Main Issues Report

Foreword by the Strategic Development Planning Authority 2010 Chair

This Main Issues Report is a key stage in producing a Strategic Development Plan. It helps us to understand what individuals, organisations, businesses, politicians and communities think should happen in this region. We are looking at what is required to provide the context in which more localised decisions can be made to ensure this region becomes an even better place and is even more successful.

This Main Issues Report is the first step to delivering a strategic land use planning framework under the new Planning legislation. The four Councils are working collaboratively to ensure that the Strategic Development Plan is delivered without undue delay to provide an environment for this region to continue to be natural choice for investment and a place where more people wish to live, work and visit.

This will provide the strategic framework from which the Local Development Plans will flow and other related plans and projects will relate.

We will be producing this first Strategic Development Plan in changing times. The financial world is placing pressures at individuals, organisations and government. However, we have to look beyond this current period towards 2032 and set out our vision for this region and the strategic land use decisions that are required to achieve the vision.

The pressures on the public sector purse are likely to require collaborative working across administrative boundaries to consider the best way to deliver public services. There may be strategic land use implications that arise.

Climate change affects us all. Land use planning has an important role in helping to achieve climate change targets through the location, design and layout of development. We are working on assessing what our present emissions are and need to further consider what decisions are required to assist in meeting or exceeding the national emissions reduction targets.

The TAYplan region is set within an extremely attractive landscape. It is a large, predominantly rural area but where most of the population live in settlements, largely concentrated around the River Tay estuary and the coast. These settlements provide the majority of jobs and services. We need to recognise the different role settlements throughout the area have and the Main Issues Reports sets out a preferred spatial strategy which respects the interdependencies of our settlements. The quality of this place is excellent and one we want to maintain and enhance.

The region is strategically located on the UK east coast. It is home to part of the corridor that links Aberdeen, Inverness and the Highlands with the Scottish central belt, Newcastle, London and other UK cities. It is also part of the European North Sea region.

In producing this Report, we recognise that the role of this Plan is to focus on things that are likely to change at the strategic land use level. We recognise that there are already three Structure Plans; national and regional plans and strategies, and our Single Outcome Agreements, all in place and with existing strategic land use proposals for housing, economic development, transport etc. These all provide a strong context for the production of this first Strategic Development Plan.

Councillor Will Dawson
TAYplan Strategic Development Planning Authority Chair
April 2010