland, which
has been described as relatively more interventionist, more pluralistic, and
corporatist than in England (Paterson, 1997). This may be explained in terms of its
economic history, its industrial composition and geography, business and
government relations, and institutional and partnership experiences. Specifically,
it has been argued that there was evidence ‘to support the view that, although there
may have been a rejection of corporatist or consensual politics south of the border,
in many respects they have survived in some areas of policy in Scotland’ (Brown
et al., 1996, p. 106).
Notwithstanding these very different institutional characteristics, however, prior
to 1997 the UK remained very much a unitary state, and Scotland was
administered within the Westminster apparatus. Its affairs were managed through
the Scottish Office, which enjoyed Cabinet standing, and its public finances were
determined by the Barnett formula (see, for example, Midwinter, 2004).
Interestingly, the Scottish Office arrangement allowed for the integrated
representation of Scottish matters at Cabinet through the post of Secretary of
State for Scotland. In practical terms, Scotland was managed as an outlying
economic and geographical region in the UK, and its financial arrangements
reflected a pro-rata balance of population. More importantly, perhaps, Scotland
did not have its own tax-raising powers.
Significantly, politics did not stand still. Over time, a number of active advances
were made towards promulgating the idea of ‘home rule’ for Scotland. This
political movement was nurtured through democratic politics and was based on
fostering a stronger sense of self-identity, awareness, and self-confidence building
(Mitchell, 2001). The debates around nationalism and devolution that took place in
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 Greg Lloyd & Deborah Peel

the 1990s in Scotland were not always straightforward, however, reflecting the
complex nuances associated with different constructions and expectations of
independence agendas (Ritchie, 2000). Nonetheless, the preparatory work carried
out by the Scottish Constitutional Convention at this time is held to have been very
influential in informing the subsequent Scotland Act 1998 (Roddin, 2004). Indeed,
in this vein, it is argued that the preparatory work that took place with the blessing
of New Labour (then in opposition), and which was cognisant of the voting
patterns in Scotland, suggested that a coalition government in the new Scottish
Parliament was very likely to emerge by design, rather than by electoral accident
(Roddin, 2004). So it proved to be.
The Scotland Act 1998 created a devolved Scottish Parliament with defined
primary legislative and tax-varying powers. Westminster retained legislative
responsibility for reserved functions, which include macro-economic policy, fiscal
arrangements and spending priorities, foreign affairs and defence. Contingent
delegated responsibilities were passed to the devolved Parliament and its Scottish
Executive, including local government, housing, social exclusion, urban
regeneration, land-use planning, environmental protection and management
(Himsworth & Munro, 1998). The boundaries between reserved and devolved
matters, however, have proved to be rather more blurred in practice as the Scottish
Parliament can agree to Westminster legislating in certain devolved matters
(Cairney & Keating, 2004). This has accentuated the continuing influence of the
ideas associated with New Labour at Westminster initially filtering through into
the domestic affairs of a devolved Scotland.
The Scottish Parliament is made up of 129 members, elected by an additional
member electoral system. As a result there are 73 single member constituency seats,
and 56 regional member seats. The former are the conventional form of place
representation, whilst the latter are elected as ‘top up’ members in eight regions of
Scotland. The intention is to provide cross-cutting political coverage of issues, and
to make the Scottish Parliament more proportionally representative. In the event,
the elections to the Scottish Parliament in 1999 attracted considerable critical
attention; not only because of the historic significance of the first Scottish
Parliament for 300 years, but because the elections involved these arrangements for
proportional representation (Denver & MacAllister, 1999). In essence, then, devo-
lution may be considered as heralding a ‘modern’ approach to the arrangements for
local and regional governance. The intricacies of the proportional representation
system threw up some interesting electoral outcomes and did indeed result in a
coalition government. In the event, New Labour lost support, the Liberal Demo-
crats gained support, and the SNP faltered in its political fortunes (Jones, 1999).
During the first decade of devolution considered in this paper, Scotland was
governed by a (new) New Labour–Liberal Democratic coalition. On the one hand,
the coalition government was held to offer the possibility of political stability. On
the other hand, the experience in Scotland showed that such a coalition
nevertheless carried with it many of the prevailing and dominant political and
economic ideas associated broadly with New Labour in Westminster (Baird et al.,
2007). That is not to say that devolution resulted in some form of puppet state.
Over the decade, there were a number of frissons within the broad New Labour
governmental movement, particularly as Scotland continued to assert the need to
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 New Labour and the Planning System in Scotland

