guidance – Page 2 – Planning Edinburgh

Customer Update – Help us to help you

We are continuing to experience a record level of applications since our last Customer Update a few weeks ago. Whilst this is positive for the City, it is a particularly challenging time for the service as it is coinciding with reduced resources.

To manage the workload effectively, a new system has been put in place where new applications are being put in a holding system until a case officer becomes available. This approach will ensure that workloads are manageable for case officers.

We will be dealing with applications in chronological order and once assigned, the case officer will only contact you if:

1) additional information is required to assess the application;

2) amendments are needed to your proposals; or

3) your application is likely to be refused.

We remain committed to providing good customer care for each application but inevitably, it is going to take longer than normal to process applications. Because we are concentrating on determining applications as quickly as possible, there will be an impact on other aspects of our work such as responding to queries.

Help us to help you:

It would help significantly if you could provide the following information at the time of application submission (or whilst it is hold):

Photographs showing the location of the work and the wider context (including interiors for listed building consent applications)

Dimensions on the plans

Contextual information i.e. neighbouring windows/ extensions (if relevant)

45 degree daylighting calculations (if relevant)

Before applying please read our planning guidelines – these answer a lot of commonly asked questions, including for;

Your patience and understanding is appreciated. We will get there but it is going to take longer.

Contextual Plans

Due to the current Covid restrictions, planning officers are unable to undertake site visits.

However, it is important for everybody that we keep assessing and determining planning applications.

If you are submitting a planning application, it would be extremely helpful to us if you could provide photographs and relevant contextual plans as part of your submission. This information will be requested but it would help the assessment process go faster if they are provided at the start. Photographs do not need to be made publicly available.

As always, we have a wide range of planning guidance available on our website.

For more information about how the current restrictions are affecting our service, see the Planning and Building Standards coronavirus update.

Revised City Centre Retail and Leisure Supplementary Guidance Consultation

Twitter image — Click here to view and comment on the proposed guidance.

The Council prepares guidance for the City Centre under the Planning (Scotland) Act. The guidance is a requirement of Policy Ret 9, Alternative Use of Shop Units in Defined Centres, of our Local Development Plan. We do this to guide shops and non-shop uses in town centres including the city centre.

The current supplementary guidance for the city centre was adopted in February 2017. The guidance sets out the policies that apply to the city centre retail core, the boundary of which is defined on the LDP proposals map. The guidance sets out the circumstances where a planning application for a change of use from a shop to a non-shop use will be supported.

Since the original guidance was adopted there has been changes in circumstances that are likely to have an impact on the city centre such as; wider changes to shopping trends, the publication of our City Centre Transformation strategy, the publication of a retail and leisure study, the future opening of the new Edinburgh St James and many changes of use in the centre.

A stakeholder workshop was held on 29 May 2019 for interested stakeholders to raise concerns about the city centre, changes in circumstance and discuss options for amending the guidance to address this changes. As a result we have now prepared draft revised guidance for consultation.

The key changes to the guidance are as follows:

Altering existing policy covering Princes Street to provide significantly more flexibility.
Creating a new separate policy for Castle Street, Frederick Street and Hanover Street which is much more flexible that other named streets.
Altering the existing policy covering the frontages of other named streets in the retail core to be more flexible.
Altering the existing policy covering elsewhere in the city centre retail core, by determining changes of use based on streets rather than units in a row.

In addition, an issue related to food and drink uses is the use of outdoor awnings and fixtures which can be considered development and therefore requires planning permission. In the past we would not support such development due to its visual impact on streets and conservation areas and its effect on the use of public space.

However, we may use guidance to introduce policy for considering temporary planning permission for high quality fixtures in the right places. This will allow us to trial and assess the effect of these proposals in certain places.

The Council is now seeking comments on the revised guidance as well as views on the use of outdoor awnings and fixtures. The consultation exercise will last from 9 August to 20 September 2019 and we encourage all interested stakeholders to submit comments on the guidance via the Council’s consultation hub.

Following the consultation we will collate and consider the comments we receive before preparing the final version of the guidance for adoption.

Do you have a problem with a neighbour’s high hedge?

We might be able to help. If you’ve been unable to resolve the problem with a neighbour’s high hedge you can apply for a High Hedge Notice.

Read our guidance here, and once you have followed the required steps in the guidance, check out this video which shows you how to make a High Hedge application online.

Development in the Countryside and Green Belt Non-Statutory Guidance

Living in Edinburgh, we’re surrounded by a band of countryside and green belt. We want to make sure that this natural heritage of ours is protected and enhanced, so, we control what kind of development is allowed in these areas.

development in the CS and GB

The Edinburgh Local Development Plan (LDP) replaced the Edinburgh City Local Plan and the Rural West Edinburgh Local Plan in 2016. From the LDP we now have one single Policy across our boundary, Env 10, that deals with ‘Development in the Countryside and Green Belt’.

We first published supporting guidance for this Policy in 2007. Recently, we’ve updated this to make sure it reflects our current practice.

You can have a read of our refresh here. The revised guidance should help all users of the LDP understand Policy Env 10.

Some key changes following our redraft include:

a new layout;
clarification as to when new buildings will be allowed in the countryside and green belt;
additional criteria to be met when replacing low quality buildings;
further information about ancillary uses and energy development; and
guidance about materials and high quality design, taken from the updated Edinburgh Design Guidance.