Decision Maker: Formartine Area Committee

Outcome: Approve

Is Key Decision?: No

Is Callable In?: No

Date of Decision: March 25, 2025

Purpose: The report sets out and seeks consideration of the Evidence Report prior to the submission of said report for Gatecheck by the Scottish Government Division for Planning and Environmental Appeals (DPEA). The Evidence Report is a collection of all the information that must be considered before the Council can embark on the preparation of the Proposed Local Development Plan. The purpose of the evidence collected is to inform the plan making process, and to provide a baseline from which planning authorities can assess where development should take place in their areas.

Content: The Committee provided the following comments:   a)    It would be helpful to know which of our communities within Formartine have undertaken, or have indicated a desire to undertake, a Local Place Plan process, b)    Can the main themes and comments from Community Councils from the last LDP process been taken forward for this process? c)    How likely is it that the Udny Station Active Travel aspirations will be taken forward in this LDP timescale, d)    It would be helpful to understand how we are engaging with our Community Councils and what standard of information can be fed into the LDP process, e)    It would be helpful to know which of our communities has fed into the Call for Evidence stage, f)      It would be helpful to understand if social informative data can be used as well as hard data, g)    How do we deal with different sources of information which are contradictory and, in terms of agricultural land, is there anything we can do better in terms of how we treat good organic land and places we should not develop, h)    In considering Topic 6, the Green Belts, the report refers to preventing coalescence between the City’s suburbs to the west of Aberdeen, - is there any consideration for the suburbs to the north? i)      It should be recognised that the AWPR was a transport corridor, not a development corridor, j)      In the preliminary assessment for the Green Belt, there were no plans for delineation, so it was helpful to note that this would this come forward within the Call for Ideas, noting that there were some proposals for boundary extensions, k)    It should be recognised that our communities may need support to produce LPPs l)      The process for communities participating needs to be clearer, noting that some have found the process to date challenging, m)  It would be helpful to have a clearer definition of Infrastructure First – we need to ensure infrastructure and developments are aligned, but we also need to be realistic in terms of funding and resource, n)    A return from 8 Community Councils across the whole of Aberdeenshire is disappointing and we need to look at engagement, o)    We need to consider PLACE and closer working with Area Teams, p)    It would be helpful to present a synopsis of all 6 Area Committee responses at Infrastructure Services Committee and Full Council, q)    We need to take cognisance of the changing population demographic, and r)     We need to ensure we do not raise unrealistic expectations.