address its own social justice and developmental agendas and to devise its own
distinctive portfolio for the management of economic and social change.
Thus, the Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition’s Partnership Agreement sought
to reconcile contrasting political agendas and priorities. In practice, it asserted the
promotion of securing the long-term growth of the Scottish economy, encouraging
private-sector investment and business activity, providing support for productivity
growth, and articulating an enterprise culture. In effect, this largely represented
New Labour’s aspirations for economic growth and development. This agenda
was mediated only at the margins by the Liberal Democratic priority for enhancing
social cohesion and community well-being. The joint vision was simply stated as
being to secure ‘a Scotland that delivers sustainable development; that puts
environmental concerns at the heart of public policy and secures environmental
justice for all of Scotland’s communities’ (Scottish Executive, 2003, p. 5). In
practice, then, the Labour–Liberal Democratic coalition was comprised of a
complex set of inter-party relations that sought to assert particular political
priorities around efficiency considerations and democratic advances (Roddin,
2004). The coalition also operated within, and contributed to, changing electoral
contexts, as non-mainstream political parties emerged at different points in time
(Denver, 2003).
The optimism at the inception of the Parliament and Executive was both
expectant and tangible. Indeed, it was suggested at the time that:

[d]evolution undoubtedly does provide opportunities for influencing the

Scottish economy, possibly significantly, [though] the scale and even
direction of effects depends on the particular contribution of policies
pursued by the Scottish Parliament and the reactions of the Scottish
people to them. (McGregor et al., 1997, p. 208)

Thus, the die was cast for a new era of policy design and implementation under
devolution. Specifically, it was held to have heralded the potential for a new model
of social policy-making that was relatively more sensitive to a Scottish agenda for
change (Parry, 2002). In particular, a view was expressed that:

regulatory policies offer a potential model for the Scottish Parliament.

At one level, they do not involve Government directly running services
or setting up new bureaucracies and expenditures, but involve them in
setting agreed rules that are then implemented by other agencies. Active
government can then be linked with the politics of decentralisation.
Regulatory policies are thus an appropriate vision of government in an
age where on one level the state is under attack and critique, yet more
and more is expected from it by the general public. (Hassan, 1999, p. 16)

This clearly locates the role, status and shape of land-use planning firmly at the
core of this new political and intellectual period of Scottish self-discovery.
Devolution, then, must be taken as central to understanding the contribution of
New Labour and the changes to the Scottish land-use planning system since it has
provided the structuring frame for reconfiguring the political authority for planning
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 Greg Lloyd & Deborah Peel

and governance. By way of overview, the programme of reform under devolution

has involved measures to address the distinctiveness of Scotland’s socio-economic
and environmental conditions and to rework the public sector to achieve greater
effectiveness. Here, the processes of addressing policy and institutional congestion
and streamlining the public sector may be viewed as a continuing process as the
Scottish Executive sought to address inherited circumstances and endeavoured to
innovate in the delivery of local services (Audit Scotland, 2006; Scottish Executive,
2006). What has all this meant for land-use planning?

Integration of Land-use Planning in the New Scottish Agenda?

