Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020

State­ment of Con­form­ity with Par­ti­cip­a­tion Statement

August 2019

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Intro­duc­tion

The State­ment of Con­form­ity is one of a suite of doc­u­ments which accom­pan­ies the sub­mis­sion of the Pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (Pro­posed LDP) to Scot­tish Ministers.

The State­ment of Con­form­ity has been pre­pared to meet the terms of Part 2 Sec­tion 18(4)(a)(i) and Sec­tion 19(4) of the Plan­ning etc (Scot­land) Act 2006. This requires author­it­ies to sub­mit a report out­lining the extent to which they have con­sul­ted with and involved the wider pub­lic in pre­par­ing the Pro­posed LDP; and how this con­sulta­tion con­forms with the inten­tions out­lined in the cur­rent par­ti­cip­a­tion statement.

The par­ti­cip­a­tion state­ment sets out the prin­ciples for com­munity engage­ment, who would be con­sul­ted, and how they would be con­sul­ted, dur­ing each stage of the plan pro­cess. The rel­ev­ant par­ti­cip­a­tion state­ment is the ver­sion cur­rent when the Pro­posed LDP was pub­lished on 25^th Janu­ary 2019. This par­ti­cip­a­tion state­ment was con­tained in the Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme dated April 2018 approved by the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity on 20^th April 2018.

(Map of Cairngorms Nation­al Park with stra­tegic diagram)

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Con­form­ity with Par­ti­cip­a­tion Statement

The CNPA has been com­mit­ted to encour­aging par­ti­cip­a­tion and this input has been vital to inform the pre­par­a­tion and imple­ment­a­tion of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020 (LDP2). We have placed a strong emphas­is on act­ively enga­ging with com­munit­ies with­in the Nation­al Park in an open and trans­par­ent way and have out­lined our com­mit­ment to involving com­munit­ies, mem­bers of the pub­lic, developers, landown­ers and stake­hold­ers in the pre­par­a­tion of LDP2 in the par­ti­cip­a­tion statement.

CNPA’s par­ti­cip­a­tion state­ment for LDP2 sets out four key object­ives, which are out­lined below:

• Object­ive 1: Ensure people and com­munit­ies are aware of the pro­cess and the oppor­tun­it­ies to com­ment at key stages in the pro­duc­tion of LDP2. We will dis­trib­ute con­sulta­tion inform­a­tion to coun­cil offices, Nation­al Park Author­ity offices and will also dis­sem­in­ate inform­a­tion through Com­munity Coun­cils, our com­munity liais­on officers, and com­munity plan­ning networks.
• Object­ive 2: Widely encour­age involve­ment using a range of meth­ods. We will pub­lish inform­a­tion on the CNPA web­site and pub­li­cise the con­sulta­tion pro­cesses through the media, news­pa­per adverts and articles.
• Object­ive 3: Pro­duce doc­u­ments which are access­ible, trans­par­ent and writ­ten in jar­gon-free lan­guage which avoids tech­nic­al terms.
• Object­ive 4: Pub­lish an updated Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme every year, set­ting out how and when people can get involved in the pre­par­a­tion process.

How we have achieved this:

Object­ive 1: Ensure people and com­munit­ies are aware of the pro­cess and the oppor­tun­it­ies to com­ment at key stages in the pro­duc­tion of LDP2. We will dis­trib­ute con­sulta­tion inform­a­tion to coun­cil offices, Nation­al Park Author­ity offices and will also dis­sem­in­ate inform­a­tion through Com­munity Coun­cils, our com­munity liais­on officers, and com­munity plan­ning networks.

CNPA have sought to ensure that the Pro­posed LDP con­sulta­tion was pro­moted as widely as pos­sible across the Nation­al Park. Sig­ni­fic­ant effort was made to dis­sem­in­ate inform­a­tion to dif­fer­ent loc­a­tions and groups to encour­age them to get involved and respond to the consultation.

Lib­rar­ies: Cop­ies of the Pro­posed LDP, Action Pro­gramme and response forms were dis­trib­uted to all Coun­cil offices, lib­rar­ies and CNPA offices with­in and on the edge of the Nation­al Park.

