All change with development plans

Highland Council has a duty (under the new Planning Act) to provide up-to-date Local Development Plans; an early stage in the preparation of any new Development Plan is the preparation of and consultation on a Main Issues Report or MIR. The purpose of an 'MIR' is to facilitate and inform the preparation of a Development Plan.

Policy tells us:

"An MIR must set out the authority's general proposals for development in the area and in particular proposals as to where development should and should not occur. The report must be sufficiently clear and precise to enable people to understand what is proposed and to make meaningful comments. It must also contain one or more reasonable alternative sets of proposals. Finally, the report must draw attention to the ways in which the favoured and alternative proposals differ from the spatial strategy of the existing adopted LDP (if any). There is no legal requirement to draw such a comparison with existing local plans, but it would be good practice to do this within the first generation of main issues reports."

Highland Council's has many existing adopted local plans. APTSec thinks it would be good practice for, not just our Local Planning Authority, but for us all to compare how these existing plans differ with what is being put forward in the MIR for the Highland-wide Plan.

The MIR for the Highland-wide Local Development Plan (HwLDP) is now available for comment.

The HwLDP MIR can be found here

Section 1 of the MIR for the HwLDP tells us in part:

"The purpose of the Highland wide Local Development Plan is to put in place what the policies will be for decisions made on planning applications across the Highland Council area."

"This Plan will draw together and replace many of the planning policies contained within the existing Local Plans, particularly those that relate to the general approach to development."

"It will also act as a replacement to the policies in the Highland Structure Plan, which we are no longer required to prepare."

The existing Highland Structure Plan was approved by Scottish Ministers and became operative on 26th March 2001. The new Planning Act makes no provision for a replacement Structure Plan but as stated above (in what I have called point 3 above) the Highland-wide LOCAL Development Plan will provide a vehicle for the policies that would have been covered by a Structure Plan in Highland.

It would therefore be good practice to look at the existing Highland Structure Plan.

To find out how Highland Council sets out the purpose of the MIR for the HwLDP, including how the HwLDP, "...will set out some of the main growth areas for the Highlands, and put in place guidance on how these specific areas should be developed over the next ten to twenty years." why not use the link to the MIR above now and read section 1.