Guide
How to find planning applications in Scotland
Where Scottish planning authorities publish applications, how neighbour notification works, and what makes the Scottish system different.
Scotland runs its own planning system under Scots law, and several things an English or Welsh reader would assume simply work differently: who gets told about an application, what outline permission is called, and where a refused applicant turns next. Finding applications, though, is straightforward once you know the shape of it.
Where applications are published
There are 34 planning authorities: the 32 councils plus the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs and Cairngorms national park authorities. Each keeps a public register online, reached from the authority's website, with the application, drawings, representations and the decision notice.
Scotland also has a shared national service, ePlanning.scot, through which most applications are submitted. Viewing and commenting still happen on each authority's own register, so for reading an application the authority portal is the place, and the register entry is the authoritative record.
Neighbour notification is the council's job
In Scotland the planning authority formally notifies neighbouring land within 20 metres of the site, a clearer duty than the mixed publicity arrangements south of the border. You then normally have 21 days to make representations. The limit of it is the same everywhere: live a street away and no notice need reach you, however much a scheme affects you. To watch an area rather than a boundary, set up an alert and get anything new inside your chosen radius by email.
Terms that differ
Applications are classed as local, major or national, and the class fixes the procedure. What England calls outline permission is planning permission in principle here, with the detail following as approval of matters specified in conditions. References read much like the rest of the UK; our reference number guide covers the common codes.
Reviews and appeals
Where a local application was decided by an officer under delegated powers, a refused applicant does not appeal to ministers. The case goes back to the council's own Local Review Body, a panel of councillors, within three months. Major and national cases, and decisions taken by committee, go instead to the Scottish Government's Planning and Environmental Appeals Division, the DPEA, which publishes its casework online. If a refusal near you matters, check which route applies before assuming the matter is closed.
Following an area
Applications indexed here get permanent, linkable pages with the register facts and a link to the authority's portal for documents; start from the list of councils, which includes the Scottish authorities. If you intend to respond to something you find, how to object explains what will be weighed; the principles apply in Scotland with Scottish policy in place of English, and representations must reach the authority within the notification window.