Cop­ies were dis­played at the fol­low­ing locations:

• CNPA Office, Grantown-on-Spey
• CNPA Office, Ballater
• Aviemore Lib­rary
• Tomin­toul Library
• High­land Coun­cil Ser­vice Point, Grantown-on-Spey
• Badenoch Centre Lib­rary, Kingussie
• Kirriemuir Lib­rary
• Angus Coun­cil, Kirriemuir
• Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil, Braemar
• Blair­gowrie Library
• Pit­lo­chry Library

This enabled people to view prin­ted cop­ies of the Pro­posed LDP and respond in writ­ing to enable those who are not as active.

(Image of High­land Coun­cil Ser­vice Point, Grantown-on-Spey)

Neigh­bour noti­fic­a­tions: Pri­or to the start of the con­sulta­tion, as required by legis­la­tion, we pos­ted out in the region of 1,000 neigh­bour noti­fic­a­tion let­ters to inform all house­holds with­in 20 metres of alloc­ated sites about the Pro­posed LDP. This gen­er­ated a lot of quer­ies from people across the Nation­al Park and enabled the plan­ning team.

Work­ing with Com­munity Devel­op­ment Organ­isa­tions: The CNPA already works closely with com­munit­ies in the Nation­al Park which is sup­por­ted by our Com­munity Sup­port Man­ager and loc­al Com­munity Devel­op­ment organ­isa­tions – Vol­un­tary Action Badenoch and Strath­spey (VABS) and the Marr Area Part­ner­ship (MAP). In order to pro­mote the con­sulta­tion more widely and dir­ectly to com­munit­ies, we liaised with both organ­isa­tions about the Pro­posed LDP and they cir­cu­lated and pub­li­cised the inform­a­tion through their net­works, includ­ing through social media chan­nels. These organ­isa­tions also pro­moted the con­sulta­tion events and provided sup­port to com­munit­ies to under­stand what the con­sulta­tion means and how they can get involved.

Plan­ning Rep­res­ent­at­ives Net­work: CNPA also util­ised the Plan­ning Rep­res­ent­at­ives Net­work (PRN) which is led by CNPA. The PRN is a net­work — com­pris­ing rep­res­ent­at­ives from com­munity coun­cils and where there isn’t one, com­munity devel­op­ment trusts across the Nation­al Park – which seeks to inform and engage com­munit­ies in cur­rent plan­ning issues and helps to main­tain ongo­ing inter­ac­tion between plan­ning and com­munit­ies. Meet­ings are held twice a year provides updates about cur­rent plan­ning related news, pro­jects and con­sulta­tions in the Nation­al Park as well as dis­cus­sions around cur­rent plan­ning issues. This plat­form has been used through­out the pre­par­a­tion of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan to com­mu­nic­ate with com­munity councils/​trusts and engage them in the process.

In order to pub­li­cise the con­sulta­tion amongst loc­al com­munity groups, the PRN meet­ings were used to inform them about the Pro­posed LDP con­sulta­tion and LDP pro­cess. In addi­tion, prin­ted cop­ies of the Pro­posed LDP and Action Pro­gramme were pos­ted to all Com­munity Coun­cils in the Nation­al Park or where there isn’t one, Com­munity Devel­op­ment Trusts/​Company. Posters were also pro­duced and pos­ted out with the Pro­posed LDP for com­munity coun­cils to put up around their areas to inform loc­al people about the con­sulta­tion and encour­age them to attend the events. We also emailed the Chair, Sec­ret­ary and plan­ning con­tact of all com­munity coun­cils and com­munity organ­isa­tions to noti­fy them of the start of the con­sulta­tion, events and inform them that cop­ies were being pos­ted to them.

Com­munity Coun­cils and Asso­ci­ations: All Com­munity Coun­cils and Asso­ci­ations with­in and over­lap­ping the Nation­al Park bound­ary were provided with cop­ies of the Pro­posed LDP. Fur­ther­more, officers vis­ited all those organ­isa­tions who reques­ted it. Officers also spoke at Badenoch and Strath­spey Com­munity Coun­cils For­um, which cov­ers all Com­munity Coun­cils with­in the High­land Coun­cil area of the Nation­al Park.