The period following devolution represents an important turning-point in the
design and implementation of policies and thinking around the agendas that have
been held to be distinctively more Scottish in character. Yet, the remit of public
policy areas has been differentially addressed. In reviewing the potential of
devolution to effect significant policy innovation, Parry (2002) observed that a
number of constraints came into play. These reflected the need to ensure policy
reconciliation between Edinburgh and Westminster; to enable a balance to be
struck between devolved and non-devolved matters; and to accommodate the
administrative styles of the civil service. This reasserts the notion that institutional
memory and established practices and cultures can continue to prevail even in a
changed devolved state that promises the potential of a clean slate. Indeed, Keating
(2005), for example, noted that Scotland’s public sector has tended to exhibit a
more traditional bureaucratic civil service model than that, say, which holds in
England and which has tended to assert the promotion of greater consumer choice
and competition.
It is worth noting that social justice considerations and priorities resulted in a
number of specific Scottish measures being brought forward. This suggests
evidence of the active mediation by the Liberal Democratic tendency in the
coalition over New Labour’s primary assertion of economic priorities (Parry,
2002). First, a portfolio of initiatives addressed social and educational priorities
concerning the free provision of care for the elderly, the abolition of tuition fees for
students in higher education, agreement on teachers’ pay, and a review of school
examinations. Such measures immediately set Scotland apart from England.
Second, the relations between the new Parliament and local government had
long been a matter of debate and concern (Alexander, 1997), and these were now
clarified and recast through the contingency of community planning. This
provided for the integrated delivery of public services within local authority
jurisdictions, and included the joint-working of a diverse range of sector partners
involved in individual communities. Interestingly, the community planning
apparatus built on an earlier Scottish governance arrangement that had addressed
the management of change agendas at the local level (Sinclair, 1997). The
touchstone of Scotland’s heritage and experience in policy innovation in
responding to new and anticipated issues remained an important one.
Third, particular attention was paid to revisiting the arrangements for local
economic development, post-school vocational education and training, together
with business support services. This followed a study that had concluded there was
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 New Labour and the Planning System in Scotland

considerable congestion in the prevailing arrangements, with evidence of

confusion, overlap, duplication and inter-organizational competition for available
resources (Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee, 2000). As a consequence,
a new economic development strategy and framework was put in place that
articulated the Scottish Executive’s primary economic ambitions. It certainly
reflected the assertion of New Labour thinking. Indeed, this was subsequently
acclaimed for its visionary experimentation in terms of local governance and
institutional capacity-building (Cooke, 2005).
Finally, a number of measures were advanced to address Scotland’s land
questions. For historical and cultural reasons, such as the Highland Clearances,
Scotland’s land resource is afforded a very high profile in political and community
debates. To this end, for example, the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 was
passed. Described as an ‘historic piece of legislation’ (MacAskill, 2004, p. 129), it
sought to address the then existing land tenure and ownership issues. These were
principally found (but not exclusively) in rural Scotland. Here, land reform has had
an important community dimension and formed part of a wider rural public policy
programme to promote economic and social justice (Bryden & Geisler, 2007). The
balance of interests in the ruling political coalition was evident.
Echoing Hassan’s (1999) observation that regulatory policies would underpin
the visionary nature of devolved government, we can further illustrate this
assertion of Scottish distinctiveness with respect to land-use planning. Here,
regulatory controls were extended to offshore marine fish farming developments
(Lloyd & Peel, 2006) and to the erection of mobile telecommunication masts
(Walton, 2002). Both these developments were held to raise significant public
interest questions in the specific context of Scotland’s natural and rural economy.
Further, two national parks were designated for the first time in Scotland’s
environmental history (McCarthy et al., 2002). This latter measure was intended to
address a perceived deficit in terms of Scotland’s rural resource management.
Importantly, and of particular relevance to this paper, the political emphasis on the
Scottish land agenda embraced a review of the strategic land-use planning system.
The particular focus on the perceived performance of land-use planning was not
unexpected. Commentators had already drawn attention, for example, to the
weaknesses of the existing arrangements, and had advocated a case for a new
national perspective on the facilitation and regulation of land and property
development in Scotland as a whole (Hayton, 1999). These issues were reflected in
the publication of a consultation paper just prior to devolution taking effect. This
document mapped out the potential areas for reform (Scottish Office, 1999). It
asserted that a key priority at this juncture was to modernize the planning system
so that its processes would enable it to contribute relatively more positively to the
challenges of social and economic change facing Scotland, the balance of urban
and rural development agendas, and the delivery of sustainable development.
Critically, the focus of this initial scoping consultation was the strategic and
national aspects of land-use planning practices.
Building on this momentum, the nascent Scottish Executive then put in action
an active programme of collaborative modernization. The timeline and content of
this process is shown in Table 1. The different elements represent important
steps in the deliberative iterations to construct a modern land-use planning system.
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 Greg Lloyd & Deborah Peel

