Mr. Craig McLaren:

The idea we have put forward is to have a statutory city or county planning officer in each local authority. The idea behind that is that, quite often, one will have a director of planning in an authority but it is a question of what access a director has to the corporate management team and to the corporate decision-making processes. The suggestion we are putting forward is that there will be a provision where these people will be appointed, they could be the existing directors of planning, for example, so it is not an additional post. What would happen then, however, is that they would be, through the legislation, consulted on key issues by the corporate management team. This would allow planning to be involved in discussions around future finances and policy of the whole council and estate development. It would bring in perceptions and expertise on some key issues which planners deal with, which include how one looks to the long term as well as the short and medium term.