Web­site: CNPA’s web­site was a key meth­od used to pro­mote the con­sulta­tion, provide inform­a­tion and was the main portal for receiv­ing responses. The con­sulta­tion was pro­moted on the main land­ing page for the web­site and through vari­ous press releases and newsletters.

(Extract from the Story Map of the LDP made avail­able on the CNPA website)

The con­sulta­tion webpages, which includes numer­ous sup­port­ing pages, attrac­ted 11,271 page views. Mak­ing the Plan itself access­ible was also con­sidered import­ant and there­fore, along­side the stat­utory loc­a­tions in which paper cop­ies of the Plan were depos­ited, the web­site provided the Plan in two forms, a tra­di­tion­al pdf and an inter­act­ive StoryMap. The StoryMap ver­sion of the Plan was viewed a total of 1,113 times.

Object­ive 2: Widely encour­age involve­ment using a range of meth­ods. We will pub­lish inform­a­tion on the CNPA web­site and pub­li­cise the con­sulta­tion pro­cesses through the media, news­pa­per adverts and articles.

CNPA sought to encour­age people to engage with the con­sulta­tion and attend events using a range of meth­ods. As high­lighted above, the con­sulta­tion was pro­moted through CNPA’s web­site which con­tained the Pro­posed LDP and extens­ive sup­port­ing inform­a­tion to inform people about how to get involved and respond to the con­sulta­tion and the pur­pose of the Pro­posed LDP itself.

Press releases about the con­sulta­tion were also pre­pared and pub­lished in three news­pa­pers — The Strath­spey Her­ald, the Press and Journ­al and the Perth­shire Cour­i­er – at the start of the con­sulta­tion. These papers cov­er all of the Nation­al Park.

Social Media Cam­paign: In order to pub­li­cise the con­sulta­tion and encour­age people to get involved, sig­ni­fic­ant effort was put into pro­mot­ing the con­sulta­tion through social media. A key part of our approach was to learn from pre­vi­ous con­sulta­tions car­ried out by the CNPA, includ­ing the Main Issues Report (MIR) con­sulta­tion that took place in ²⁰¹⁷⁄₁₈. In par­tic­u­lar, we wanted to make sure that we reached audi­ences that don’t usu­ally engage in the pro­cess, and to a large extent, these groups fall with­in the 16 and under and work­ing-age cohorts of the pop­u­la­tion. Dif­fer­ent plat­forms were used includ­ing Face­book, Twit­ter and Ins­tagram which proved highly successful.

(Example of a Tweet used to pub­li­cise the Pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan consultation)

Video has proved to be the most effect­ive form of social media con­tent. Short videos allow the view­er to eas­ily and quickly digest inform­a­tion. Fur­ther­more, research sug­gests that view­ers are much more able to under­stand and retain inform­a­tion presen­ted in video form, which is a chal­lenge when it comes to present­ing the com­plex inform­a­tion con­tained with­in LDPs. On a more tech­nic­al level, we needed to con­sider how our audi­ence accesses inform­a­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, the use of mobile devices, such as phones or tab­lets, have become an incred­ibly sig­ni­fic­ant medi­um for access­ing inform­a­tion, with around 43% of the CNPA’s web­site users using such devices. Video is easi­er to access on these devices than imagery or text and there­fore is more likely to be engaged with by this audi­ence. Research also sug­gests that video encour­ages social shar­ing and there­fore is more likely to reach a wider audi­ence. Finally, video builds trust and gives the Plan­ning team and the Nation­al Park Author­ity as a whole a more ​‘human’ and approach­able per­sona. This forms part of a broad­er strategy of enga­ging with the pub­lic on a more per­son­al level.

(An example of the videos presen­ted by plan­ning officers)

Video con­tent took the form of two main forms. Firstly, we released a brief over­view of what the Pro­posed LDP was and how people could get involved. This was presen­ted by officers who had worked on the Plan and who would be attend­ing engage­ment events. Secondly, we pro­duced a series of videos using Google Earth Stu­dio, Google’s recently released browser-based anim­a­tion tool for Google Earth’s 3D and satel­lite imagery. This is the first time the tool has been used for spa­tial plan­ning. These took the form of a fly-over of all the Pro­posed LDP’s set­tle­ments as well as short­er Set­tle­ment spe­cif­ic videos, which provided inform­a­tion on the nature of pro­pos­als with­in each set­tle­ment with­in the Plan’s hier­archy. These videos enabled people to view pro­pos­als without hav­ing to look through the doc­u­ments. These videos attrac­ted a lot of atten­tion and sought to engage and inform people in a more innov­at­ive way.

