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Planning, Architecture and Regeneration News

Planning Guidance launched: Effective Community Engagement in Local Development Plans

Today we published a practical guide to Effective Community Engagement in Local Development Planning and Impact Assessments, which have been finalised following public consultation in 2023.

The guidance was prepared under the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 Section 16C and supports meaningful and inclusive engagement in the Local Development Planning context.

This useful guide is designed for professionals and communities to help people be more involved in the decisions about their places that affect them. It is easy to understand and supports best practice. It provides diagrams and a quick reference guide as a structure to help planning authorities decide how and when to engage with communities, people and communities to understand when their effort will have most impact or influence on making Local Development Plans.

Practical examples of engagement can be accessed on the Our Place website which may help in putting the principles set out in the guidance into practice. The guidance complements these wider approaches and focuses on effective community engagement at various stages of the Plan Preparation process. The ‘levels of engagement’ and ‘stage by stage’ parts of the guidance aim to help everyone understand the ways that people and community groups can work together and across sectors to influence their future places.

Community Benefits from Net Zero Energy Developments consultation

On 19 December 2024, Scottish Government launched a public consultation on Community Benefits from Net Zero Energy Developments. This will be open until 11 April 2025.

Community benefits schemes are a well-established, integral part of renewable energy developments in Scotland, fostering a positive relationship between renewable energy businesses and local communities. These schemes saw over £30 million offered by renewables developers in community benefits in the last 12 months. Community benefits sit alongside the wider – and significant – social and economic benefits from renewable energy development, including employment opportunities, supply chain growth and infrastructure development.

We encourage you to read the consultation paper and respond through Citizen Space. Please share with your colleagues and networks to help ensure that all those with an interest in this important issue have the chance to share their views.

The National Flood Resilience Strategy

The National Flood Resilience Strategy was published on 18 December 2024. Sea levels, peak rainfall and peak river flows are all set to increase significantly in the years to come resulting in greater flood exposure and more flood impacts. The Strategy, part of the Scottish National Adaptation Plan 2024-2029 (SNAP3), sets out to help meet this challenge. The Strategy supports a flood resilient places approach, recognising that reducing the impacts of flooding is as much about the design of our places as it is about the design of specific flood actions.

Improving Scotland’s flood resilience

A National Flood Advisory Service will be established to improve Scotland’s flood resilience and embed best practice on a nationwide scale.

The service is one of the actions in Scotland’s first National Flood Resilience Strategy, published today. It will provide support and advice on building flood resilience to delivery partners and communities, and provide the governance framework for progressing high value flood actions such as flood protection schemes.

Other key actions include:

• work to improve our understanding of how urban and rural landscapes can be adapted for flood mitigation
• support for a broader range of flood actions including smaller flood protection schemes and property level flood resilience
• improvements to how data is used to inform decision making and raise community awareness of current and future flood exposure.

The scale of the challenge Scotland faces in response to climate change means that actions within the strategy are designed to extend beyond “fixing” individual flooding problems to creating flood resilient places and communities.

An additional £15 million has been set aside in the draft 2025-2026 Scottish Budget to support the delivery of the Strategy, wider flooding resilience and coastal adaptation work.

Boosting reuse and recycling

Actions aimed at ensuring households and businesses in Scotland boost reuse and recycling rates and cut waste have been published.

The Circular Economy and Waste Route Map sets out 11 priority areas where efforts and resources will be concentrated to support a transition to a circular economy – where resources are kept in use for as long as possible.

They include:

• setting new circular economy targets
• reducing the amount of food waste produced
• developing a model for regional hubs and networks for the reuse of construction materials and assets
• improving the provision of recycling and waste services
• minimising the carbon impacts of the energy from waste sector

The Route Map is the product of extensive collaboration and engagement with the public, private and third sectors through two consultations since 2022, with consistently high levels of support for the proposals.