Our role in development management

Development management is the means of ensuring that sustainable economic growth, as envisaged by the development plan, is achieved on the ground. It provides an opportunity for us to work with developers and planners to ensure that development happens in a way that enhances, rather than damages, Scotland's nature and landscapes.

We do this by:

• Engaging in pre-application    discussions.
• Providing advice to planners and developers so that they can take nature and landscapes into account when designing new development, assessing new development proposals and in making their decisions.
• Focussing our involvement on proposals which could significantly affect the quality and enjoyment of Scotland's natural heritage, including those that require Environmental Impact Assessments.
• Seeking early engagement with developers to ensure that essential information on the environmental impacts of proposals is available to decision makers.
• Seeking changes to proposals to improve the outcome for nature and landscapes.
• Limiting our use of objections to cases where a development proposal raises natural heritage issues of national interest. We have prepared more detailed guidance for our staff on how to identify such cases  .
• Using ePlanning to respond quickly to consultations.