What you need to know
Help & further info
Check your local planning authority’s website. In most cases this will be your local Council, unless you live within the boundaries of a national park where the park is the planning authority.
Your planning authority should, at a minimum, have published information on how to prepare and submit a local place plan but some provide a wider range of resources. For example:
Dumfries and Galloway Council ran a webinar for local organisations and the video can be found on their website
Highland Council have a Local Place Plan preparation flowchart and useful templates
Planning Aid Scotland might be a source of practical support to develop your plan.
Nick Wright Planning has been involved in working with a number of communities across Scotland (and the UK), on a commission basis, and blogs about this on his website.
Further reading
The Scottish Government’s Our Place website has information about Local Place Plans and other place-related initiatives.
Draft ‘How to Guide’ for communities on Local Place Plans, produced in 2020 for the Scottish Government by SCDC (Dave Allan and Paul Nelis) and Nick Wright.
Guide for community delivery of Local Place Plans prepared by Planning Aid Scotland.
Th primary legislation governing Local Place Plans can be found in Section 14 of the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019.
Secondary legislation governing Local Place Plans is contained in the The Town and Country Planning (Local Place Plans) (Scotland) Regulations 2021.
Official guidance for communities and Scottish Government Planning circular 1/2022: Local Place Plans provides guidance to communities and planning authorities on the preparation, submission and registration of Local Place Plans.
The Community Map Scotland project is providing free access to the Parish Online tool for community councils. This can help with creating interactive maps (although more simplified maps are just as acceptable)
Community-led Action Planning Argyll & Bute (communitytoolkit.net) - this online toolkit takes you through the stages of developing a community-led action plan and provides resources and templates you can download and adapt to use in your own process.
A Community Action Planning Toolkit (cairngorms national park) this pdf toolkit takes you through the stages of developing a community-led action plan and provides resources and templates you can use as inspiration to develop your own materials.
A comparison guide