Invitation for communities to prepare a Local Place Plan
Shetland Islands Council is now in a position to issue a formal invitation to communities to prepare a Local Place Plan.
Local Place Plans are a new type of statutory plan which ensures that your community’s aspirations are to be taken into account when making future planning and development decisions.
It is the express purpose of a Local Place Plan (LPP) that it must represent the aspirations of the whole community in a place, giving due regard of relevant national, regional and local policies and strategies. Its key features are:
- Community-led plans setting out proposals for the development and use of land
- An LPP can only be led by formally constituted community bodies, such as Community Councils, Local Development Companies or Public Hall Committees
- The boundaries of the place can be determined by your own community
- There is no obligation on any community to prepare an LPP
- A valid LPP must be registered by the Council
- Registered LPPs must be taken into account when preparing Shetland’s next Local Development Plan
What happens next?
The Council’s Development Plans & Heritage Department has put in place a wide range of resources to help support formally constituted community bodies who may wish to prepare an LPP for their place.
We are hoping that we can co-ordinate LPP preparation in Shetland by bringing together community bodies as a cohort who can follow the process together. This will foster mutual support and ensure that we can all get the maximum benefit from these resources. Each community will still be able to develop things at their own speed.
We intend to work with community bodies to jointly determine the timescales and support that works best. To this end, we will be holding an initial online information sharing session to launch LPPs in early May 2024.
If you represent a formally constituted community body and would like to attend the online session and / or be kept updated on progress with Local Place Plans. Please fill in the form below for submission by Friday 3rd May 2024:
SIC LPP Expression of Interest
If you have any questions before meeting in May, please contact us at: LPP@shetland.gov.uk
In the meantime, the following links will give you the essential background to Local Place Plans…
Local Place Plans are founded on the Place Principle. The Place Principle promotes the need for communities, public organisations and businesses to work collaboratively with the assets and services in a place to achieve better outcomes. More information on the Place Principle and what it means for your community can be found here:
The regulations for Local Place Plans came into force on 22nd January 2022 and can be found here:
The Town and Country Planning (Local Place Plans) (Scotland) Regulations 2021
The Scottish Government’s guidance for community and planning bodies to support the preparation, submission and registration of LPPs can be found here: