Emerging regional spatial strategy
The Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 establishes a duty for a planning authority, or planning authorities acting jointly, to prepare and adopt a Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) for their region.
The new duty to produce RSS will be enacted with the publication of statutory guidance, which the Scottish Government currently anticipates will be in place later in 2022.
Although this part of the Act has still to be enacted, the Scottish Government has encouraged planning authorities to develop an indicative Regional Spatial Strategy (iRSS) for their area, in order to develop early thinking on RSS and to help inform the preparation of the NPF4.
The regions that the Scottish Borders belongs are the South East of Scotland region and the South of Scotland region, and an iRSS for each of these regions has now been produced by us, in the case of the former jointly with the same authorities as are included within SESPlan and in the case of the latter, jointly with Dumfries and Galloway Council. Both iRSSs were submitted to the Scottish Government in April 2021 and have informed the production of the Draft NPF4.