TABLE 1. Timeline of planning modernization in Scotland

Year Modernization measure
2001 Consultation Paper—Review of Strategic Planning—which addressed key elements
of strategic planning practice and proposed that a National Planning Framework
be prepared to enhance the strategic context of local land-use planning.
2002 Review of Strategic Planning—Conclusions and Next Steps—a report that
documented the generally positive consultation responses to the Review and set
out the steps to be followed in securing the modernization of land-use planning.
2003 Your Place, Your Plan—White Paper on Public Involvement in Planning—which
examined a suite of issues around securing more effective civil engagement,
including the potential of ‘Third Party Right of Appeals’
2003 Modernising Public Local Inquiries: A Consultation Paper—which explored ways
of increasing the efficiency and transparency of the inquiry processes.
2003 Options for Change Research—a research report that explored in considerable detail
the various potential component parts of a planning bill.
2004 National Consultative Group—which set in motion regular pan-Scotland meetings
of representative interests in the land development communities of interest
2004 National Planning Framework—which set out the Mark 1 version of this spatial-
planning-inspired planning document to provide a context within which local
planning activities would then take place.
2004 Rights of Appeal in Planning Consultation Paper—which explored in greater detail
the advantages and disadvantages of a Third Party Rights of Appeal provision in
a modern land-use planning system.
2004 Making Development Plans Deliver Consultation Paper—which discussed the
different forms of development plan that would be appropriate to complement the
National Planning Framework. Attention was drawn to the importance of
city-regions in Scotland.
2005 White Paper—which provided a statement of the composite proposals for change.
2005 Planning Bill—the draft legislation that was subject to Parliamentary Committee
scrutiny and debate.
2006 Planning etc. (Scotland) Act 2006—passed in December by 149 votes to 13.

This was to take account of Scotland’s experiential learning in planning practice,

the reconciliation of contemporary land and property development pressures, and
the anticipation of future economic and demographic trends. The process involved
publication of a number of consultation papers, research reports and white papers,
as well as draft legislation. The Scottish Executive also initiated a programme of
workshops and debates with key environmental and developmental interests,
infrastructure providers, and community groups, and which were undertaken
across the different urban and rural regions of Scotland (Peel & Lloyd, 2006).
Taken together, this reflected the broader New Labour emphasis of
modernization in order to achieve regulatory efficiency gains in the structures
and processes of the land-use planning system. This sat alongside a deliberate
attempt to co-construct support and momentum for the implementation of the
planning reforms. This rested on devising a modern architecture for land-use
planning. This was to involve a concerted effort to co-produce the redesign of
the planning system by the active engagement of the constituent parts. In effect,
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 New Labour and the Planning System in Scotland

the intricate threading of these technocratic and democratic ambitions reflected the
composition of the prevailing political coalition. In practice, it did not prove
always to be a necessarily easy balance as some issues raised serious trade-offs
between efficiency ambitions and equity concerns. This was the case, for example,
with respect to securing major infrastructure investments, including renewable
energy and transport projects that raised concerns around environmental and
community impacts. Notably, the debates and deliberations around third-party
rights of appeal were also highly complex as the different interests were exposed
and contested.

