Statutory requirements behind the Glasgow City Development Plan (CDP): EIR release

Information requested

All relevant documentation or statutory guidance that directed or required the City of Glasgow to create and implement the City Development Plan (CDP) and Supplementary Guidance 4 (SG4). I am particularly interested in the legal or regulatory basis underpinning these documents.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Please see below all of the information you requested.

Provisions for development planning, including the requirement for local authorities to prepare a local development plan (LDP), are set out in the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 (section 16), as amended by the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019.

Section 22 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 included provision for planning authorities to provide supplementary guidance if they wished. That option has since been repealed under the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 (section 9).

​​​​​​​The February 2023 Chief Planner Letter (paras 7-8) provided clarification to stakeholders in respect of existing adopted supplementary guidance, noting that guidance adopted before 12 February 2023 (the date on which section 13 of the 2019 Act came into force) will continue to be in force until such time as a new LDP is adopted by the relevant local authority.

Glasgow City Council published a series of Supplementary Guidance to accompany its Glasgow City Development Plan (CDP). The supplementary guidance explains in detail how the CDP’s policies are to be implemented and includes the SG4: Network of Centres (2017) guidance to which you refer in your request.

​​​​​​​Correspondence issued by Scottish Government in relation to City Plan and SG4: Network of Centres is available on the Scottish Government website Local development plan: Glasgow City.

​​​​​​​If you have any questions in respect of the City Development Plan itself or its supplementary guidance, please contact Glasgow City Council directly as it is best placed to answer questions on these documents.

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