Offer from GCAT re Local Place Plans
Local Place Plans are a Scottish Government initiative that the SG would like to see in place for all local communities. It is not a requirement – more of a potential opportunity.
Communities that successfully register an LPP with Dumfries & Galloway Council by the end of 2024 will be assured that that their LPP will be ‘taken into account’ in the creation of the Dumfries & Galloway Local Development Plan. The LDP will determine where housing, light and heavy industry and land use changes are permitted over the next 10 years from 2027. This is known as spatial planning.
However, there may be a second benefit of having an LPP for your community council area. Because it is an SG initiative, it is possible that in the future, SG funding streams, and possibly other national streams such as Lottery funding, will make ‘having an LPP’ a desirable if not essential funding criterion.
So if your community determined that it would like an LPP for these two reasons, but also determined that it would not like to duplicate the effort that went into creating the Glenkens & District Community Action Plan, I could suggest the following approach
Each interested Community Council area undertakes quite a focussed piece of engagement work (probably a survey and one or two workshops) to gather local views on spatial planning – the use of land in your area. Are there places where you would like to see more housing, where the green space should be protected, or where you’d like to encourage local business?
That is then wrangled into a very targeted LPP, that fulfils all the criteria to be registered with the Council to be taken into account, but does not duplicate CAP work.
However, I could provide some words (or you could create your own, of course) that explicitly link the G&D CAP to your Local Place Plan, so that if you were asked to provide the LPP in a funding application, it would be clear that you are part of a wider community with more ambitious community development plans than just spatial planning.
LPPs have to be owned and delivered by their local communities, so neither GCAT nor the Council ‘Place Planning’ team can do this work for you, unfortunately, but there are likely to be small grants (£500-£1,000) available to pay for venue hire and a small amount of external advice. I could also stay in touch to ensure that no-one is duplicating work or re-inventing the wheel.
If you are interested in this approach and/or creating LPPs, do get in touch before the end of May, and the first stage might be a meeting of interested community reps to talk through the process in more detail and sketch out a plan for the rest of the year?
Helen Keron, GCAT Executive Manager helen@catstrand.com