Innovations in Land-use Planning?

The core elements of the modernizing land-use planning system in Scotland
during this decade may be considered as impacting on both the macro (national)
and micro (site-specific) agendas of land and property development. First, the
introduction of the National Planning Framework may be considered a very real
innovation. This built on the established Scottish tradition of devising strategic
planning arrangements to inform local land-use planning decision-making. It
further absorbs and reflects the broader ideas circulating with respect to European
spatial planning practices (Lloyd & Peel, 2007b). This national development plan
addresses many of the more recent concerns articulated in the modernization
process that Scottish land-use planning practice tended to lack a strategic or
joined-up dimension. Moreover, in terms of meshing vertical and horizontal
relationships in planning and development to promote consistency and certainty,
the National Planning Framework seeks to inform strategic investment decisions
and local land-use development planning on a pan-Scottish basis. Significantly,
this measure has been strengthened over the decade and, indeed, the Planning etc.
(Scotland) Act 2006 has given it statutory standing.
In practice, the National Planning Framework will be debated in the Scottish
Parliament and will seek to provide strategic guidance on those planning and
development matters held to be in the national public interest. Critically, the
National Planning Framework forms the apex of a new development plan
hierarchy, and thereby structures lower-order development plan policies and
decision-making around land and property development. Importantly, then, the
National Planning Framework emerged from the established land-use planning
tradition as the most appropriate discipline to promote a greater sensitivity to
articulating spatiality and strategic planning thinking in public policy areas in the
national interest (Lloyd & Peel, 2005). Further, the New Labour concern with
integrating different sector-based interests has been further asserted in Scotland.
The arrangements for economic development, for example, now exhibit a greater
awareness of Scotland’s geography and linkages; and the relationship between
land-use planning and community planning has also been explicitly addressed in
national guidance.
Second, the nature and style of statutory development plans are being recast.
The Planning etc. (Scotland) Act 2006 provides for the removal of existing
structure plans and the creation of strategic development plans in the four largest
city-regions around Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Over the decade,
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 Greg Lloyd & Deborah Peel

this strand of policy action emphasized the critical role of Scotland’s principal
cities in New Labour’s urban agenda. This remains an ongoing programme.
Notably, the legislation gives Ministers powers to designate Strategic Develop-
ment Planning Authorities that will comprise groups of planning authorities in
these four functional areas. These are intended to work together to prepare the
necessary strategic context. Elsewhere, in Scotland, local plans will provide for
unitary coverage. In the four pubescent city-regions, however, the local plans will
support the strategic tier, creating a two-tier arrangement. Importantly, this new
hierarchy seeks to create a cascade of planning scales that is predicated on
securing greater consistency and certainty in decision-making.
Third, there is to be a marked change in emphasis in the regulation of land-use
and property development proposals. The control of development is replaced by
development management, which is itself an attempt to facilitate the positive
realization of property investment. The new arrangements for development mana-
gement are sensitive to scale, and appropriate decision-making routes are provided
in the hierarchy. The focus on development management changes appeal consi-
derations with an emphasis on enabling local outcomes in the appropriate
circumstances. This represents an attempt to recharge the democratic productivity
of the local land-use planning system. These arrangements are complemented by
an emphasis on delivery, the front-loaded opportunities for active engagement by
the public and interested parties, and with enforcement being given a more
explicit priority.
Finally, integral to the process of planning modernization is the advocacy of a
culture change in the diverse groups involved in land-use planning. Over and above
the legislative and procedural changes being devised, the implementation of the
reforms is acknowledged as requiring a substantive change in the way in which
society articulates the value and purpose of land-use planning. This necessitates an
enhanced awareness and shared understanding of the spirit and requirements of
land-use planning in a modern society (Scottish Executive, 2007a). Importantly, the
required behaviour and cognitive changes apply across all interests involved in
land-use planning and property development in Scotland, and to society at large. A
reliance on Planning Aid for Scotland is a powerful example of the acknowledged
need to facilitate a greater public understanding of the role of planning (Peel, 2007).
Through devolution, and, indeed, through the period of coalition government in
Scotland, New Labour effectively initiated a process of modernization of the land-
use planning system and facilitated the absorption of spatial planning thinking into
the new arrangements. This mirrored the modernization agenda in England and
Wales, and the parallel adoption of national spatial frameworks in Wales and
Northern Ireland. Whilst the details of the new planning forms may have differed
between the devolved states, the underlying principles and values are much the
same. Here, New Labour’s preoccupation with promoting private property
development, reducing bureaucracy, speeding up planning decision-making, and
accommodating technocratic and democratic ambitions are very evident. Yet there
is sufficient differentiation in the individual modernization of planning to
reflect prevailing conditions. The Planning etc. (Scotland) Act 2006 may be
considered to represent the apotheosis of New Labour and planning in Scotland.
Whilst retaining the essential architecture of the traditional land-use planning
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system (Peel & Lloyd, 2007), New Labour has sought to bring into effect a new
ethos and understanding of this familiar and tested institutional apparatus. This
decade has thus witnessed a three-pronged attempt to bring together the legislative,
procedural and cultural change ambitions of New Labour.

