Scottish Development Department Research Articles

Role of the Scottish development department

Role of the Scottish development department

Community Housing and Regeneration: Government Policy and Housing Improvement

The Cullingworth Report, Scotland's Older Houses, of 1967 provided a detailed and shocking reminder of the acute problem of inadequate housing in Scotland. In addition to policy changes, to increase rates of clearance and replacement, the report called for inquiry into various practical areas, including the scope for improvement of tenements and methods for determining housing quality, including environmental standards. This paper, along with following article in this journal, recounts the work of the multidisciplinary improvement team, formed in the Scottish Development Department as part of government's response to Cullingworth's recommendations, in investigating those problems, collaboration with housing agencies and local authorities, and some resulting publications.

Tenement Improvement in Glasgow: A Quiet Revolution, 1968–80

This paper summarises a talk delivered on Saturday 2 May 2009 on the afternoon of the second day of the AHSS conference ‘Mirror of Modernity’. It records three separate periods of work relating to, largely physical, aspects of tenement improvement in Glasgow carried out by the author: initially over the years 1968–69 on the Rehabilitation in Glasgow Study at the University of Strathclyde; followed by its Oatlands sequel in 1969–70, as a Scottish Development Department pilot exercise. A final interval over 1973–4 covers work relevant to house improvement for the Corporation of the City of Glasgow Planning Department on the Second Review of the Development Plan. The paper ends with a short summary of tenement improvement progress in Glasgow over the decade 1970–1980. These accounts are snapshots of the progress of rehabilitation in the City over a key period of rapid transition, from policies directed exclusively towards clearance, renewal and municipalisation to a more balanced approach embracing community...

Cist burials and an Iron Age settlement at Dryburn Bridge, Innerwick, East Lothian

This report provides an account of the excavations of a cropmark enclosure and other prehistoric remains at Dryburn Bridge, near Innerwick in East Lothian (NGR: NT 724 755). The excavations were directed over two seasons in 1978 and 1979 by Jon Triscott and David Pollock, and were funded by the Ancient Monuments Branch, Scottish Development Department. Features and artefacts of various periods were discovered during the excavations, including a Mesolithic chipped stone assemblage and pits associated with Impressed Ware pottery. A pair of distinctive burial cists dating to c 2300–2000 cal BC was discovered, each containing two inhumations, one articulated and the other disarticulated; a Beaker vessel was found directly above one of the cists. By the mid-1st millennium cal BC a settlement had been founded on the site. Three successive settlement layouts can be interpreted from the excavated structures. The first two phases represent continuous occupation, dating to before 400 cal BC, and consisted of timber roundhouses, other rectangular structures and a small cemetery of pit graves located within a palisaded enclosure. The final occupation phase, which extended into the Roman Iron Age and may have occurred after a break in occupation, consisted of an unenclosed settlement of ring-ditch houses.

Cist burials and an Iron Age settlement at Dryburn Bridge, Innerwick, East Lothian

This report provides an account of the excavations of a cropmark enclosure and other prehistoric remains at Dryburn Bridge, near Innerwick in East Lothian. The excavations were directed over two seasons in 1978 and 1979 by Jon Triscott and David Pollock, and were funded by the Ancient Monuments Branch, Scottish Development Department. Features and artefacts of various periods were discovered during the excavations, including a Mesolithic chipped stone assemblage and pits associated with Impressed Ware pottery. A pair of distinctive burial cists dating to c2300-2000 cal BC was discovered, each containing two inhumations, one articulated and the other disarticulated; a Beaker vessel was found directly above one of the cists. By the mid first millennium cal BC a settlement had been founded on the site. Three successive settlement layouts can be interpreted from the excavated structures. The first two phases represent continuous occupation, dating to before 400 cal BC, and consisted of timber roundhouses, other rectangular structures and a small cemetery of pit graves located within a palisaded enclosure. The final occupation phase, which extended into the Roman Iron Age and may have occurred after a break in occupation, consisted of an unenclosed settlement of ring-ditch houses. Historic Scotland and predecessor bodies funded the post-excavation studies and publication of this report.

