Local Place Plans

Preparing Local Place Plans

Local Place Plans can be prepared by community bodies, either community councils or community-controlled bodies.

For information on who can formally prepare a Local Place Plan, read our Local Place Plan Preparer Checklist.

This checklist should be submitted to lpp@highland.gov.uk, at the earliest opportunity, by any group who has started or will soon be starting Local Place Plan preparations.

Your local Third Sector Delivery Organisation will be able to advise on group governance and any changes that may be required to meet the requirements of a community-controlled group (Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisations (SCIO) or companies limited by guarantee) under the Community Empowerment Act.

Download the Scottish Government model governing documents and guidance

The area represented by a Community Body preparing a Local Place Plan needs to include the whole of its Local Place Plan area. For information to help ensure the validity and effectiveness of Local Place Plans for Community Bodies and their community, read our further guidance on Local Place Plan area and Community Body area.

Deadline

Local Place Plans can be submitted at any time and will, once registered, be considered where relevant in the planning process.

As we are currently gathering evidence for the new Highland Local Development Plan (HLDP), the Scottish Government has required us to establish a deadline for registering Local Place Plans so they can be fully considered as evidence for the HLDP.

Based on the current HLDP preparation programme, we advise that Local Place Plan submissions that:

pass the validation check before or during January 2026 will be registered and taken into account in the preparation of the HLDP Evidence Report before that Report’s submission to the Gate Check
pass the validation check between February and June 2026 will be registered and are likely to be taken into account in the preparation of this HLDP from the outset
are validated and registered after June 2026 will be taken into account at the next available opportunity in the local development plan cycle which may, dependent upon timing, include some consideration in the preparation of the HLDP Proposed Plan

A number of Local Place Plans are currently being checked by the Council so that feedback can be provided to the community bodies and any actions required can then be addressed. This latest advice on timescales provides more opportunity for these steps to be completed.

The minimum time anticipated for our checking process for Local Place Plan validation is 10 working days.

We ask that Local Place Plans be submitted at the earliest opportunity, as we may need to come back to you for amendments to your submission during the checking process.

Preparing a Local Place Plan

For information on the stages of Local Place Plan preparation, from draft, proposed, finalised, and then registered, read our Local Place Plan Preparation Flow Chart.

You may be trying to identify sources of funding to help with preparing your Local Place Plan.

One such possible source is the Ward Discretionary Fund, which may, for example, be able to provide help with printing costs relating to Local Place Plan community engagement.

Notifying the Council

Any community council or community-controlled body deciding to prepare a Local Place Plan is asked to notify the Development Plans Team by completing our Notification of Intent form.

There is no obligation to complete this form, and it does not commit you to submitting a Local Place Plan at a future date. It is simply a means of indicating an intent to prepare a local place plan.

Download the Notification of Intent form

Local Place Plan templates

Our templates are designed to help community councils and community-controlled bodies who would like to prepare and submit a Local Place Plan.

Our Local Place Plan templates consist of a guidance document (provided in Word and PDF) and three blank templates:

Our Local Place Plan Template Guidance in Word is designed so that it can be worked in on a computer, e.g. for adding notes to the boxes, and has a handy navigation pane that can be activated by clicking on: View - Navigation Pane, in the 'Show' section, in the ribbon in Word.

Our Local Place Plan Template Guidance is also provided in PDF for ease of printing when using it in hard copy.

You do not have to use our templates. They are a guide that you may wish to follow to help ensure that your Local Place Plan meets the Government’s legal requirements for Local Place Plan preparation.

Scottish Government requirements

The information that, by law, must accompany a Local Place Plan submission is stated in the Planning Aid Scotland (PAS) checklist for Local Place Plan validation.

Our Local Place Plan Template Guidance also indicates the Scottish Government requirements for Local Place Plans, plus the things that the Council asks for to aid the Local Place Plan validation process.

Things asked for by the Council

We ask for the following things to aid the Local Place Plan validation process.

Local Place Plan area map

The boundary showing the Local Place Plan area must be drawn as a solid line (neither fuzzy nor dashed) so that we can accurately plot it onto our Local Place Plan map register.

Hyperlinks included in your Local Place Plan submission

Hyperlinks included in your Local Place Plan submission should also be provided as a full URL, either in-text or in a footnote, or as an endnote in your Local Place Plan submission documents

Contact details

Following our Notification of Intent Privacy Notice, we will not display personal contact details in our directory and map of Local Place Plans.

Contact details provided in any document as part of a Local Place Plan submission must be generic, and must contain no personal email or postal addresses, and no phone numbers.

Consents

The community group preparing the Local Place Plan is responsible for obtaining all necessary permissions for the use of any photos and graphics included in their Local Place Plan prior to submitting it to the Council

Gaelic Guidance

For any community group wishing to include Gaelic language in their Local Place Plan, we have produced a bilingual guide to the consideration of Gaelic in Local Place Plans.

Guidance and tools to help communities prepare Local Place Plans