The New Labour Impact on Land-use Planning?

What can we disentangle from New Labour’s complex relationship with land-use
planning over this period in Scotland? It is important to clarify the reality of the
changed context offered by devolution in the UK. Devolution was itself part of a
broader modernizing programme by New Labour on its election in 1997. This was
intended to reconcile regional political realities in the light of UK national
economic ambitions and the promotion of appropriate and effective subsidiarity in
governance and planning. Devolution thus appeared to allow for the design of
policy and other arrangements to reflect greater sensitivity to space and place, and
to enable a more distinctive agenda to be devised in this instance in Scotland. In
contrast to England, however, where New Labour held a more substantial
majority, in Scotland New Labour has had to mediate its political objectives in
coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Here, the technocratic–economic imperative
has been mediated with democratic and public interest considerations.
The relative permeability of neoliberal values in Scottish political debates has
set a particular context to understanding the tensions around the reform of the
land-use planning system. In terms of the economic imperative, Powell (2000), for
example, has argued that the New Labour programme in Scotland post devolution
was essentially neoliberal in character, notwithstanding the coalition arrangements
and even though this ideology runs counter to an established culture of
interventionism and corporatism (Brown et al., 1996; Paterson, 1997). Two
points are relevant. First, neo-liberal ideas were able to gain ground because of the
deeper structural changes taking place in the Scottish economy, notably the
powerful shifts in corporate control (Baird et al., 2007). Second, Scotland is now
very much more caught up in—and exposed to—the global competitive milieu,
and the associated international pressures that have continued to bear down
strongly on its national political, intellectual and practical realities. Arguably, the
adoption of spatial planning is part of this general process. In effect, the exogenous
context within which a devolved Scotland is operating has generated very
fundamental shifts in its traditional value systems.
Moreover, in political terms, the Labour–Liberal Democratic coalition’s
approach to political debate, policy design and implementation remained modelled
on conventional lines. Thus (and, perhaps, surprisingly), Jones (2007, p. 22)
argues that behaviour in the new Scottish Parliament adopted an adversarial mode
of political negotiation, being based on ‘a rather traditional Westminster
majoritarian fashion, to which the opposition, principally the SNP, reacted in an
even more traditional oppositional style’. Modernization of the land-use planning
system was bound up in these particular conditions. The impact of New Labour
thinking in Scotland has thus to be filtered through the particular context of the
first tentative steps of the Scottish Parliament, the day-to-day realities of coalition
politics, the hegemony of neoliberalism, and a new locus of oppositional
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governance. Indeed, the legacy of a decade of New Labour in Scotland is going to

be tested in very particular ways—in the short term at least. In the next section, we
speculate on New Labour’s legacy.