(An example of a video made with Google Earth Stu­dio that was used for the consultation)

Along­side the videos we also pos­ted a series of sup­port­ing inform­a­tion. This included 3D mod­els of the Plan’s Stra­tegic Set­tle­ments and them­at­ic policy spe­cif­ic inform­a­tion. One of the key areas we wanted to explore was hous­ing and the rationale behind the Plan’s hous­ing pro­pos­als. For this we used Infogram to cre­ate and share an inter­act­ive infograph­ic on some of the key ele­ments of the evid­ence base that under­lie of the Plan’s hous­ing policy. Like video, research sug­gests that inter­act­ive con­tent, par­tic­u­larly where the aim is to share data, is one of the most effect­ive ways of enga­ging with an audi­ence. To increase par­ti­cip­a­tion, the con­tent pro­duced for the Pro­posed LDP was optim­ised for both mobile and desktop devices.

As a res­ult of the videos and pro­mo­tion through the social media cam­paign, a record num­ber of people engaged in the pro­cess to achieve the following:

• Dur­ing the cam­paign we pub­lished 94 posts to Face­book, Twit­ter and Ins­tagram and uploaded 22 dif­fer­ent videos to You­Tube and Facebook.
• Col­lect­ively these posts made 153,782 impres­sions across the 3 net­works (Face­book, Twit­ter, Instagram).
• The videos received 30,169 views across all 4 net­works (includes YouTube).
• Posts were engaged with (liked, clicked, shared) 10,067 times – res­ult­ing in an over­all engage­ment rate of 7% for non-video based posts.
• Engage­ment with all cam­paign con­tent, include video, res­ul­ted in an engage­ment rate of 26%. Engage­ment Rate – is the met­ric that meas­ures the level of engage­ment that a piece or group of cre­ated con­tent receives
• Our cam­paign con­tent was shared 189 times on Face­book and Twit­ter and we received 64 comments.

The digit­al cam­paign (includ­ing engage­ment through the web­site) achieved the following:

• The con­sulta­tion web page and the four sup­port­ing MIR and LDP web pages attrac­ted 11,271 page views dur­ing the con­sulta­tion peri­od – 31% of these page views were for the Pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan con­sulta­tion page. This accoun­ted for 2% of all the traffic to cairngorms​.co​.uk web­site and was the 8^th most vis­ited part of the web­site in this time period.
• A third of all people who vis­ited the con­sulta­tion web­site page used the Inter­act­ive Report.
• A third of all people who saw a con­sulta­tion related post on Face­book or Ins­tagram either engaged with the post or watched the video related to the post.
• Just over 10% of people who saw a con­sulta­tion related post on Twit­ter engaged with that tweet.

Events: Sev­en drop-in con­sulta­tion events were held to provide an oppor­tun­ity for people to dis­cuss the pro­pos­als and find out more about how to get involved in the con­sulta­tion. The events were held across the Nation­al Park and were atten­ded by over 200 indi­vidu­als. They were pub­li­cised on the CNPA web­site as well as pro­moted widely through CNPA’s social media chan­nels as well as VABS, MAP and com­munity pages. Videos were used to pro­mote the events through all social media chan­nels and videos were also pos­ted from the events again to pro­mote and pub­li­cise the consultation.

(Bal­later Con­sulta­tion Event (Feb 2019))

(Table of Events, Loc­a­tion, Date and Num­ber of Attendees)

Engage­ment at the drop in events was high as they provided an oppor­tun­ity for people to come and dis­cuss the Pro­posed LDP with plan­ners dir­ectly on a one to one basis. CNPA plan­ners were avail­able over a 4 hour peri­od to explain the pro­pos­als to mem­bers of the loc­al com­munity and provide cla­ri­fic­a­tion and guid­ance on how to respond. We also incor­por­ated some of the digit­al mater­i­al into these events, includ­ing the Google Earth Stu­dio videos and 3D mod­els of set­tle­ments for attendees to watch and obtain fur­ther inform­a­tion about the pro­pos­als in their area.

