Scottish Government launched a consultation on the future of Scottish planning system

The Scottish Government have recently published a consultation on proposed changes to the planning system, seeking views on them from the public. The changes include proposals to align community and spatial planning as well as better co-ordination of infrastructure planning both locally and nationally.

The consultation on the Scottish planning future lays out key areas to implement changes, which are:

• making plans for the future;
• people make the system work;
• building more homes and delivering infrastructure;
• stronger leadership and smarter resourcing.

Following last year's review, where a set of recommendations was published and suggested that a National Planning Framework should replace the strategic development plans, the Scottish Government identified ten actions to deliver more homes and speed up the planning process.

Some of the key changes include:

• aligning community planning and spatial planning - introduction of requirements for development plans to consider wider community planning;
• improvement of national spatial planning and policy - development of the framework so it suits the regional priorities, simplify the local planning policy by using national policies;
• stronger local development plans - extension of plan period to 10 years and remove supplementary guidance for better accessibility;
• keeping decisions local - rights of appeal - review decisions should be made by local authorities rather than centrally;
• embedding an infrastructure first approach - improved co-ordination of infrastructure planning at a national and regional level;
• releasing more "development ready" land - more strategic and flexible approach for identifying land for housing development, simplified planning zones;
• making better use of resources - efficient decision making - a proposal to remove the planning consent from a wider range of developments.

The consultation starts on 10 January 2017 and ends on 4 April 2017.

For more information visit:

https://consult.scotland.gov.uk/planning-architecture/a-consultation-on-the-future-of-planning/