Tag: Scotland

Housing Land Audit and Delivery Programme 2017

The Supply of Land

The Council use something called the Housing Land Audit and Delivery Programme (HLADP) to assess the supply of effective land for housing in Edinburgh.

What is effective land?

Effective land must be free of any constraints that could prevent the building of homes. These constraints can include:

  • who owns the land;
  • contamination;
  • how easily the land can be sold;
  • infrastructure (including roads and schools for example) and;
  • how the land is currently used or has been used in the past.

The Strategic Development Plan for South East Scotland sets out how many new homes the city needs. This figure is currently 20,222 to be built by 2026.

Our latest housing land assessment in October was the 2017 HLADP. We have identified effective land for 23,329 houses on a mix of both brownfield (55%) and greenfield (45%) sites.

Sites included in the 2017 HLADP are in the Local Development Plan or have planning permission.

HLADP MAP

The Delivery of Homes

The HLADP examines the supply of land and the expected delivery of new homes.

table for blog

The output target is a five-year segment of the housing land supply target. The delivery programme is the number of homes likely to be built over the next five-years. We calculate this figure in agreement with Homes for Scotland.

Accelerating Delivery Rates

Many factors, including the strength of the economy and the demand for housing, can affect the construction of new homes. Even if we have enough land, it won’t always mean that houses will be built.

The credit crunch has affected the construction of housing in recent years. Although the country is still recovering from this, completions have doubled in the last four years. Current build rates in the city are steadily growing.

We are working to find ways to further speed up build rates in the city. The diagram below highlights some of the factors we have identified.

HLADP table

What’s next for the HLADP?

We will be using the HLADP to update our next Local Development Plan Action Programme. We’re also doing work to identify potential interventions to increase the delivery of housing. That will be reported next year.

Look out for our next blog post about a housing site currently under construction in the city.

 

Local Development Plan Update: Our New Development Plan Scheme

After the Local Development Plan (LDP) was published, we asked you for your feedback on how well you had been involved.  The results of this survey can be viewed here.

The Development Plan Scheme

The newest Development Plan Scheme was approved on the 7 September 2017. Every Development Plan Scheme has a Participation Statement. This sets out how we will engage with the public as we get ready to prepare for the next LDP.

The planning system can impact everyone. So, it is important that all members of the public, community groups and organisations have their say about what’s in a LDP.

Thomas Morton Hall 18 Jan 2012 2 (002)
Engagement Workshop we held for our current LDP at Thomas Morton Hall in January 2012.

Improving Engagement

This year, we have considered the feedback we received from the LDP engagement survey when writing our Participation Statement.

Following the public’s comments, we are now working towards raising better awareness of the LDP process and improving the opportunities for you to get involved with creating the Plan.

To kick things off, we are:

1) Writing a communication plan.

69 people responded to our consultation survey. We found that the majority were over 65 and retired.

As result, we now know we must find better ways to:

2) Engage with the 16 – 54 age group.

47/69 respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement that “I think that the Edinburgh Local Development Plan process was good“.

Because of this, we are working to understand:

3) Better ways to involve all community groups in the creation of our next LDP;

4) Your preferred method and frequency of update from us; and

5) How we can make it easier for you to comment on proposals and let you know how we use your comments.

What happens next?

We will keep you updated with the work we are doing to deliver the first LDP with a frequent series of blog posts.

Moving forward, these will begin to touch on preparing the next LDP – LDP 2.

A new Development Plan Scheme will be published in 2018 and will include details and dates of engagement activities that you can get involved in.

Strategy for Setted Streets

Stone setts add significant historic and cultural value to the streets of Edinburgh and are an important feature of our cityscape.

The City of Edinburgh Council has a duty to protect the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh World Heritage Site, Conservation Areas and other historic parts of the city. This protection includes the setting of Edinburgh’s many listed buildings, where setted streets are an integral part of their identity and authenticity.