In addi­tion to the main con­sulta­tion events, CNPA officers atten­ded a range of meet­ings dur­ing the con­sulta­tion peri­od, includ­ing with Com­munity Coun­cils and oth­er stake­hold­ers, such as the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship. The Pro­posed LDP was also fea­tured in three Nation­al Park e‑bulletins that were sent out to a sub­scriber list of 1,270 people. 13% of people who opened a CNPA e‑bulletin dur­ing the con­sulta­tion peri­od clicked on a link to the consultation.

In total 207 responses were received to the Pro­posed LDP consultation.

Object­ive 3: Pro­duce doc­u­ments which are access­ible, trans­par­ent and writ­ten in jar­gon-free lan­guage which avoids tech­nic­al terms.

CNPA has put extens­ive effort into deliv­er­ing a more access­ible and clear Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan. The Pro­posed LDP is much more visu­al, using pho­to­graphs to sup­port policies as well as using aer­i­al imagery for the set­tle­ment maps and bright col­ours to high­light dif­fer­ent alloc­a­tions. This is inten­ded to make the inform­a­tion clear­er and more transparent.

(Example of policy lay­out incor­por­at­ing images)

(Example of set­tle­ment map using aer­i­al imagery and bold col­our­ing for allocations)

In addi­tion site spe­cif­ic inform­a­tion has been provided for each alloc­a­tion using clear and visu­al maps along with key bul­let point inform­a­tion set­ting out the require­ments and con­straints for each site to help inter­ested parties and developers to under­stand any issues that must be addressed as part of a plan­ning application.

(Example of site spe­cif­ic inform­a­tion pages using OS Maps and bul­leted information)

Over­all, CNPA believe that the Pro­posed LDP presents a sig­ni­fic­ant improve­ment from the cur­rent Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015. Sig­ni­fic­ant effort has been put into mak­ing the Pro­posed LDP clear­er and more access­ible for all users. Set­tle­ment inform­a­tion par­tic­u­larly has been greatly enhanced and is avail­able not only in a stand­ard pdf doc­u­ment ver­sion, but also been made into a Story Map avail­able on the CNPA web­site which enables users to nav­ig­ate through the Plan con­tent eas­ily and more inactively.

Object­ive 4: Pub­lish an updated Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme every year, set­ting out how and when people can get involved in the pre­par­a­tion process.

CNPA pub­lish a Devel­op­ment Plan Scheme annu­ally set­ting out the time­frame for the pre­par­a­tion of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan. Whilst this has been done every year in Spring/​Summer, it has been delayed to August this year to ensure that the time­frame for the sub­mis­sion of the Pro­posed LDP for Exam­in­a­tion is met. CNPA acknow­ledge this is a key doc­u­ment for keep­ing people up to date about the anti­cip­ated deliv­ery of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and this has been achieved.

(Extract of DPS (April 2018))

Con­clu­sion: Over­all, the CNPA believe that it has achieved all of the object­ives set out with­in the Par­ti­cip­a­tion State­ment and that the con­sulta­tion on the Pro­posed LDP was effect­ive. Not­ably, CNPA sig­ni­fic­antly increased its reach and engaged with a far wider range of people than pre­vi­ous. While it is noted that the total num­ber of responses was lower than the Main Issues Report, this is largely because no peti­tion style responses were sub­mit­ted to the Pro­posed LDP con­sulta­tion (unlike dur­ing the MIR con­sulta­tion). In addi­tion, The CNPA believe the con­sulta­tion suc­cess­fully provided clear­er inform­a­tion and cla­ri­fic­a­tion, which helped people to bet­ter under­stand the pro­pos­als and remit of the LDP and res­ul­ted in a great­er num­ber of people decid­ing that they did not need to respond. There­fore, while the CNPA were able to engage with record num­bers of people, the num­ber of responses sug­gests that the major­ity of those we engaged with do not object to the Pro­posed LDP.

(Pub­lished by Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity con­tact information)