Scotland’s chief planner and the national planning improvement champion have called on councils and their partners to speed up work on new local development plans. They have set out an action plan to be taken forward with immediate effect.
In a joint letter dated 18 September, Dr Fiona Simpson, chief planner and director, and Craig McLaren, national planning improvement champion, describe local development plans as a key tool for planning authorities. They say the plans help authorities be clear with the public, investors and the wider council about the future development of places, and help attract and enable investment.
They wrote: “The form, content and timely preparation of LDPs play a pivotal role in helping us to address the housing emergency, attract investment and enable development. Through the new system we have a real opportunity to reduce complexity and increase certainty.”
The action plan and an accompanying advice note follow a summit the two co-chaired on 10 August. The summit focused on the proposed plan stage of the process and brought together heads of planning, the Improvement Service, the Key Agencies Group and officials from the DPEA, the Planning Directorate and the National Planning Hub. The document sets out agreed actions for all lead partners.
The letter says authorities should prioritise having adopted plans in place as soon as possible and should progress relevant improvement actions identified through the National Planning Improvement Framework. All parties are asked to work collaboratively and to ensure that resources are available to support progress on plans “with a clear sense of urgency”.
Simpson and McLaren said the aim should be to make preparing new plans “as simple, fast, efficient and transparent as possible”. They added: “Rather than adapting established practices to fit new requirements, we all need to embrace the culture change that sits at the heart of the new planning system.”
The letter points to the chief planner’s March 2026 letter, which indicated that proposed plans, including site allocations, should carry significant weight in decision-making. It also says local development plans are expected to contain a very limited number of policies. Making the National Planning Framework part of the development plan was intended to set national planning policies at a national level, so that authorities can focus on the spatial aspects of how their places develop. Planning guidance, which can be updated more readily, continues to provide more detailed development management guidance. The authors say this approach helps keep plans streamlined and user-friendly.
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The Improvement Service and the National Planning Hub will host a workshop in Edinburgh on 12 November to support delivery of the action plan. It will bring together planning authorities, the Scottish Government, key agencies and representatives from the development industry.
The letter concludes: “The decisions we make now will establish important precedents for the future, so it is essential that we take this opportunity to set the right direction, demonstrate the value of the new approach, and deliver on the ambitions and aspirations that underpin the new system.”
