Local Place Plans are a new type of plan giving people an opportunity to develop proposals for the development and use of land in the place where they live.
As of March 2021 we are awaiting Guidance from the Scottish Government as to how the development of Place Plans will be carried out.
The Scottish Government commissioned SCDC and Nick Wright Planning to look at the opportunities and challenges. The conclusion they came to following discussions with stakeholders were:
1.Local Place Plans should be community-led.
2.Local Place Plans should be prepared through inclusive and robust community engagement.
3.Local Place Plans should express a clear vision with key actions.
4.Local Place Plans should be co-produced and co-delivered.
5.LPPs should reflect community aspirations, and should not be limited to spatial planning.
6.The spatial elements of Local Place Plans should inform Local Development Plans.
7.Local Place Plans should be tools for community empowerment and addressing inequality.
8.Local Place Plans should be tools to help community planning and land-use planning achieve better outcomes.
9.Local Place Plans boundaries should reflect local community boundaries.
10.Local Place Plans and Community Action Plans can essentially be the same thing.
Going forward they concluded:
To ensure Local Place Plans deliver their benefits, we need to think about:
- Equipping local communities to prepare and deliver their own plans.
- Ensuring local authorities are able to commit resources, time and personnel to support the delivery of Local Place Plans.
- Making sure Local Place Plans tackle inequality by developing criteria at national and local level for how decisions about how resources are allocated.
Planning Aid Scotland (PAS) has produced a guide intended as a helpful resource for any community group looking to prepare a Local Place Plan (LPP). The suggested approach outlined in the publication is not intended to be prescriptive. Every effort should be made to adapt any recommendations to your local setting and needs; every place is different and so every Local Place Plan will be different.
An overarching ambition should be to take a collaborative approach, bringing together different sections and interests in your community so that your final plan will have buy-in from as many people as possible, including local businesses, landowners, developers etc. This approach is a key aspect of placemaking and the Place Principle. Working in this way will make the ambitions for your place contained within your Local Place Plan more inclusive, realistic and deliverable
Assessing the standard of places
The Place Standard Assessment tool is a tool for assessing quality of place. The Place Standard provides a simple framework to structure conversations about place and focuses on social as well as physical characteristics.
Users answer 14 questions and the answers are plotted in a simple diagram which represents a qualitative evaluation of a place. The results can help to promote collaboration and stimulate conversation about how the physical and social environment can reduce inequalities around health and wellbeing.
The Place Standard has been developed in partnership between Scottish Goverment, NHS Health Scotland and Architecture & Design Scotland.