An evidence-gathering resource for Local Development Plan preparation

Place skills for plan-making is a suite of resources to support planning teams in taking a place-based collaborative approach to preparations for new-style Local Development Plans.

You can expect to find resources to support a place-based approach to the evidence-gathering phase of Local Development Plan preparations.

Each snapshot will guide you through basic placemaking principles, practical steps, templates and case studies to help apply the learning. 

The steps have been tried and tested through Architecture and Design Scotland’s partnership work with the Key Agencies Group. You will see how to gather the evidence to resolve complex challenges and establish the conditions for success in your place.

Key learning points in this resource

By following the steps in your place, you will see ‘how to’... 

• establish place leadership as a planning team
• plan for collective engagement
• establish a place-based collaborative approach with your corporate team
• undertake collective mapping of place-based evidence at a whole authority and local area scale
• undertake collective analysis of place-based evidence (coming soon)
• develop format and content for a place-based evidence report (coming soon)

A tried and tested method for Local Development Plan preparations

Place skills for plan-making resources support the implementation of recent changes to national policy and legislation. The steps complement the Key Agencies Group Collaborative Local Development Plan Offer.

The methods and approaches promote place-based thinking and are broadly applicable to planning for wider geographies, through for example Regional Spatial Strategies, Local Outcome Improvement Plans or Strategic Housing Investment Plans.

View the resource here.

Why use this resource?

Local Development Plans (LDPs) outline the future vision for our communities. They guide development decisions, determining what projects are permitted and which are not. This includes the locations of future homes, the provision of essential services like education, healthcare and transportation, and the overall character and function of our neighbourhoods.

Through Architecture and Design Scotland’s recent work with local authorities and key agency partners, they have developed and facilitated a pilot approach to local development planning using design thinking, methods and approaches with collaboration at its core purpose.

The initial phase of preparing a plan is to gather relevant evidence into an evidence report. Thinking about plan-making as a design process, this phase is where you can ‘discover’ and ‘define’ the issues and opportunities that the plan needs to address or the problems it needs to help solve. 

By applying design as a problem-solving tool at a strategic scale, you can help partners build a collective understanding of the issues and opportunities that a local development plan needs to address for its places and communities through its evidence report.