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Blue and green infrastructure Topic Paper - Engagement version

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Top­ic: Blue and green infrastructure

Engage­ment ver­sion – Septem­ber 2025

Require­ments addressed in this section

Table 1 Inform­a­tion required by the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Scot­land) Act 1997, as amended, regard­ing the issue addressed in this section.

Sec­tionRequire­ment
Sec­tion 15(5)(a)the prin­cip­al phys­ic­al, cul­tur­al, eco­nom­ic, social, built her­it­age and envir­on­ment­al char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the district.
Sec­tion 15(5)(b)the prin­cip­al pur­poses for which the land is used.

Links to evidence

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Sum­mary of evidence

Policy con­text

Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4

Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 includes a spe­cif­ic policy (Policy 20 Blue and Green Infra­struc­ture) that aims to pro­tect and enhance blue and green infra­struc­ture and their net­works. Its out­comes are to ensure blue and green infra­struc­ture are an integ­ral part of early design and devel­op­ment pro­cesses; are designed to deliv­er mul­tiple func­tions includ­ing cli­mate mit­ig­a­tion, nature res­tor­a­tion, biod­iversity enhance­ment, flood pre­ven­tion and water man­age­ment; and com­munit­ies bene­fit from access­ible, high-qual­ity blue, green and civic spaces.

Green and blue infra­struc­ture involves incor­por­at­ing nat­ur­al ele­ments like parks, green spaces, and wild­life hab­it­ats to enhance biod­iversity, mit­ig­ate cli­mate change effects, and improve over­all qual­ity of life.

This could involve policies to pro­tect and expand exist­ing green spaces, cre­ate new green­space through devel­op­ment, and estab­lish eco­lo­gic­al cor­ridors. The blue ele­ment Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 14 of 174 focuses on water bod­ies, includ­ing rivers and lochs. This might include meas­ures to pro­tect water qual­ity, man­age flood risks, and enhance recre­ation­al oppor­tun­it­ies along rivers.

Loc­al devel­op­ment plans should be informed by rel­ev­ant, up-to-date audits and/​or strategies, cov­er­ing the mul­tiple func­tions and bene­fits of blue and green infra­struc­ture. The spa­tial strategy should identi­fy and pro­tect blue and green infra­struc­ture assets and net­works; enhance and expand exist­ing pro­vi­sion includ­ing new blue and/​or green infra­struc­ture. This may include ret­ro­fit­ting. Pri­or­it­ies for con­nectiv­ity to oth­er blue and/​or green infra­struc­ture assets, includ­ing to address cross-bound­ary needs and oppor­tun­it­ies, should also be identified.

Loc­al devel­op­ment plans should encour­age the per­man­ent or tem­por­ary use of unused or under-used land as green infra­struc­ture. Where this is tem­por­ary, this should not pre­vent future devel­op­ment poten­tial from being realised.

Loc­al devel­op­ment plans should safe­guard access rights and core paths, includ­ing act­ive travel routes, and encour­age new and enhanced oppor­tun­it­ies for access linked to wider networks.

The fol­low­ing Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 policies are lis­ted as key con­nec­tions to Policy 20 and are rel­ev­ant to this evid­ence base:

Sus­tain­able Places

  • Policy 1 Tack­ling the cli­mate and nature crises
  • Policy 2 Cli­mate mit­ig­a­tion and adaptation
  • Policy 3 Biodiversity
  • Policy 4 Nat­ur­al places
  • Policy 5 Soils
  • Policy 6 Forestry, wood­land and trees
  • Policy 7 His­tor­ic assets and places
  • Policy 8 Green belts
  • Policy 13 Sus­tain­able transport

Live­able Places

  • Policy 14 Design, qual­ity and place
  • Policy 15 Loc­al Liv­ing and 20 minute neighbourhoods
  • Policy 18 Infra­struc­ture first

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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  • Policy 19 Heat and cooling
  • Policy 16 Qual­ity homes
  • Policy 21 Play, recre­ation and sport
  • Policy 22 Flood risk and water management
  • Policy 23 Health and safety

Pro­duct­ive Places

  • Policy 27 City, town, loc­al and com­mer­cial centres
  • Policy 29 Rur­al development

Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 con­firms that infra­struc­ture includes green and blue infra­struc­ture and provides the fol­low­ing definitions:

  • Green Infra­struc­ture – fea­tures or spaces with­in the nat­ur­al and built envir­on­ment that provide a range of eco­sys­tem services
  • Blue Infra­struc­ture – water envir­on­ment fea­tures with­in the nat­ur­al and built envir­on­ments that provide a range of eco­sys­tem ser­vices. Blue fea­tures include rivers, lochs, wet­lands, canals, oth­er water­courses, ponds, coastal and mar­ine areas includ­ing beaches, por­ous pav­ing, sus­tain­able urb­an drain­age sys­tems and raingardens.

Green and Blue Infra­struc­ture con­trib­utes to the fol­low­ing Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 qual­it­ies of suc­cess­ful places:

  • Qual­ity 1 — Healthy
  • Qual­ity 2 — Pleasant
  • Qual­ity 4 — Sustainable

Green and Blue Infra­struc­ture con­trib­utes to the Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 cross- cut­ting outcomes:

  • Redu­cing green­house gas emissions
  • Improv­ing biodiversity
  • Lifelong health and wellbeing.

Updated Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment policy on pro­tect­ing Ram­sar sites 2025

Pri­or to the pub­lic­a­tion of the updated policy pos­i­tion in July 205, in Scot­land, stat­utory pro­tec­tion of nat­ur­al her­it­age sites was delivered primar­ily through des­ig­na­tion either as a Site of Spe­cial Sci­entif­ic Interest or as a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion / Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Area (European site) under the Nature Con­ser­va­tion (Scot­land) Act 2004 and

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Page 16 of 174 The Con­ser­va­tion (Nat­ur­al Hab­it­ats, &c.) Reg­u­la­tions 1994 (Hab­it­ats Reg­u­la­tions) respect­ively. Ram­sar sites were there­fore not afforded the same level of pro­tec­tion as these des­ig­na­tions. How­ever, from 9 July 2025, as a mat­ter of policy, the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment con­siders that lis­ted Ram­sar sites in Scot­land should be treated as if they were European sites for the pur­poses of land use change decision making.

This policy pos­i­tion is designed to reflect the require­ments set out in Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4, as part of Policy 4c (Nat­ur­al Places), which states that, ​‘All Ram­sar sites are also European sites and / or Sites of Spe­cial Sci­entif­ic Interest and are exten­ded pro­tec­tion under the rel­ev­ant stat­utory regimes.’

Nature30 Sites

The 30 by 30 tar­get, to ensure that 30% of the world’s ter­restri­al, inland water, coastal and mar­ine areas are effect­ively con­served and man­aged by 2030 through eco­lo­gic­ally rep­res­ent­at­ive, well con­nec­ted and equit­ably gov­erned sys­tems of pro­tec­ted areas and oth­er effect­ive area-based con­ser­va­tion meas­ures (OECMs), was agreed in 2022 as part of the Kun­ming Mon­tréal Glob­al Biod­iversity Framework.

The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted to achiev­ing the 30 by 30 tar­get. In Scot­land it is being delivered through the net­work of exist­ing pro­tec­ted areas con­sist­ing of Sites of Spe­cial Sci­entif­ic Interest (SSSI), Spe­cial Pro­tec­ted Areas (SPAs), Spe­cial Areas of Con­ser­va­tion (SACs), Ram­sar sites, and Nation­al Nature Reserves (NNRs),

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