From Beyond the Devil's Beef Tub: A Note from Dumfries and Galloway

T h e S c o t t i s h G e o r g i a n S o c i e t y ( s g s ) was founded in Edinburgh 50 years ago in response to Edinburgh University proposals for demolishing George Square and rebuilding modern university facilities. The building industry at that time was recovering from the loss of architects and skilled tradesmen during the war years. In South-West Scotland, local government, in those days, was in the hands of the county councils of Dumfriesshire, the Stewartry and Wigtownshire, the large burgh of Dumfries and 15 small burgh councils, each a housing authority in its own right. With staff shortages, some of the early post-war housing schemes were based on pre-war designs made available by the rias, and housing layouts were prepared by consultants like Frank Mears from Edinburgh, who was also planning consultant to Dumfries Town Council and Dumfriesshire County Council at the time when planning committees were set up under the 1948 Planning Act to establish development control. The Planning Act introduced the control of buildings of architectural and historic interest. The Scottish Development Department, responsible for planning in Scotland, initiated the survey of buildings to be listed guided by Ian Lindsay as Chief Investigator with private architects making local surveys in different parts of the country. In South-West Scotland, draft lists became available in the late 1950s and 1960s but the first list to become statutory in Dumfries and Galloway was the one for Dumfries Burgh issued in 1972. The sgs soon established itself to comment and make representations on proposals relating to listed buildings. Carnsalloch House north of Dumfries, designed by Isacc Ware in 1758, had received grant for repairs, was for sale and was in danger of demolition. Terregles House, west of Dumfries, and No 6 Bank Street, in the town, were also at risk. So, Colin McWilliam came to photograph these buildings (Figure 7.1). Carnsalloch was saved thanks to John Gladstone of Capenoch who was a Regional Correspondent of the sgs. He persuaded the Cheshire Home Foundation to acquire the house, but unfortunately, now after 40 years, it is again on the market and very much ‘at risk’. Terregles House and No. 6 Bank Street were demolished. Colin McWilliam’s photographs are in the National Monuments Record of Scotland (nmrs) of the Royal Commission and the eighteenth century rainwater head in lead from Bank Street is in the Dumfries Burgh Museum. Building control was in the hands of the Dean of Guild Courts in the towns and a

‘Taking a gamble’: The Scottish Office, Whitehall and the Highlands and Islands Development Board, 1965-67

In a seminal speech to a group of planning officials in the early part of 1964, Douglas Haddow, then Secretary of the Scottish Development Department, outlined his personal view of the 'major tasks' that lay ahead in reshaping 'the machinery of public administration' to meet the needs of a modern economy. 1 Haddow openly admitted that much of the existing structure of government was peculiarly ineffective in meeting the popular demand for 'modern living', and gave warm support for the reform of local government into larger units of administration. He also highlighted the need for the economic regeneration of the regions, whether that meant the reconstruction of Scotland's existing urban communities or the creation of new settlements based on 'the best principles' of urban design. Haddow then went on to outline what he regarded as one of the central tenets of Scottish administration the post-war period, the close link between the Scottish Office's role in promoting physical planning and the activities of other Government departments to facilitate Scottish economic development. He commented:

Excavations on Iron Age and Medieval Earthworks At the Dod, Borders Region, 1979–81

Over three seasons between 1979 and 1981 the author undertook, on behalf of the then Historic Buildings and Monuments Directorate (Scottish Development Department), the rescue excavation of a 2.4 ha native settlement in advance of land reclamation for upland arable farming. Though limited in extent, the excavations identified a complex sequence of four major phases of occupation. Dating evidence was scarce but occupation appears to have begun as an unenclosed settlement during the Iron Age that was subsequently enclosed within earthen ramparts. Occupation inside the earthworks continued at least until the second century A.D. and a succession of later phases of building indicates that the site may have been settled continually or intermittently until the seventeenth century.

The excavation of two Bronze Age burial cairns at Bu Farm, Rapness, Westray, Orkney

Excavation recorded two large cairns with dry stone kerbs and a third, miniature cairn of similar construction. Each of the large cairns contained a central, slab-built cist. Burnt deposits with bone inclusions underlay the basal slabs of both cists. The third, smaller cairn covered a pit which also contained burnt deposits. The cremated remains from the two larger cairns appear to represent a single adult in each case. Faunal remains from Cairn 1 include bones of a range of mammals, birds and fish. Radiocarbon dates indicate that the cairns were built in the mid- to late second millennium BC. Excavation and publication were funded by the former Historic Buildings & Monuments section of the Scottish Development Department (now Historic Scotland).

The Origins of the Scottish Development Department, 1943-62

In April 1962 the Conservative Government announced the dissolution of the Scottish Home Department and the Department of Health for Scotland. In their place two new departments with different identities were established, the Scottish Home and Health Department and the Scottish Development Department. (Sec the Appendix for the SDD's administrative structure.) At the time the announcement evoked considerable all-party support and was generally welcomed in the press: James Hoy, one of the shadow Labour Scottish spokesmen, and the Labour Lord Provost of Glasgow were approached before the announcement (SRO, SOE 1/267). The Glasgow Herald (16 April 1962) thought the structure of the Scottish Office had become 'untidy' with many new functions allocated almost at random to the existing departments. The Scotsman (16 April 1962) hoped the changes would bring 'a new sense of purpose' into the direction of Scottish business. It was the first substantial alteration to Scottish administration since the 1939 Re-Organisation of Offices (Scotland) Act, which itself followed the recommendation of the official inquiry into Scottish Administration chaired by Sir John Gilmour. Most contemporary commentators attributed the 1962 re-organisation to the publication of the inquiry into the Scottish economy by the Scottish Council (Development and Industry), chaired by J.N. Toothill, the managing director of Fcrranti in Edinburgh, which had been published the previous November (SCDI 1961). Amongst a wide set of recommendations to 'stimulate growth', the inquiry urged the creation of a new Government department to combine the Scottish Secretary's statutory responsibilities for planning (then held within the Department of Health) with his non-statutory function to promote Scottish industry (then held within the Scottish Home Department). It commented: 'we do not think the present

