241122Paper3DevelopmentPlanScheme2024

Form­al Board Paper 3 22 Novem­ber 2024 Page 1 of 6

For Decision

Title: Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan – Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme 2024

Pre­pared by: Dan Har­ris, Plan­ning Manager

Pur­pose

1. This paper presents the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme (2024) for the next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan. The Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme is an import­ant com­mu­nic­a­tions tool. It is key to sup­port­ing deliv­er­able and people-focussed plans by let­ting stake­hold­ers know when and how they can get involved in the pre­par­a­tion of the next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and keep­ing them informed of progress.
2. The Park Author­ity must pub­lish and sub­mit a Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme to Scot­tish Min­is­ters each year. The Board is there­fore being asked to agree the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme 2024 as set out in Annex 1.

Recom­mend­a­tions

1. The Board is asked to: a) Agree the updated Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme 2024

Stra­tegic context

1. The Plan­ning (Scot­land) Act 2019 has brought numer­ous reforms to Scotland’s devel­op­ment plan sys­tem, which are in the pro­cess of being imple­men­ted. A sig­ni­fic­ant mile­stone in this was the adop­tion of Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 by Scot­tish Min­is­ters in Feb­ru­ary 2023. Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 replaced Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 3 and Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy, incor­por­at­ing an updated Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy, con­tain­ing detailed nation­al policy on a num­ber of topics.
2. Unlike its pre­de­cessors, Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 is part of the stat­utory devel­op­ment plan (Fig­ure 1). This means that for any place in Scot­land, the stat­utory devel­op­ment plan con­sists of Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4, which cov­ers the whole coun­try, and the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan for the plan­ning author­ity area where the place is.

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Fig­ure 1 The Scot­tish Stat­utory Devel­op­ment Plan.

1. Stra­tegic dir­ec­tion with­in the Nation­al Park is also provided by the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2022. It sets out the vis­ion and over-arch­ing strategy for man­aging the Nation­al Park, as well as identi­fy­ing pri­or­it­ies for action and an over­all stra­tegic policy frame­work. Fur­ther­more, the Part­ner­ship Plan acts as the Region­al Spa­tial Strategy for the Nation­al Park, which is inten­ded to address stra­tegic devel­op­ment and issues.
2. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment guid­ance states that Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plans for Nation­al Parks should be con­sist­ent with the Part­ner­ship Plan and Region­al Spa­tial Strategy. The Part­ner­ship Plan there­fore provides the stra­tegic con­text for the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan, and the next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan will help to deliv­er sev­er­al of the Part­ner­ship Plan’s policies and priorities.
3. At a loc­al level the devel­op­ment plan may be influ­enced by Loc­al Place Plans. These are com­munity-led plans that focus on places with­in loc­al author­it­ies’ areas, which may include par­tic­u­lar neighbourhoods.
4. On 19 May 2023, the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Devel­op­ment Plan­ning) (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions came into force. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has indic­ated that it expects all

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plan­ning author­it­ies to replace their cur­rent Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan with a new style Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan with­in around five years of this date. This means the Park Author­ity is expec­ted to pre­pare and adopt its next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan by around May 2028.

1. The Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme is an import­ant part of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment pre­par­a­tion pro­cess. It is key to sup­port­ing deliv­er­able and people-focussed plans by let­ting stake­hold­ers know when and how they can get involved in the pre­par­a­tion of the next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and keep­ing them informed of progress.
2. The Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme must be pub­lished and sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Min­is­ters each year dur­ing the pre­par­a­tion of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan.

Scope of the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme

1. This is the second Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme pub­lished in sup­port of the next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan. The first Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme was adop­ted at the Park Author­ity Board Meet­ing on 23 June 2023.
2. The key com­pon­ents of the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme 2024 are its timetable and Par­ti­cip­a­tion Statement.
3. The timetable sets out each stage of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan pre­par­a­tion pro­cess, identi­fy­ing the years and months in which it is expec­ted to take place. In accord­ance with rel­ev­ant guid­ance, the timetable presents this inform­a­tion in the format of fin­an­cial year quarters.
4. The Par­ti­cip­a­tion State­ment sets out when con­sulta­tion on the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan is likely to take place, with whom and its likely form, and the steps to be taken to involve the pub­lic at large. The Park Author­ity sought the views of com­munity coun­cils and asso­ci­ations and young people, via the Cairngorms Youth Action Team, on the con­tent of the Par­ti­cip­a­tion State­ment dur­ing pro­duc­tion of the first Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme in 2023. The con­tent of the Par­ti­cip­a­tion State­ment is unchanged with­in the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme 2024. How­ever, the times­cales for under­tak­ing some of the con­sulta­tion activ­it­ies have been amended to reflect the updated timetable for pre­par­ing the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan.

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Update to the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan’s timetable

1. The Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme 2024 con­tains an update to the timetable in the pre­vi­ous Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme, pub­lished in July 2023.
2. The Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Devel­op­ment Plan­ning) (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions 2023 require that if the timetable included in an updated Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme dif­fers from the timetable included in the pre­vi­ous ver­sion, the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme must identi­fy the changes to the timetable and the reas­ons for them.
3. The reas­ons for the changes to the timetable for the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan are: a) A great­er volume of work required to pre­pare the Evid­ence Report than anti­cip­ated, with addi­tion­al require­ments emer­ging after the pub­lic­a­tion of Scot­tish Government’s Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan­ning Guid­ance and Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Devel­op­ment Plan­ning) (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions 2023. b) Staff posts with­in the plan­ning ser­vice being vacant dur­ing the course of the year.

