Item 7 - Review of Planning Enforcement Charter

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Item 7 12 Decem­ber 2025 Page 1 of 2

For decision

Title: Review of Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter Pre­pared by: Ed Swales, Mon­it­or­ing and Enforce­ment Officer

Pur­pose To seek the Plan­ning Committee’s approv­al of an annu­al update to the Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter.

Recom­mend­a­tion The Com­mit­tee is asked to: a) Approve the updated Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity, as set out in Appendix 1.

Back­ground and stra­tegic context

1. Sec­tion 158A of the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Scot­land) Act 1997 (as amended) requires plan­ning author­it­ies to pre­pare an Enforce­ment Charter. Fur­ther guid­ance on this require­ment is included in Annex N of Cir­cu­lar 10/2009: Plan­ning Enforce­ment (https://www.gov.scot/publications/planning-circular-10 – 2009-planning- enforcement).
2. Plan­ning author­it­ies must keep their Enforce­ment Charter under review, and it must be reviewed and re-pub­lished every two years. More fre­quent reviews may be required if there are changes to the plan­ning enforce­ment sys­tem or legis­la­tion that affects it. Scot­tish Min­is­ters may also require the Charter to be reviewed on a more fre­quent basis.
3. When a plan­ning author­ity updates their Enforce­ment Charter, they must pub­lish the updated Charter on their web­site, send a copy to Scot­tish Min­is­ters, and place cop­ies of it on dis­play in pub­lic lib­rar­ies with­in the plan­ning author­ity area.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Item 7 12 Decem­ber 2025 Page 2 of 2

The Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter

1. The first Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter was ori­gin­ally approved by the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee in June 2009. The Charter has been reg­u­larly reviewed there­after, and the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee has agreed to review the Charter annu­ally as a mat­ter of good prac­tice. The exist­ing Enforce­ment Charter is avail­able on the Park Authority’s web­site at http://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​park- authority/​planning.
2. The exist­ing Enforce­ment Charter is con­sidered to remain fit for pur­pose, clearly and con­cisely explain­ing the way the Park Author­ity will carry out the plan­ning enforce­ment func­tion with­in the plan­ning ser­vice and with­in the con­text of the oth­er five loc­al plan­ning author­it­ies. It has been used fre­quently to refer mem­bers of the pub­lic to when they make enforce­ment enquir­ies, where the Charter’s clar­ity and sim­pli­city is help­ful. The con­tent of the exist­ing Enforce­ment Charter there­fore does not require any sig­ni­fic­ant modification.
3. How­ever, there is cur­rently one pro­spect­ive legis­lat­ive change, as set out in Sec­tion 44 of the Plan­ning (Scot­land) Act 2019, which requires a plan­ning authority’s enforce­ment charter to include a state­ment on the authority’s mon­it­or­ing of com­pli­ance with plan­ning per­mis­sions that have been gran­ted for major devel­op­ments. Although this legis­la­tion has not yet form­ally come into force, a state­ment to this effect has been included in the pro­posed updated Enforce­ment Charter.

Next Steps

1. Sub­ject to agree­ment by the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee, the updated Enforce­ment Charter will be sent to Scot­tish Min­is­ters, pub­lished on the Park Authority’s web­site, and cop­ies will be issued for dis­play in all the pub­lic lib­rar­ies with­in the Nation­al Park.

Appen­dices

1. Draft Plan­ning Enforce­ment Charter
2. Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Enforce­ment Register

Ed Swales 28 Novem­ber 2025 edwardswales@​cairngorms.​co.​uk