The Town and Country Planning (Masterplan Consent Areas) (Scotland) Regulations 2024 and The Masterplan Consent Area Scheme (Environmental Impact Assessment) (Scotland) Regulations 2024: impact assessments

Island Communities Impact Assessment (ICIA)

Title of policy, strategy or programme

The Town and Country Planning (Masterplan Consent Areas) (Scotland) Regulations 2024

The Masterplan Consent Area Scheme (Environmental Impact Assessment) (Scotland) Regulations 2024

Impact assessment process

1- Understand your objective

The Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 includes provisions covering procedures for implementing Masterplan Consent Areas (MCAs), which will be a new upfront consenting mechanism.

Planning authorities will be able to use MCAs as part of a proactive, place-making approach to planning and consenting – enabling the type of development they wish to come forward in their places.

MCAs are a flexible tool and could support a range of scales and types of development across Scotland - from small scale changes, up to major new developments. MCAs would effectively enable planning authorities to grant up-front consent for planned development, offering benefits to potential investors in terms of certainty and removing much of the risk.

The Act provides the planning authority would prepare a MCA 'scheme', with scope to give a range of types of consent, including planning permission, plus roads construction consent, listed building consent and conservation area consent – where provided for in the particular MCA scheme. Development that is in line with the MCA scheme could be brought forward without the need to apply for permission.

2 – Assess impact on islands

The proposed regulations are necessary to provide additional detail to the requirements set out in primary legislation. We consider there to be benefit in working to the principle that regulations are kept to the minimum necessary. This will provide for maximum flexibility or all authorities, including the islands. Guidance will explain the statutory procedures from the 2019 Act and the regulations.

The proposals, as noted above, offer flexibility for local circumstances including island communities, in terms of the use and style of MCA schemes. We do not envisage that the provisions proposed will have significant, or different effects on island communities.

3 – Consultation

Previous consultation and engagement on the Planning Bill included an island proofing exercise undertaken through a collaborative workshop, held on 29 September 2017. It informed the Island Communities Impact Assessment, which was updated following Stage 2 of the Planning (Scotland) Bill. That assessment indicated the main theme from discussions was the need to allow flexibility for the islands – acknowledging that their needs were very different to that of towns and cities.

This public consultation on the MCA Regulations will allow communities and representatives across all of Scotland will be able to voice their views on the proposals.

4 – Assessment

We consider that the implementation of MCA Regulations will not have a significantly different effect on island communities and therefore a full ICIA is not required.