Stra­tegic policy consideration

1. The Park Author­ity has a stat­utory duty to adopt and pub­lish the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme. The Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme in Annex 1 was pre­pared in accord­ance with Scot­tish Government’s Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan­ning Guid­ance, which was pub­lished in May 2023.
2. The Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme sets out the timetable for pre­par­a­tion of the next Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and a Par­ti­cip­a­tion State­ment that sets out how and when mem­bers of the pub­lic and stake­hold­ers will be con­sul­ted and engaged.

Stra­tegic risk management

1. While no risk is posed by the adop­tion of the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme itself, it is recog­nised that there are risks to the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan’s timetable for preparation.
2. As exper­i­enced in 2023 and 2024, the emer­ging require­ments for evid­ence have been more resource demand­ing than ori­gin­ally anti­cip­ated. While it is hoped that these factors have now been under­stood, there remains uncer­tainty around the volumes of inform­a­tion required by key agen­cies and oth­er stat­utory stake­hold­ers to allow them to con­sider the Evid­ence Report sufficient.

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1. The times­cales for the gate check and the later exam­in­a­tion, are not con­trolled by the Nation­al Park Author­ity. Fur­ther­more, there remains uncer­tainty about the stand­ards needed for an Evid­ence Report to be found suf­fi­cient at the gate check stage. To date, of the sev­en Evid­ence Reports sub­mit­ted to gate check by oth­er loc­al plan­ning author­it­ies: a) Two have been found to be suf­fi­cient. b) Two have been found to be insuf­fi­cient and returned to their loc­al author­it­ies. c) One has been with­drawn from gate check. d) One is still under con­sid­er­a­tion by a report­er with a tar­get date of 23 Decem­ber 2024. e) One is yet to be alloc­ated to a reporter.
2. Where an Evid­ence Report is returned, the plan­ning author­ity is required to carry out a range of tasks to bring it to suf­fi­ciency, which may include the need to redraft sec­tions of the report, gath­er addi­tion­al evid­ence, com­mis­sion addi­tion­al stud­ies and carry out fur­ther engage­ment, as well as the stat­utory demo­crat­ic pro­cesses. The revised ver­sion must then be resub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Min­is­ters for its gate check. While the delay caused in the pre­par­a­tion of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan in such cases will be depend­ent on the spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances, the delay caused in all cases will be sev­er­al months.
3. Cer­tain duties relat­ing to the pre­par­a­tion of Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plans also fall out­side the remit of the Park Author­ity to deliv­er. For example, Hous­ing Need and Demand Assess­ments, Loc­al Heat and Energy Effi­ciency Strategies and Open Space Strategies are the respons­ib­il­ity of Loc­al Author­it­ies to pre­pare and deliv­er but are needed by the Park Author­ity to inform the pre­par­a­tion of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan. While the Park Author­ity works closely with part­ners to help deliv­er these duties, it does not have any dir­ect con­trol over their man­age­ment. There­fore, it is recog­nised that there could be an impact on the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan’s timetable should part­ners face dif­fi­culties in deliv­er­ing these duties.
4. Any sig­ni­fic­ant delay to the timetable is likely to place the abil­ity to meet the Scot­tish Government’s tar­get of hav­ing an adop­ted Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan in place by around May 2028 at risk. The updated timetable presen­ted in the Devel­op­ment Plan scheme estim­ates adop­tion of the new Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan by quarter three ²⁰²⁷⁄₂₈, there­fore there is lim­ited room for fur­ther slippage.

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1. The Park Author­ity Board will be kept up to date on the pro­gress of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan’s pre­par­a­tion and the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme will be updated and pub­lished annually.

Suc­cess measures

1. At the exam­in­a­tion stage, before con­sid­er­ing the Pro­posed Plan itself, the per­son appoin­ted to carry out the exam­in­a­tion will determ­ine wheth­er the con­sulta­tion and pub­lic involve­ment in the pre­par­a­tion of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan has met or exceeded the require­ments set out in the Par­ti­cip­a­tion State­ment. The Exam­in­a­tion will not pro­gress if the plan­ning author­ity is deemed to have failed in this regard.
2. Fol­low­ing the exam­in­a­tion, the meas­ure of suc­cess is the adop­tion of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan by the Park Author­ity Board and its sub­sequent delivery.

Next steps

1. Once the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme 2024 is agreed by the Park Author­ity Board, the Park Author­ity will: a) Pub­lish it on the Park Author­ity web­site. b) Place a copy in each pub­lic lib­rary or Loc­al Author­ity office in the Nation­al Park. c) Email cop­ies to each Com­munity Coun­cil or Asso­ci­ation in the Nation­al Park. d) Send two cop­ies to Scot­tish Ministers.
2. A fur­ther update to the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme will be brought to the Board in 2025.

Sup­port­ing information

1. Annex 1 — Pro­posed Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme 2024

Links

[Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme 2023](Development Plan Scheme 2023)

Dan Har­ris, 05 Novem­ber 2024 danharris@​cairngorms.​co.​uk