Into the Future?

On 3 May 2007 a Scottish General Election led to a dramatic change in Scotland’s
political administration, leadership and composition. Indeed, this is the first SNP
government in British political history (Jones, 2007). This electoral outcome may
be seen as a consequence of a decade of New Labour thinking and coalition
politics in Scotland, and it raises the possibility of further very fundamental
political debates around independence and Scottish autonomy (Devine, 2006). In
facilitating devolution, then, New Labour may be seen as having created the
potential of a political dialectic (through a political coalition), which resulted in the
election of an SNP administration.
In practical terms, Scotland is now governed by a SNP minority administration
that has subsequently brought in a number of wide-sweeping changes in the
arrangements for planning and governance, in political priorities, and in the stated
ambitions for Scotland. Yet it remains a minority government, and this begs
questions as to the likely conduct of political debates around strategic issues, such
as land and property development, infrastructure, environment and land-use
planning that may be reduced to detailed deliberations and negotiations on an
issue-by-issue basis (Lloyd & Peel, 2007a). Essentially, whilst the New Labour
legacy may be cast in terms of initiating a modernization of the traditional land-use
planning structures, its execution now rests with a different political ideology.
What might this suggest for strategic planning, spatial planning, and a modern
land-use planning system in Scotland?
The SNP was formally established in 1934 as an amalgamation of a number of
smaller political groups concerned with nationalism, independence and the
assertion of a stronger Scottish identity (Lynch, 2000). Since devolution, it has
gained in terms of visibility and standing, serving as the principal opposition to the
coalition. Moreover, its political base now encompasses representation in the
European Parliament and in Westminster. Whilst sensitive to the social and
community needs of its constituency, it has increasingly tended to articulate a
forthright position in economic terms, striving to promote Scottish business
interests and advocating a reduction in the size and composition of government
and the public sector (Baird et al., 2007). An early statement of its political
principles and priorities, for example, is principally a manifesto for economic
growth and development (Scottish Government, 2007). This is, in part a response
to the arguments that Scotland’s economic performance must improve in order to
sustain its standards of living at a time of uncertain change (Ashcroft & Bell,
2007). Indeed, in October 2007, First Minister Alex Salmond outlined his
ambitions to create and sustain a Celtic Lion economy in Scotland in a speech in
New York. The analogy with Ireland is important in the context of devising and
executing an effective land-use planning system in a small nation-state.
Since assuming political control, the SNP has embarked on a wide-ranging set
of measures that turn on the recasting of the civil service to make it tighter and
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more strategic; locating land-use planning within the Department of Finance and
Sustainable Growth; and announcing a number of decisions relating to planning
and infrastructure (Lloyd & Peel, 2007a). It has responded to concerns about the
arrangements for infrastructure (Marsh & Zuleeg, 2006) by re-asserting the
perceived role of the National Planning Framework and the land-use planning
system. In a statement to the Scottish Parliament on 13 September 2007, for
example, John Swinney (the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable
Growth) presented the explicit link between land-use planning and the objectives
of promoting increased and sustainable economic growth. There was evidence that
the new administration was keen to articulate its own agenda. A proposed New
Labour–Liberal Democrat marine national park was shelved. Notably, however,
the SNP manifesto includes a commitment to advance a marine bill in Scotland, to
assert the importance of renewable energy and to address climate change.
It would appear from this that the modernized land-use planning system and the
innovation of spatial planning evident in the National Planning Framework have
been more assertively positioned at the core of the business development agenda of
the SNP-led Scottish government. In the statements made to date, there is a
powerful parallel with Ireland in the SNP’s aspirations for planning. Marsh and
Zuleeg (2006), for example, have drawn attention to the potential of devising
national, long-term development plans to articulate infrastructure investment
spending priorities. Here, the National Development Plan in Ireland is suggested as
a possible appropriate model for Scotland. It is argued that this would encourage a
more rigorous approach to the appraisal of public-funding proposals and help to
underpin the priority for enabling and sustaining economic growth. In other words,
it is suggested that such an approach would establish the implementation agenda for
economic development and spatial planning purposes. Given the SNP’s interest in
emulating Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economic success, this would suggest providing
the appropriate planning machinery to support such an agenda.
The lessons from the first decade of devolution in Scotland are that land-use
planning is an essential part of modern national and regional governance. Planning
is now recognized not as a negative regulatory form of local control but as having
the potential to deliver strategic agendas for economic, social and environmental
change. The strengthening of the National Planning Framework in this respect is
highly apposite and indicates that the strategic strand of New Labour’s
modernization agenda is likely to endure. The implementation of the New Labour
legacy in Scotland devised under a particular set of conditions may yet take place
within a more forthright business model of economic governance reflecting very
different conditions. This potential flexibility and purposefulness of modern land-
use planning is an important lesson for elsewhere.

