Proposal of Application Notices in Scotland

This article is about Scotland. A proposal of application notice Scotland requires for major and national developments is a statutory step, not a courtesy. Under sections 35B and 35C of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997, the notice must be given to the planning authority at least 12 weeks before the planning application is submitted, and the consultation that follows has to be carried out properly or the authority must decline to determine the application.

There is no English equivalent. English pre-application engagement is encouraged and sometimes required by a local validation list, but it is not a statutory precondition to a valid application in the way this is.

When a proposal of application notice is required

The trigger is the development hierarchy. Developments classified as national or major require pre-application consultation, and those categories are defined by regulations that set thresholds by use and by site area, with housing, retail, business, industry, waste, minerals, energy and fish farming each treated separately.

Check the classification before anything else, because the whole programme hangs off it. A scheme sitting just below a threshold is a local development with no statutory consultation requirement. The same scheme with three more units may be major.

Where you are close to the line, ask the authority for its view in writing. Getting this wrong is expensive in a way few planning mistakes are, because the remedy is to start the 12 weeks again.

The 12 week minimum period before submission

The notice is submitted to the planning authority, and 12 weeks must elapse between the notice and the planning application. That is a minimum rather than a target, and on contested schemes it is common for the process to take longer.

The notice itself must describe the development and the site, and set out how the applicant intends to consult the community. The authority then has a short period, 21 days, to respond, and it may specify additional steps beyond the statutory minimum: more events, consultation with particular bodies, a different venue or a wider notification area.

Take that response seriously. A requirement imposed by the authority at this stage becomes part of what your consultation has to deliver, and failing to meet it undermines the report you will have to submit later.

Programme the 12 weeks as a real period of work rather than a waiting period. Design development continues, but the point of the exercise is that the scheme is still capable of changing in response to what people say.

Public events and what they must offer

The statutory minimum is at least one public event in the area, advertised in a local newspaper circulating in the locality at least seven days before it takes place.

The advertisement has to do specific work. It must state where and when the event will be held, give a description of the development, and explain that comments should be made to the applicant rather than to the planning authority at this stage, while making clear that representations to the authority can be made later when the application is submitted.

Run the event so that it can actually change something. That means drawings people can read, staff who can answer questions about traffic and drainage rather than only about architecture, and a comment mechanism that captures what was said. Timed sessions in a village hall at a time working people can attend will do more for the scheme than a glossy exhibition at 2pm on a Tuesday.

Where the authority has required a second event, hold it after the first has been digested, and show what changed in between.

Notifying community councils and elected members

Community councils in the area of the proposed development must be notified. They are the statutory community voice in Scotland and they will comment on the application whether or not you engage with them.

Elected members are a separate matter and not a statutory requirement at this stage, but briefing local councillors before the public event is normal practice and avoids the situation where a member first hears about a scheme from a constituent.

Keep a record of every notification: who, when, by what means, and what was sent. That record goes into the report.

The pre-application consultation report

The application cannot be validated without a report describing the consultation carried out. It is the evidence that the statutory process was followed, and its quality is what the authority assesses.

A workable report contains:

1. The proposal of application notice and the authority's response to it.
2. A list of every body and community council notified, with dates and method.
3. Copies of the newspaper advertisements with their publication dates.
4. A description of each event, with attendance and the material displayed.
5. A fair summary of the comments received, including the critical ones.
6. A clear statement of what changed in the scheme as a result, and what did not change and why.

Point six is the one that separates a report the authority accepts from one it questions. A report recording 40 objections and no change to the scheme is not necessarily wrong, but it has to explain the reasoning rather than simply record the outcome.

This is a close relative of the English statement of community involvement, and the drafting discipline is similar. The statement of community involvement page sets out that structure, though a Scottish report must be written to the Scottish statutory requirements rather than adapted from an English template.

Consequences of getting the process wrong

The sanction is blunt. Where the authority considers that the pre-application consultation requirements have not been complied with, it must decline to determine the application.

That is not a refusal, which could be appealed. It is a refusal to engage with the application at all, and the remedy is to redo the consultation and submit again. On a major scheme that can mean losing a construction season.

The failures that cause it are procedural rather than substantive: an advertisement placed with fewer than the required days before the event, a community council missed off the notification list, an application submitted before the 12 weeks had run, or a report that does not evidence what was done.

An illustrative example: a developer of 120 dwellings submitted a proposal of application notice, received a response requiring two public events rather than one, held both, and submitted a report setting out how the layout had changed to move the vehicular access away from a primary school and how a request to reduce the unit numbers had been considered and declined with reasons. The application was validated without query. This example is illustrative rather than a real case.

Using the process to shape the scheme

Treat the 12 weeks as design time. The consultation surfaces the objections you will face at committee months early, and dealing with two of them before submission is worth more than answering six of them afterwards.

Three questions are worth asking at every event: what do you use this land for now, what would make this scheme acceptable to you, and what are we missing about this place. The third one produces the most useful answers, because local people know about flooding, informal paths and traffic patterns that no desk study will show.

PlanScope's drafting is grounded in English national policy and English local plans, so a Scottish application needs the relevant national framework checked by the reviewer before submission. You can browse the 66 PlanScope report types by category to see what a supporting document set contains, or enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a site is likely to need.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.