Setted surface looking West along Dean Park Crescent
Setted Comely Bank Avenue looking South
Setted surface looking East along St. Bernard’s Crescent

When they are not properly maintained, setted streets can have implications for walking, cycling and driving. Damaged setts are often replaced with alternative materials like tarmac as a temporary solution. This can result in an unsightly and uncared for appearance.

Tarmacked corner of Learmonth Place and Comely Bank Grove
Setted surface looking West up Dean Park Crescent
Tarmacked surface looking West towards Edinburgh Castle on Market Street

We are working in partnership with Edinburgh World Heritage and Historic Environment Scotland to develop a strategy for the protection and maintenance of setted streets.

Have your say

To help inform the strategy we’d like to know what you think about setted streets and their value to the city. We are also interested to know what issues you think setted streets can have on our movement.

You can give us your views until Wednesday 11 October 2017.

#SYPC2017

I have titled this post with a hashtag, as we were asked to promo the event on social media.

Emma’s blog post #4: #SYPC2017

SYPC stands for Scottish Young Planners Conference. The conference consisted of morning lectures with Q&A sessions, and afternoon workshops (and then drinks after). The whole day was geared around giving young planners the skills they need to be successful.

The first talk was given by Kevin Stewart MSP, titled “People, Places and Planning: skills and the planning review”. The Q&A for this was particularly good, as it gave us the chance to question the Minister on the planning review, and future prospects for planning in Scotland.

There’s a picture of the Minister that I took and put on the planning Edinburgh insta which you should all be following.

By the way, the most used buzzword was “collaboration” (we guess. We didn’t keep a tally or anything). Coincidentally, “collaboration” is the very word Bob Reid (former convenor of RTPI Scotland) said we should replace with “mobilisation”. Bob’s talk was all about “collaborating: working together to deliver development”, and he says there’s no point in talking about things if you’re not getting anything done; collaboration v mobilisation.

Nicola Barclay, CEO of Homes for Scotland gave a talk on “leading”. She spoke about her journey to the role she’s in now, and what helped shape her into the leader she is today. She recommended we all do a quiz (something like this) to see what positive traits we have that we might not recognise on our own. Very inspirational stuff, loved it.

I attended 2 of the afternoon workshops;

“Making development work: the economics of development”, given by Catherine Wood (Gladman) and Ian Drummond (Taylor Wimpey).

Despite this being largely maths based, the process of valuing land was explained to us in a way we (most of us, anyway) could understand…. That toss up between giving better designed places or maximising profit. Toughy.

Also “make yourself an asset: effective networking and business development”, from Sandra Lindsay (Springfield Properties) and Michael Halliday (Halliday Fraser Munro).

This, I could totally get on board with. We learnt how to do an “elevator pitch”, which was effectively me selling myself to a stranger in 1 minute without coming across as a weirdo… I’ll have to keep you posted on how I manage with that…

To conclude: the information provided was very good, we all learned a lot throughout the day, and I didn’t lose a bet about “vision” being the most used buzzword.

Emma

Ps. It took a solid 24 minutes for Donald Trump to be mentioned, and he was subsequently mentioned maybe 3 further times;

“Do not leave the wrong impression” – we were learning about how to effectively network, here

 

Your views on future growth of Edinburgh and South East Scotland

UPDATE: August 2015
As the consultation is now halfway through, SESplan have prepared this useful summary of the events and how you can continue to get involved. 

The Strategic Development Plan is about long-term planning, setting a vision and spatial strategy for Edinburgh and South East Scotland.  As part of the preparation of the second Strategic Development Plan SESplan, the Strategic Development Plan Authority, have published a Main Issues Report.

SESplan Main Issues Report July 2015
SESplan Main Issues Report July 2015

The Main Issues Report is a consultation document which highlights the key challenges facing the region over the next 20 years and presents a series of issues and options on how to address them. This is summarised in an Easy Read Guide.

Consultation takes place from 21 July 2015 until 30 September 2015. A series of events are taking place across the area and details are available on the SESplan website. You can give your responses on the issues by submitting a response via the SESplan Consultation Portal.

Responses will be used to inform the policies in the second Strategic Development Plan.