What is your lived experience of Highland?
What is good about your Highland community and what could be done differently? The Highland Council is embarking on a major survey that encourages people to describe their experiences of living, working, visiting and investing in Highland to help plan for its future.
The Highland Council has launched its new Highland Place Standard tool to enable conversations and gather feedback on what makes for a good place to live, work, play, and visit. The information is aimed at shaping future plans, including the Council’s next Local Development Plan, and seeks feedback under four main themes: Movement, Spaces, Resources, Civic, and Stewardship. It aims to highlight what needs to be protected, changed, or improved, so we have what is needed for the future.
Councillor Ken Gowans, Chair of the Council’s Economy and Infrastructure Committee, said: “We will use views shared via our new Place Standard Tool as evidence to plan for how land and buildings are used in communities and across Highland. We hope this analysis will help the Council, partner agencies and community groups target valuable time and money to make a difference to what matters locally.
“You can complete the Place Standard tool as an individual or as part of a group. We will be promoting its use widely and are liaising with services and partners, such as High Life Highland, who can help encourage and facilitate wide participation. The aim of the Place Standard Tool is to provide us with valuable input to a range of Council workstreams including the next Local Development Plan, the Highland Outcome Improvement Plan, place plans and day to day service delivery.”
Responses to this survey will be treated anonymously. The Council will share anonymised analysis with suitably registered community groups who want to develop proposals for better places, to agree priorities, and to take action.
The Highland Place Standard survey will be open until the end of May 2024.
Alongside the survey, a number of community bodies across Highland are also taking up the opportunity to prepare Local Place Plans. More information is available on the Council’s Local Place Plan webpages on which additional advice and guidance has been launched today, including templates that community bodies may wish to use.
Further information on the programme of work to prepare the new Local Development Plan, including evidence gathering during 2024 and opportunities to get involved, is available in the Council’s latest Development Plans Newsletter published today and on the Council’s Highland Local Development Plan webpage.
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