Scottish Planning Policy and Housing: Technical Consultation on Proposed Policy Amendments

Overview

The Scottish Government is committed to a plan-led planning system. Development plans form the basis of planning decision-making to enable the right developments in the right locations.

We want the planning system to support the delivery of good quality homes in the right locations. This is of even greater importance now, as it has become even clearer that the quality of our homes can contribute a great deal to our health and wellbeing, and that housing delivery will play a key role in our future economic recovery. However, to achieve housing development in a sustainable way, we need to overcome current conflict in the planning system and actively address lengthy technical debates about the numbers of homes that we will need in the future. This will allow us to focus more on how we can strengthen delivery and enable good quality development on the ground.

This consultation paper sets out proposed policy amendments to achieve these objectives and invites views on them. These are draft proposals and in the meantime the existing policy remains in place. The paper may be a material consideration in the determination of planning applications and appeals, with the weighting of any material consideration being a matter for the decision maker. 

Why your views matter

To ensure that our policy on planning for housing is clear and can be more easily and consistently applied in practice, the Scottish Ministers wish to update and clarify specific parts of the Scottish Planning Policy (SPP).

Read the consultation paper