Item9AALDPMonitoringCommitteePaper

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 9 11/10/2019

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR INFORM­A­TION

Title: LOC­AL DEVEL­OP­MENT PLAN MON­IT­OR­ING REPORT

Pre­pared by: Dan Har­ris, Plan­ning Manager

			Nina Caudry, Development Planning Officer

Pur­pose of Report

This paper provides an over­view of how the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 was used by both the Nation­al Park Author­ity and the Loc­al Author­it­ies whose area it cov­ers over the four years of its imple­ment­a­tion. The inform­a­tion shows how the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan is cur­rently being used.

Back­ground

1. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (LDP) was adop­ted on 27^th March 2015. The LDP is the first devel­op­ment plan that cov­ers the whole of the Nation­al Park, repla­cing the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Plan 2010 and the Perth & Kinross Coun­cil High­land Area Loc­al Plan 2000, which covered the part of Perth and Kinross that was added to the Nation­al Park in 2010.

2. This report rep­res­ents the 3^rd mon­it­or­ing report / state­ment on the LDP’s imple­ment­a­tion, the last one hav­ing been pub­lished as part of the emer­ging LDP’s stat­utory Mon­it­or­ing State­ment. The mon­it­or­ing peri­od cov­ers the peri­od from 27^th March 2015 to 31^st March 2019.

High­lights

1. Appendix I has a com­plete mon­it­or­ing report for the LDP cov­er­ing the use of every policy with­in it. The bul­lets below provide a sum­mary of key points to draw from the policy analysis.

a) A total of 1,480 applic­a­tions were determ­ined with­in the Nation­al Park dur­ing the mon­it­or­ing period.

b) Of those applic­a­tions, 87 (around 6%) were determ­ined by the Nation­al Park Author­ity and 1,393 by the Loc­al Authorities.

c) Of those applic­a­tions, 1,409 were approved and 71 refused, giv­ing an approv­al rate of around 95% over the mon­it­or­ing period.

1. A fur­ther 99 applic­a­tions were registered but were not determ­ined due to either being with­drawn or being found not to require plan­ning per­mis­sion (e.g. they were for pro­pos­als with­in the per­mit­ted devel­op­ment rights of the applicant).

2. The most fre­quently used policy was ​‘Policy 3 Sus­tain­able Design’. This policy was also one of those used most fre­quently to refuse plan­ning per­mis­sion, demon­strat­ing that both loc­al author­it­ies and the CNPA are pre­pared to refuse poorly designed or inap­pro­pri­ately sited devel­op­ment pro­pos­als when necessary.

3. The reas­ons for call­ing in applic­a­tions are appar­ent from the use of some policies such as ​‘Policy 4 Nat­ur­al Her­it­age’ and ​‘Policy 5 Land­scape’ that were used more often by the CNPA determ­in­ing its 6% of applic­a­tions than by the loc­al author­it­ies in determ­in­ing the major­ity of applications.

4. There are some pos­it­ive pat­terns to the use of policies and poten­tial con­tri­bu­tion to the eco­nomy of the Nation­al Park. The approv­al rate for applic­a­tions where ​‘Policy 2 Sup­port­ing Eco­nom­ic Growth’ was rel­ev­ant was around 96%.

5. Sub-policy inform­a­tion was not sys­tem­at­ic­ally recor­ded by plan­ning author­it­ies and there remain some gaps in our under­stand­ing of how policies were used. This has res­ul­ted in a change in the way policies have been format­ted in the Pro­posed Plan, which provides the sub-policies with dis­tinct references.

6. There were 15 appeals against refus­al of plan­ning per­mis­sion. One was against Nation­al Park decisions and 14 against Loc­al Author­ity decisions. Six (40%) of these appeals were allowed. A fur­ther two appeals were raised against non- determ­in­a­tion, one was determ­ined to not be with­in the jur­is­dic­tion of the DPEA to con­sider, the oth­er was allowed.

7. Inform­a­tion on alloc­ated sites has not been included in the Mon­it­or­ing Report as this inform­a­tion is provided in detail in the LDP’s Action Pro­gramme, which is reviewed annu­ally and was presen­ted to Plan­ning Com­mit­tee in June.

Next Steps

1. Inform­a­tion on policy imple­ment­a­tion will con­tin­ue to be mon­itored annu­ally and used to inform the devel­op­ment of future policies and pro­ced­ures. In 2020 the cur­rent LDP (2015) will be replaced fol­low­ing the adop­tion of the new LDP, which is cur­rently await­ing exam­in­a­tion. There will there­fore be one final Mon­it­or­ing Report for this Plan to be pub­lished in 2020.

Dan Har­ris & Nina Caudry Octo­ber 2019

danharris@​cairngorms.​co.​uk ninacaudry@​cairngorms.​co.​uk