Tag Archives: views

Are controversial ‘fix rooms’ a solution or a problem?

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By Steven McGinty

In August, Glasgow City Alcohol and Drug Partnership (ADP) announced that it had found a potential site for its pilot drug consumption facility.

This new service provides drug users with a place to inject drugs under clinical supervision and discard their needles. Other services may also be offered, including the prescription of pharmaceutical grade heroin (administered under strict controls) and the development of a peer support network.

The site in Glasgow’s city centre would be the first in the UK and it’s hoped that it would be up-and-running by 2018. However, these proposals have been met with a mixed response.

Drug consumption rooms

First established in Bern, Switzerland, in 1986, drug consumption rooms were a response to concerns over the spread of HIV/AIDS, increases in drug related deaths, and the rise of public drug deaths in European cities. They were also part of a wider shift in drugs policy, where traditional abstinence-based approaches were being replaced by harm reduction programmes, which focused on reducing the negative impacts of drug abuse.

Since then, over 90 drug consumption facilities have been opened in countries such as Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada.

The case for Glasgow

Approximately 500 drug users inject in public places in the city centre. This small group of people accounts for the majority of discarded needles – a major public health risk for the city – and for many instances of public order problems. As a result, Glasgow City Council, Police Scotland and other agencies are spending significant resources managing drug misuse in the city centre.

Although this small group of public injectors provides challenges, they are also vulnerable and often experience other issues such as homelessness, mental health issues, and recent imprisonment. In particular, they are far more likely to suffer health problems. This includes an increased risk of blood-borne viruses, injecting-related serious infections, and overdoses and drug-related deaths. In recent years, the statistics have shown a decline in the health of Glasgow’s drug users. In 2015, the number of HIV infection cases rose from a consistent 10 to 47 per year. Drug-related deaths also rose from 157 to 170 in 2016.

As Susanne Millar, chief officer of Planning, Strategy and Commissioning for the Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership, and chair of the ADP, explains:

“People injecting drugs in public spaces are experiencing high levels of harm and are impacting on the wider community. We need to make our communities safer for all people living in and visiting the city, including those who publicly inject.”

What the experts say

Many have welcomed the announcement.

Dr Emilia Crighton, director of Public Health at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and vice chair of the ADP, argues that Glasgow is decades behind other countries in how it responds to drug addiction. She highlights that the city has been at the centre of high profile cases of anthrax, botulism and HIV infection, and that conventional treatment has not been successful at reducing health risks. She explains:

“Our ultimate goal is for drug users to recover from their addiction and remain drug free. However, until someone is ready to seek and receive help to stop using drugs it is important to keep them as safe as possible while they do continue to use drugs.”

David Liddell, Chief Executive Officer of the Scottish Drugs Forum, is also in favour of the new facility, explaining that they have been successful in other countries.

“They may seem controversial but when you see that these have been running in many countries in Europe for up to 30 years, you get a different perspective. Holland now has 31 drug consumption rooms and Germany has 24, for example. From these years of practice, clear evidence has emerged as to the effectiveness of these facilities.”

But there has also been some notable criticism. For example, Professor Neil McKeganey, an expert in drugs policy with the Centre for Substance Use Research in Glasgow, argued that the scheme is highly flawed. He believes that David Liddell is wrong, and contends that the proposed facilities are controversial. Professor McKeganey highlights previous research with drug addicts in Scotland which found that only 5% wanted to inject more safely, with the overwhelming majority wanting to receive treatment and become drug free. Professor McKeganey also suggests that ‘supposedly’ safer places to inject will not reduce the rising cases of HIV infection and other drug-related harms.

He warns that although these services have a role to play, “there is a real danger here we are moving steadily away from services to get addicts off drugs.”

Final thoughts

There is a growing body of research into the effectiveness of drug consumption rooms. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction has found that drug consumption facilities can deliver a number of benefits, including:

  • increasing access to health and social services;
  • supporting safe and hygienic drug use; and
  • reducing public drug use and associated nuisance.

