Planning for change is Collar's key role

NEIL Collar started as a trainee with lawyers Brodies in 1990 and has been there ever since.

It's a profession where lateral hires have become common of late but he is one of many Brodies partners who have been with the firm since their day one. He says: "That means as an organisation the culture is right."

He will, in fact, be involved in a bit of lateral hiring soon – recruiting a specialist from another firm of lawyers to join the growing planning team he heads.

He has a leadership style which has been recognised by the Royal Town Planning Institute which, in its annual review, ranked Brodies the first in Scotland and chose Collar as Scotland's No 1 planning adviser.

His work spans all aspects of the planning process – applications, appeals and inquiries, court actions, issues in relation to land acquisition, compulsory purchase and compensation, listed buildings and conservation areas.

Lots of tetchy issues there at a time of considerable looming planning legislation change and reams of consultative documents from the Scottish Government as the changes slowly wend their way to reality.

Collar calls it "consultation hell". He sits on a Law Society committee which he says has to go through a huge amount of material to produce responses. "It is quite a challenge. There is a lot of detail to assimilate."

He supports a suggestion by the British Property Federation that there should be planning training for councillors.

He states: "There is a particularly pressing need now, because so many new councillors have joined planning committees since the last election. Furthermore, the new procedures on determining planning applications are due to come into force in January, which will give councillors increased responsibilities, especially when sitting on the local review board, a newly-created appeals body.

"As part of the Scottish Government's culture change agenda, planning authorities should consider prioritising or fast-tracking bigger developments. In return, developers might be prepared to pay for extra staff to deal with their application.

"Some planning officers develop expertise in dealing with complex developments, particularly retail and minerals. That enables planning applications to be dealt with more efficiently. Local authorities should explore the potential to pool that expertise into centres of excellence."

A particularly busy area for Collar and his team is on compulsory purchases orders for rail links – the new Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine link involved the compulsory purchase for Clackmannanshire Council of more than 70 parcels of land; the Waverley project involves over 1,300 separate purchases; and the Airdrie-Bathgate link involves over 1,000 separate parcels of land and several thousand owners, constituting the largest compulsory purchase scheme carried out by a private firm in Scotland this century.

He says that his philosophy has always been to try to understand what the person on the other side needs. "Rather than have a rant about my client's needs I want to find out what is holding it up, what the problem is, understand it and move on."