Conclusions
In 1997 devolution was central to New Labour’s ambitious programme of change.
It has been asserted, for example, that democratic devolution ‘may seem a modest
institutional innovation by the standards of federal countries, but it nevertheless
signals a major challenge for a London-centric political culture which, until now at
least, has been impervious to campaigns to extend democracy and participation’
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(Morgan & Mungham, 2000, p. 15). In practice, however, devolution forms but
part of a broader campaign of political and economic reform cast against a
globalizing agenda. Devolution has nonetheless allowed for the maturing of those
very ideas.
Interestingly, the neoliberal mantle of New Labour has passed to, and been
partially embraced by, the SNP Scottish government. Given its own political
agenda, the future must remain uncertain as new Nationalist ideas are asserted and
debated (Devine, 2006). A recent paper, for example, proposes a national
conversation around the options open to a maturing devolved Scotland (Scottish
Executive 2007b). These include the retention of the present devolution scheme
with the possibility of further evolution in extended powers; the redesign of
devolution by adopting a specific range of extensions to the current powers of the
Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government, and the possibility of greater fiscal
autonomy; and independence. Here, the process of devolution and the amalgam of
neoliberal ideas combine to foster a potentially radical change in Scottish politics.
Modernization of the land-use planning system during this decade has involved
a root-and-branch attempt to address the perceived weaknesses that were
undermining the planning function in the 1990s. Devolution provided the impetus
to take planning forward on a visionary basis through a new model of strategic
spatial planning, the National Planning Framework; and to create a ‘business’
model of land-use regulation, based on a culture of development management at
the site-specific scale. Parallel attempts have been made to nest planning within
the wider portfolio of public policy change, and to instil a spatial planning logic
into public policy more generally. It is this interweaving of policy thinking that
has witnessed planning moving centre-stage in debates around sustainable
development.
The Planning etc. (Scotland) Act 2006 has been presented as a landmark piece
of legislation that has been crafted over a decade and that has involved research,
consultation, and policy development to re-articulate the spirit and purpose of
planning through statutory, policy and procedural changes. This agenda has
emphasized efficiency and effectiveness in the design and execution of the
planning service, enhanced quality of planning outcomes on the ground, and
greater transparency in the process and improved opportunities for the inclusion of
stakeholders and the public. Throughout, the Scottish Executive underscored that
securing the wider benefits of a more positive planning system must involve
concerted attempts to share in unleashing the system’s potential (Scottish
Executive, 2007a). This dimension of the reform agenda has stressed the need
to critically reflect on more localized processes, organizational cultures, and
individual planning behaviours.
Planning reform, then, is recognized as very much an ongoing process of
continuous improvement. Moreover, whilst a diversity of actors ensures that each
has its own individual role to play in implementing the new system, the
importance of a partnership approach has been a constant. Ultimately, however, it
remains to be seen to what extent the SNP adopts this spirit of planning and
how—and in what ways—the (new) nationalist Scottish government takes on the
mantle of leadership in driving forward the modernization process started by
New Labour.
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