Continued Petitions

The next continued petition is PE1818, on introducing regulations on the residential use of trampolines, which was lodged by Stacey Clarke. The petition calls on the Scottish Government to implement regulations on ownership and use of residential trampolines.

Since the committee’s previous consideration of the petition, submissions have been received from the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning, Scottish Gymnastics and Eddie McDonald, and two submissions have been received from the petitioner. Those submissions are summarised in the clerk’s note.

The minister’s submission advises that

“Temporary or moveable structures, such as trampolines, do not generally require planning permission and we have no plans either to extend the requirement for planning permission or to introduce a system of licensing for them”.

There has been a bit of commentary and reaction from the petitioners on a comment that I made about trampolines and supporting regulations. I have experience of people coming to see me to complain about misuse of trampolines. Those complaints have been about trampolines being used wilfully late at night or adults using them. That is a form of antisocial behaviour. I am not dismissing people’s experiences at all, because people whose behaviour is antisocial can be remarkably creative. However, for me, there is a tension in that trampolines are very important for a lot of families and young people in terms of their family activity and exercise. Perhaps they are even more important in the pandemic.

I still think that we have not heard an argument for saying that planning permission or regulation are needed. However, active engagement with people who are making other people’s lives a misery in the local community is needed. If people on trampolines are making other people’s lives a misery, there are authorities that should be able to respond to that and take it seriously. That has been the bugbear of dealing with antisocial behaviour all my political life. The system does not necessarily recognise ways in which people’s lives can be made difficult.

I am interested in what other committee members think about the petition, but I am not sure whether the solution that is offered in it would address the underlying general problem. We can make no comment on people’s individual experiences. I might have had the experience of a family using a trampoline as a family would, but the noise might bother somebody else. It is like the balance in our communities between young people playing football and people having to listen to them. The issue is not always easy.

I think that that is right. There is an issue to do with how antisocial behaviour is expressed rather than an issue in this specific area.

I think that there is agreement that we want to close the petition and that the proposed solution would not address the problem, which is to do with how people misuse equipment rather than something that is inevitably caused by having the equipment.

We remind the petitioner that she may wish to return to the committee in the new parliamentary session with a petition that tries to address that question, and we highlight the fact that, if people complain about antisocial behaviour and the authorities at the local level are not responding, individual local MSPs would be able to take up those complaints.

We agree to close the petition, and we thank the petitioner very much for bringing the question before us. We recognise that antisocial behaviour, by its very nature, uses opportunities that are afforded, that it is expressed and read in different ways, and that it can be very difficult. There have been suggestions about how matters might be taken forward. We thank the petitioner for her engagement with us.