Development guidance - Muirtown and South Kessock development brief

A Development Brief has been prepared for the Muirtown and South Kessock area of Inverness. The Development Brief sets out a framework to guide future development in the area and to assist the Council, partners and community interests in making bids for funding to help regenerate the wider brief area. 

The finalised Development Brief was approved for adoption by the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee in November 2015. The Development Brief was subsequently sent to Scottish Ministers who have confirmed that the Council could adopt the Development Brief as statutory Supplementary Guidance.

Read Development Brief

A draft Development Brief was prepared for the Muirtown and South Kessock area of Inverness after a series of consultation events that took place in February and April of 2014. The draft brief was subject to a period of public consultation from 27 February to 2 April 2015 to gather views on the content of the draft document. The consultation included 2 drop-in exhibition and discussion sessions where the public could discuss the draft brief contents with staff in attendance.

• Muirtown Primary School - Wednesday 11 March
• Merkinch Community Centre (Corbett Room) - Thursday 12 March

The consultation invited comments on the contents of the draft Plan. After considering and making appropriate changes based on comments received on the public consultation a final version was presented for adoption as Supplementary Guidance to our Development Plan.

Draft Muirtown and South Kessock Development Brief

Draft Muirtown and South Kessock Development Brief

The draft Development Brief has been drawn from the material collected at the workshop and follow up events that took place in 2014. The content presents the opportunities and challenges for each of the different locations within the wider brief area. The geographic extent of the brief reflects the discussions at the workshops and the identification of the key linkages and relationships across the area.  As a consequence the final Development Brief encompasses a larger geographical area to now include Clachnaharry and a wider area of Merkinch.

Strategic Environmental Assessment

As with all plans, policies and strategies we produce, the supplementary guidance has been subject to a strategic environmental assessment to assess the level of significance of any environmental impacts.

The following documents are available:

• Screening Report
• Historic Scotland response
• Scottish Environmental Protection Agency response
• Scottish Natural Heritage response
• Determination Notice
• Statement of Reasons

Earlier stages of the Development Brief

Parts of Muirtown and South Kessock are identified as having potential for future development in the Highland-wide Local Development Plan, Inverness Local Plan and the emerging Inner Moray Firth Local Development Plan. 

• The area to be included within the Brief is the part of the city shown on the map above as originally defined in the Highland-wide Local Development Plan. 

Reasons for preparing a Development Brief

• To identify and support the delivery of improvements to the area
• To include the net improvement of the local transport network
• The delivery of a greater diversification of housing tenure and renewal of housing stock in the area
• The opportunities for development at and around the Muirtown Basin and improvements to water and land based recreation opportunities and pedestrian access to the area

Initial design workshops

To help prepare the masterplan, interactive workshops were held on 26 and 27 February. These workshops gathered views on development opportunities and ideas for general improvements in the area. This assisted in early work to prepare a masterplan and development framework for the area, that will guide future development.

Follow up workshops

Following these design workshops held in Muirtown Primary School and Merkinch Community Centre, the Design Team carried out testing of the ideas from the workshops and worked up proposals in a bit more detail.  Follow up workshops were held in the same venues on  1 and 2  April. A summary of the material prepared at these design workshops is available.