Planning policy and planning agreements

Recent years have seen a steady increase in the use of agreements in the development control process. The use of agreements has given rise to considerable controversy and, in an effort to defuse this, the Department of the Environment and the Scottish Development Department issued guidelines. Amongst other things, these recommend that planning authorities should, where appropriate, give guidance in development plans about the circumstances in which they intend to seek to impose obligations through agreements. This paper examines the extent to which this guidance has been followed by planning authorities in Scotland. It shows that structure plans are increasingly making provision regarding the funding of collective infrastructure and that some local plans are making explicit provision arising from detailed planning control policies. The paper points out that the use of development plans in this way brings the pursuit of such benefits within the Secretary of State's jurisdiction. It also provides an opportunity for public participation in an area where the public have often previously been excluded.

The development of transport strategies for Edinburgh

In 1990 a consortium of the Scottish Development Department, Lothian Regional Council and Edinburgh District Council commissioned The MVA Consultancy to conduct a study of potential transport strategies for Edinburgh for the year 2010. The study was completed in under a year. This timescale was achieved by developing a strategic sketch-planning model, which enabled the performance of alternative strategies to be tested against a range of objectives and in the context of different scenarios for future development. A range of novel evaluation measures was developed, including a procedure for combining the issues of cost-benefit analysis and financial feasibility The study considered a wide range of transport policy measures, including road and light rail infrastructure, traffic and environmental management, parking supply, park-and-ride, public transport service levels, fares, parking charges and road user charging. It demonstrated the contribution of each of these to achievement of the transport policy objectives and the added benefits of combining infrastructure, management and pricing measures The Paper presents the objectives and structure of the study. It describes the sketch planning model developed and the ways in which this was used to evaluate strategies against the range of policy objectives. It presents the results of the strategy tests and identifies those strategy elements which contribute most to the resolution of transport problems. It demonstrates that it is possible, as a result, to achieve improvements in today's levels of environmental conditions, safety and accessibility, despite significant growth in the demand for travel

The pottery industry at Throsk, Stirlingshire, in the 17th and early 18th century

The bulk of pottery from 17th- and early 18th-century sites in Scotland is a particular type of earthenware, much of which may have been made at Throsk near Stirling. This paper describes a fieldwork project at Throsk, achieved with funding from Historic Buildings and Monuments, Scottish Development Department (now Historic Scotland), and gives a catalogue of the different vessels produced. Methods of manufacture are discussed as well as the uses of the pottery. Documentary research has provided information on over thirty potters and how their products were marketed and distributed. A first report on a neutron activation programme involving Throsk pottery is given in an appendix.

Unemployment rates: an alternative to the Jarman index?

To compare the Jarman index with alternative deprivation measures with regard to its usefulness to district health authorities as an indicator of need at small area level. The Jarman index (UPA (8)), Townsend's index of material deprivation, the Scottish Development Department's index, the Department of the Environment's basic index, and unemployment rates were compared in respect of their correlation with measures of morbidity by electoral ward in a typical English district health authority. Measures of morbidity comprised standardised mortality ratios, admission rates (standardised and non-standardised), and permanent sickness rates. Spearman rank correlation coefficients were calculated for each combination of measures and were then ranked for each of the deprivation indices. The 59 electoral wards of the Central Nottinghamshire Health Authority. The Jarman index consistently ranked lower in respect of its correlation with measures of morbidity than did the other deprivation measures. Current unemployment rates correlated well with morbidity measures, in particular with hospital admission rates, with correlations ranging from 0.669 to 0.830 for average and standardised all age admission rates. The Jarman index seems to be the least appropriate of these indices for health authority use. Unemployment rate merits further consideration as a simple, up to date marker for deprivation and consequent need for health service provision.

Marine fish farming, planning policy and the environment

Abstract Marine fish farming has generated a considerable range of economic and social benefits in a number of communities throughout the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. At the same time, however, concern has been expressed as to the environmental effects of the industry. Notwithstanding this potential conflict of interest there is not, as yet, a comprehensive land‐use planning and environmental policy framework for marine fish farming in Scotland. This paper reviews some of the individual attempts which have been made to provide such a framework, including the policy initiatives of the Crown Estate Commissioners, the Scottish Development Department and local authorities in northern Scotland.

