Local Place Plans
Guidance and tools
Preparing and submitting Local Place Plans is a community-led process.
Guides
The following organisations have produced guidance on how to help your community prepare a Local Place Plan:
- Scottish Government guide to preparing and submitting Local Place Plans (external link)
- Planning Aid Scotland Guide for Community Delivery of Local Place Plans (external link)
- Scottish Government and partner organisation guide to Local Place Plans (external link)
- SCDC Local Place Plans - A guide for communities (external link)
- SCDC and Nick Wright Planning How to Guide (external link) to Local Place Plans
- The Highland Council Local Place Plan guidance and templates
- The Highland Council Further guidance on Local Place Plan area and Community Body area
- The Highland Council's latest Local Place Plan update
- Historic Environment Scotland Talking About Heritage (external link)
- CLS, KPC and WHCT guide to Creating a Local Place Plan: By Communities For Communities (external link)
Tools
The following tools, toolkits, and information may help your community prepare a Local Place Plan:
Community engagement
- Place Standard Tool (external link)
- Place Standard Tool for Climate, Air Quality, and Children and Young People (external link)
- Public Health Scotland Place Standard Tool video (external link)
- National Standards for Community Engagement (external link)
Community Map Scotland
Mapping assistance is available through the Community Map Scotland (external link) tool.
Community councils can get 12 months of free access to the tool by going to Parish Online (external link) and using the code cms12 when signing up (select ‘Subscribe’ when prompted, instead of ‘Trial’).
Council information and tools
- Guide to consideration of Gaelic in Local Place Plans - Bilingual Version
- The Highland Council Open Map Data portal datasets (external link) for use in a mapping tool
- The Highland Council Programme and Corporate Plan
- Housing Land Audit
- Housing Need and Demand Assessment
- Town Centre Health Checks
Other information and tools
- Scottish Government model governing documents and guidance (external link)
- Development Trusts Association Scotland Community Ownership Support Service (external link)
- Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (external link)
- Scotland's official statistics (external link)
- National Records of Scotland settlement data (external link)
- Scottish long term flood hazard and risk information (external link)
- Tool for Understanding Scottish Places (external link)
- Toolkit for Successful Town Centres (external link)
The Development Plan
While Local Place Plans seek to influence the content of the new Local Development Plan, they must have regard to the current national development plan and local development plan for the community in which they are being prepared.
Development plan for Scotland
The development plan for Scotland is contained in the National Planning Framework (external link).
Local development plan for Highland
The local development plan for Highland comprises of four planning policy documents. Our general development policies are contained in the Highland-wide Local Development Plan, which should be read with the Local Development Plan for your area. Our three area local development plans contain the allocations and area-specific development policies for:
Locality Plans
If applicable, a Local Place Plan must have regard for any Locality Plan for its area. To see any Locality Plans for our area, visit the Highland Community Planning Partnership website (external link).
If there is no Locality Plan for your area, you may wish to have regard for the Local Outcome Improvement Plan (external link).
Local Place Plan Examples
The following examples may be useful when preparing a Local Place Plan:
- Documents created by communities in Highland while preparing their Local Place Plan
- Local Place Plans registered by other Local Authorities