Seòmar agus comataidhean

Scottish Government submission of 19 August 2021

PE1885/B: Make offering Community Shared Ownership mandatory for all windfarm development planning proposals

I refer to the above petition, currently under consideration by the Public Petitions and Citizen Participation Committee, and your request for the Scottish Government’s views on the issue raised by Karen Murphy on behalf of residents of Kintyre and Knapdale about making community shared ownership a mandatory requirement to be offered as part of all planning proposals for windfarm developments.

I think it would be helpful to explain why mandating community shared ownership as requested by this petition, would be challenging.

The main point is electricity generation is a reserved matter under the Scotland Act 1998. As such the Scottish Parliament does not have the legal competence to change the law for a purpose relating to the regulation of the control of electricity generation.

In the absence of legal powers, the Scottish Government has sought to promote and encourage community shared ownership through good practice. In 2015, (updated in 2019), we published Good Practice Principles as follows:

Scottish Government Good Practice Principles for Shared Ownership from Onshore Renewable Developments

Scottish Government Good Practice Principles for Community Benefits from Onshore Renewable Energy Developments.

 Both these documents set out our approach for how we wish to see renewable energy developers engage with host communities when developing renewable energy projects.

For community shared ownership, we have set out that we want to see a significant increase in opportunities being made available across all renewable energy projects in Scotland, helping to deliver lasting economic and social benefits to host communities across the country.

We have indicated we want to see shared ownership projects being considered, explored, and offered as standard on all new renewable energy projects including, repowering and extensions to existing projects.

We also set a target that by the end of 2020, at least half of newly consented renewable energy projects should have an element of community shared ownership. Through active monitoring of the projects coming through the planning and consenting system, this was met, with 59% of all consented projects (10 of 17 projects) identified in 2020 offering an element of shared ownership. Progress on shared ownership will be reviewed annually against this target.

It continues to be our view that successful renewable energy projects will be those which treat communities as active and positive partners and we encourage all renewable energy developers to adopt our Good Practice Principles.

I hope this is helpful.