Planning Aid for Scotland funding: EIR release

Information requested

Information on funding provided by the Scottish Government to the charity Planning Aid for Scotland.

1. Whether the funding given to Planning Aid for Scotland is provided under certain statutory powers (and if so, please identify the statutory powers - e.g. the Scottish Ministers’ grant-making powers under S253A of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997).

2. Details of all funding given to Planning Aid for Scotland for the period 1 January 2017 until the present date.

3. Any terms and conditions attached to the funding provided to Planning Aid for Scotland for the above period.

4. Whether there is a tendering process and any competition for the funding which is given to Planning Aid for Scotland.

5. If there is no tendering process or competition for the funding, any reasons why the Scottish Government has adopted this position.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations.

We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA. This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

I include a copy of all of the information you requested. The enclosed table below is in response to your second request.

Year	Funding	Funding (£s)
2016-17	Core grant (1)	60,000
2017-18	Core grant	253,000
2017-18	Aspiring Communities Fund	31,791
2017-19	PAS Youth Volunteer Programme and Bridging the Gap Project	133,017
2018-19	Core grant	300,000
2019-20	Core grant	350,000
2019-20	Development of guidance on mediation in the Scottish planning system (2)	4,725
2020-21	Core grant	310,000
2020-21	PAS NPF4 Youth Engagement	14, 875
2020-21	Community engagement on the NPF4 position statement	6,000
2021-22	Core grant	300,000
2021-22	Case Management System upgrade	16,500
2021-22	NPF4 facilitation	3,000
2022-23	Core grant (3)	81,000

(1) Covers time period before 1 January 2017
(2) Project work jointly proposed with Scottish Mediation
(3) Covers time period from 1 April 2022 to 21 June 2022

The answers to your questions 1., 3., 4. and 5. are set out below

1. Whether the funding given to Planning Aid for Scotland is provided under certain statutory powers (and if so, please identify the statutory powers - e.g. the Scottish Ministers’ grant-making powers under S253A of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997).
We can confirm that the Scottish Ministers rely on statutory powers relevant to the purpose of the particular grant.

Where the grants relate to planning matters, this is under section 253A of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997, as amended. However, Ministers have also used powers under section 126 of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 where those powers more specifically relate to the grant’s purpose.

3. Any terms and conditions attached to the funding provided to Planning Aid for Scotland for the above period.
Terms and conditions are contained within each grant letter and reflect the purpose of each individual grant. In addition, they also reflect changes in the Scottish Government’s standard grant letter. Copies of the terms and conditions for each of the grants are attached.

4. Whether there is a tendering process and any competition for the funding which is given to Planning Aid for Scotland.
There is currently no tendering or competition process for the grant funding allocated to the advice service.

5. If there is no tendering process or competition for the funding, any reasons why the Scottish Government has adopted this position.
The Scottish Government has funded the advice service of PAS (formerly known as Planning Aid for Scotland) to some extent since the early 2000s. The PAS advice service supports communities across Scotland through the provision of information and free advice on planning and environmental matters. A number of local authority websites also reference services which are supported by the Scottish Government grant. These include Angus, City of Edinburgh, Dundee, Inverclyde and West Lothian.

There are additionally two important elements: the independent nature of PAS is such that it provides information / advice rather than advocacy. And the Government has been supportive of PAS’s model of using volunteer planners to provide the service. This model was recognised as a case study in Volunteering for All: Our National Framework published in 2019.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

EIR 202200307057 - Information Released - Annex A

File type

41 page PDF

File size

2.2 MB

EIR 202200307057 - Information Released - Annex B

File type

40 page PDF

File size

1.9 MB