Spotlight on services

With Coastal Zone Manager, Simon Pallant, and Community Involvement and Development Officer, Roselyn Fraser (by Louise Shearer)

I recently read about the new Scalloway Local Place Plan and was interested to find out more from the officers involved in its development.

Can you tell me a bit more about the Scalloway Place Plan – what’s the benefit of a local place plan, particularly for that community?

It’s a community-led plan that has been put together to help develop Scalloway as a place to live, work and visit. The local community were actively involved in its creation, which has not only helped create a sense of ownership of the plan, but also means they will be involved in shaping the future of Scalloway. 

I hear a lot of people talking locally and nationally about ‘Place’ – can you tell me what it is as a concept and why it’s so important to policy makers right now?

‘Place’ is about where we live, value or spend our time. It involves how we interact with our areas and the big influence these can have on our lives, health and wellbeing. Central to this is engaging with communities, having conversations and getting their perspectives. 

At local and national levels there have been a number of initiatives to help communities understand and influence how their areas can work for them. To do this, we all need to think about the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of our places. This will then help us identify improvements so that we can tackle inequalities and change them for the better. 

Who was involved in the production of the Scalloway Place Plan and who led on it?

The production of the local place plan followed the public engagement on the Re-Create Scalloway project. This involved people of all ages, businesses, local groups and organisations, agencies and service providers. It was led by a steering group made up from the Scalloway Community Council, elected members and other interested community champions. The group was supported by the council’s Planning and Community Planning and Development Services to produce the plan. 

Were the public consulted and what about young people?

Absolutely! In 2018, the community council hand-delivered pre-consultation questionnaires to every property in Scalloway. Consultation events were then held over the summer to encourage people to identify areas to improve and issues to address. In November, people voted on the priorities to take forward into the vision and action plan. 

2018 was the ‘Year of Young People’. It was a priority to get as many young folk to participate as possible. Workshops were held in the Scalloway Primary School, Anderson High School and there was engagement with pre-school pupils. Nearly 300 young people were engaged in total.

We also provided regular newsletters and had a website to keep people up to date with the consultation and the outcomes. 

Does it link back to the Place Standard work of 2016?

Yes. The outcomes of the Place Standard helped provide the evidence base for our funding application to the Scottish Government. Crucially, this work informed the Re-Create Scalloway consultation process, which meant that we didn’t have to ‘start from scratch’. The Place Standard results highlighted that matters such as traffic and parking, facilities and amenity, housing and the local economy needed to be addressed in Scalloway.

I understand that the Plan has been adopted – what does that mean?

The local place plan and the supporting documents (vision and action plan) have been adopted by the council as non-statutory planning guidance. This means that the council will use them when assessing planning applications in Scalloway and when they take forward the next Local Development Plan (LDP2). Having an adopted local place plan will also help the community council and others apply for funding to deliver improvements. 

What happens next?

The local place plan has community ownership. The Scalloway Community Council and the Scalloway Community Development Company have been using it as their evidence base to gain funding for a number of projects.

It’s also a multi-partnership plan. So it will continue to require the assistance of the council and a range of people and organisations to help deliver the vision and action plan. 

I hear it’s one of the first local place plans to be adopted in Scotland and you hope it will act as a benchmark for future plans – are there plans in the pipeline for more and what lessons have you learnt?

There should be more local place plans on the way in the future. The Scalloway Local Place Plan was a pilot project and the Scottish Government intends to produce guidance on their production in early 2021. 

We have found that local place plans don’t just have to be limited to planning and land-use though! They can also address matters such as health, transport, community facilities and inequalities. Central to this is inclusive public engagement and identifying realistic and deliverable changes to our places.

Joint working was key to the success of Re-Create Scalloway and the local place plan, as well as hard work, enthusiasm and time commitments by all those involved in its production, including everyone who took part in the consultation process. 

Finally, they don’t necessarily have to be all about major projects or improvements. Sometimes the smallest changes can have the biggest impact on the quality of people’s lives.