PlaceMaker is empowering Planners in Scotland's East Ayrshire Council to digitalise their Local Plan-making processes and make the most of their site and policy data, to understand their communities better than ever before.

Local data for local Planners

By combining the council's own local planning data with national data sets, Planners are able to make the most of their planning data within one centralised site database in PlaceMaker. Using their local expertise, Planners can add custom drawn sites to their database for example, to include a derelict site they're aware of or a site they know is likely to come forward for development.

Toggling policy layers on and off, Planners can visualise all their policy and constraint data. They can even add and view their Place Standard data for each site, once this information has been collected as part of the council's public engagement. The platform can support Planners to consider infrastructure capacity by adding their local primary and secondary school capacity data to the database, to assess potential residential development sites in a catchment area.

Pulling all this data together into one platform will enable Planners to proactively identify potentially suitable sites to meet housing need and deliver council priorities. With the ability to prioritise by suitability, the goal is that Planners won't be spending months visiting unsuitable sites, but will instead be able to front-load information gathering and understand suitability, capacity and accessibility before needing to conduct a site visit.

"From setup, all our data has been readily available in the platform, and this will enable us to review, identify and assess sites for our next Local Development Plan. With PlaceMaker, we're looking forward to being able to analyse sites really easily with all the data we need in one place, for all of our officers. The platform will give us more confidence that we're not selling short a site's capacity and allow us to see how it supports our spatial strategies for East Ayrshire - helping us to consider more complex sites or reassign sites for residential use. We're also exploring how the versatile platform can support residents to create and submit Local Place Plans to contribute to the future development of our council area."

Amy Bristow, Planning Officer (Development Plans) at East Ayrshire Council

Realising a site's full potential with granular density analysis

Utilising prevailing density data across their towns and communities, Planners in East Ayrshire will be able to accurately assess the capacity of potential sites taking into account site size, the area of a site that is suitable for development and local prevailing density in that postcode area. This accurate data prevents Planners from 'selling a site short' and avoids a blanket approach to urban or rural density.

The data is visualised using a heat map approach so Planners can view prevailing densities across their entire council area and calculate potential development capacity more accurately to support housing delivery in their communities. This more granular data is enabling Planners to explore opportunities to support Town Centre Living policies, to promote social inclusion and accessibility in existing built up areas.

Supporting accessibility and 20-minute neighbourhoods

Accessibility data within the Site Details page for each site enables Planners to assess accessibility and walking distances to key amenities in their catchment area. Following the 20-minute neighbourhood guidance set out by the Improvement Service, planners in East Ayrshire can now display this data within their PlaceMaker platform. Allowing Planners to easily visualise this analysis is supporting policy implementation for walkable localities and site sustainability, as well as strategies for social inclusion.

The standardised approach to accessibility assessment can save officers time, giving them the information they need within one single platform. Beyond the Planning Policy team, this data can also support Housing colleagues to promote areas for residential development and build the case for development in less dense but well connected locations.

The power of data to support Scottish Planners

The standardisation of planning data and policies across Scotland offers a unique opportunity for the advancement of digital planning and the visualisation of policies and constraints - from 20 minute neighbourhood policies to how residents feel about aspects of their neighbourhood through Place Standard data. PlaceMakers digital tools for Call for Sites, engagement and consultation also offer Planners easy-to-use, versatile tools which can support community groups to submit Local Place Plans in a uniform and digitally enabled way, and Planners in East Ayrshire are now exploring the opportunities this presents.

PlaceMaker's advanced and automated assessments are not replacing Planners or giving Planners 'the answer'; rather, East Ayrshire's Planners are provided with a variety of useful, accurate data to inform strategic and innovative decisions for future sustainable development of thriving communities.

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