However, the evidence on whether drug consumption rooms reduce cases of HIV or the hepatitis C virus remain unclear. And research has also shown that some countries can find it difficult to establish a legal basis for facilities – as the recent suspension of a facility in Greece demonstrates.

For Glasgow, it probably is about time that a drug consumption room was piloted. However, it will be important that its impacts are fully evaluated and that resources for drug treatment services are maintained in the coming years.

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Can the NPPF be used to encourage better design? A look at a recent High Court decision…

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by Laura Dobie

A recent High Court decision has significant implications for interpreting the design policies in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and the National Planning Policy Guidance (NPPG).

Handing down the decision in Horsham District Council v. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (1), Barratt Southern Counties Limited (2) on 23rd January 2015, Mr Justice Lindblom stated “It is not a general principle in planning law that an acceptable proposal for development should be turned away because a better one might be put forward instead”, dismissing the notion that this principle had not persisted with the introduction of the NPPF.

The case revolved around the question of whether an inspector had failed to take account of whether a better designed scheme could be conceived for a development site.

The Court dismissed an application under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 by Horsham District Council for an order to quash the decision of the inspector – appointed by the first defendant, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government –  to allow the appeal of the second defendant, Barratt Southern Counties Limited (“Barratt”), against refusal of planning permission for a development of 160 dwellings on land to the north of West End Lane in Henfield, West Sussex.

The Council had contested the grant of planning permission. During an inquiry the council submitted that the proposed development was a poor design which obscured views of the landscape, that a well-designed scheme should contain view corridors to retain these important views, and that it was fundamental to the principles in the NPPF regarding good design and the need to incorporate development into the character of the area, that such a scheme should preserve these views.

The inspector concluded that the likely “adverse environmental effects” of the proposed development were “limited” and did not outweigh “the considerable social and economic benefits” with respect to the early provision of new homes in circumstances of a local shortfall. He considered that policy in the NPPF did not indicate that the development should be restricted, and that the development would therefore be “sustainable”, and “the presumption in favour of such development should be applied”.

The Council argued that the inspector was not entitled to grant planning permission for Barratt’s proposal while it was still possible for a scheme to come forward in which long views from the site would be better protected, in light of policy set out in paragraph 64 of the NPPF that “permission should be refused for development of poor design that fails to take the opportunities available for improving the character and quality of an area and the way it functions.”

In his ruling, Mr Justice Lindblom stated that the NPPF does not say that a proposal which does not take every conceivable opportunity to enhance the character and quality of an area, or which does not deliver as well in this respect as a different proposal might have done, must therefore automatically be rejected.

He noted that the inspector focused on the policy in paragraph 64, as well as the wider policies on the design of development within which that paragraph is set, and that he exercised his own judgment on the issues relating to “good design” and “poor design” in light of these policies, concluded firmly that the proposal was not of “poor design”, and brought that conclusion into the comprehensive assessment of the planning merits on which he based his decision.

Referring to the decision in First Secretary of State and West End Green (Properties) Ltd. v Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd., Mr Justice Lindblom stated that in this case, the fact that an alternative approach could have been adopted in the design of the development, and that this could have maintained some views from the site which would have been obscured by Barratt’s development, did not mean that the design of the proposal the inspector was considering contravened government policy in the NPPF.

The judge went on to state that the inspector was entitled, and in fact, required, to exercise his own judgment on whether the scheme constituted poor design under the NPPF, and that he did so in an entirely lawful manner, applying NPPF policy appropriately. He noted that, “It may be that the council disagrees with him, but such disagreement is not ammunition for a legal challenge.”

The Court also reiterated the principle that an application under section 288 of the 1990 Act does not afford “an opportunity for a review of the planning merits” of an inspector’s decision.

This case indicates that an acceptable scheme cannot be rejected to encourage an improved scheme, given the design policies of the NPPF and the NPPG.

Full details of the final judgement are available here.