The Scottish Government published their third National Planning Framework (NPF3) and draft Scottish Planning Policy (SPP) on Tuesday 30 April 2103. This will influence development plans across Scotland and guide future planning decisions on a range of sectors including transport, energy and infrastructure. Section 2.20 focuses on wild land and states: “SNH has been updating its wild land mapping using modern GIS tools to provide a more objective approach to understanding wild land. Based on a number of attributes like naturalness of the land cover, ruggedness, remoteness from roads and the visible lack of modern man-made structures, SNH has published an updated map showing the ‘core’ areas of wild land in Scotland.” The draft core areas map published by SNH on Wednesday 1 May 2013 is underpinned by ideas, methods, software and approaches pioneered by WRi and tested for the two Scottish national parks in 2008 and 2011, as well as technical advice and expertise provided by WRi to SNH in developing the new national wildness and core areas maps.
For more information see:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2013/04/Planning-systems-30042013