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.