Early findings on the effects of deregulation of bus services in Scotland

The 1985 Transport Act in the UK drastically changed the framework for the supply of local bus services. Its provisions, commonly described as “deregulation,” removed quantity control from local (formerly stage‐carriage) bus services by abolishing Road Service Licences. Competitive tendering was also introduced for any service which a local authority wished to subsidise on the grounds of social need. In making these provisions, the Government foresaw that competition would result, which (it was argued) would lead to more efficient provision of services, thereby reducing the financial cost of services both to passengers and to taxpayers, whilst improving the quality of service. In England and Wales, the privatisation of the National Bus Company was proposed but, in Scotland, the Scottish Bus Group (SBG) was not to be privatised under the 1985 Act. Subsequently, however, the Secretary of State for Scotland has announced the Government's intention to privatise SBG as well. Considerable interest has arisen, of course, in the effects which deregulation might have and a number of studies have been or are being carried out. This paper is based upon a report of the results of eight area studies in Scotland, undertaken by the Transport Operations Research Group (TORG) of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne on behalf of the Central Research Unit of the Scottish Development Department (SDD). The aim of these area studies was: to identify and evaluate changes in public transport arising from the 1985 Transport Act, focussing particularly on the impact on the travelling public. The primary objective is therefore to establish and compare the levels of bus service provision, fares and patronage, before and after bus stage‐carriage deregulation. Accordingly, three primary topics were defined as the central issues for the monitoring programme. These were: (a) supply; (b) fares; and (c) demand. The process of monitoring was based on a six‐monthly cycle of data‐collection. Study areas were selected by the SDD prior to the start of the monitoring programme. The aim was to cover a range of the most common social and public transport circumstances in Scotland. Both rural and urban areas are included amongst the eight areas. This paper reports on the results of the monitoring programme up to November 1987, covering the first complete year post‐deregulation.

Drinking Water Directive and Proposed Water Supply (Water Quality) Regulations for Scotland

ABSTRACTTaken in conjunction with the clauses added to the Water (Scotland) Act 1980 by the Water Act 1989 in respect of quality, as opposed to organizational terms, the introduction of the EC drinking water Directive1 and the proposed water quality Regulations2 represents the most fundamental change to Scottish water supply legislation since the Water (Scotland) Act 1946.The drinking water Directive1 was passed by the European Council on 15 July 1980, with the requirement for full compliance by Member States by 18 July 1985.Water Supply (Water Quality) Regulations for Scotland were circulated in draft form by the Scottish Development Department for informal consultation during September 1989. This had been preceded by informal consultation through the Convention of Scottish local authorities during the discussion stage of the UK Advisory Group on Drinking Water Regulations.This paper attempts to provide a simplified interpretation of the proposed Scottish Regulations on drinking water quality. It comments briefly on those requirements likely to have a significant impact on Scottish water authorities, including public communications, laboratory facilities, water treatment operational practices, and capital funding.

The Institution of Water and Environmental Management Evidence to the Scottish Development Department in Connection with its Policy Review of the River Purification Boards

Water and Environment JournalVolume 2, Issue 6 p. 574-577 The Institution of Water and Environmental Management Evidence to the Scottish Development Department in Connection with its Policy Review of the River Purification Boards First published: December 1988 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-6593.1988.tb01343.xCitations: 1AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume2, Issue6December 1988Pages 574-577 RelatedInformation

Evidence of a Post-1603 Court Architecture in Scotland?

While carrying out fieldwork in the Annan area on behalf of the Scottish Development Department my attention was attracted by a remarkable series of Renaissance buckle quoins at Hayknowes farm — at first sight puzzling, since the architectural style of Hayknowes otherwise indicates a building date of somewhere around 1800. These quoins are built in to each of the front angles of the house, and rise to a height of about five feet. And nearby, at Newbie, on the spot identified by the Ordnance Survey map as the site of ‘Newbie Castle’, a single similar quoin exists, built in to one angle of a nineteenth-century cottage. A clue to the puzzle was provided by the coincidental re-cataloguing of part of the Annandale family archive by the National Register of Archives (Scotland) [NRA(S)], whose secretary drew attention to the existence of a body of material relating to the construction in the later 1650s of a house at Newbie for the Earl of Hartfell. One surviving receipt in this group, for having produced a sundial, is from John Mylne, King’s Master Mason, and dated 1655. This document is of particular interest since, by linking Mylne’s name with Newbie at the same time that a new house, or an addition to a house, was being built there, it indicates the possibility of Mylne having also been involved with the design of the building at Newbie.

Monumental guidebooks 'in State care'

A new series of guidebooks to Scottish monuments in State care is being produced by the Historic Buildings and Monuments Directorate of the Scottish Development Department. The origin and progress of Government-sponsored guidebooks in Scotland are considered chiefly from the point of view of the non-expert user or casual visitor.