Leading conservation charity, the Scottish Wildlife Trust, is pleased that the Scottish Government’s new planning strategy recognises the benefits to Scotland from protecting and enhancing the natural environment.

The Trust believes that planning can deliver the step-change in environmental quality that the Scottish Government wants to see, provided that key policies such as creating high-quality greenspaces in towns and cities, and designing -in green infrastructure at the landscape scale are taken on board by all decision-makers, including developers and local authority planners. 

Head of Policy for Scottish Wildlife Trust, Dr Maggie Keegan, said: “In the past, poor planning decisions have led to some of Scotland’s most prized natural assets becoming degraded, isolated, or disappearing completely – which is deleterious to Scotland’s wildlife and people’s enjoyment of outdoor spaces. 

“The Scottish Wildlife Trust is pleased that the Scottish Government’s strategy recognises the importance of working with, not against the environment, places more importance on working at a landscape scale and expects planners to ‘green up’ cities and towns.

“The Scottish Wildlife Trust  would also urge the Scottish Government to strengthen nature’s resilience to key threats such as climate change by endorsing, in planning, a national ecological network which would join up protected sites and greenspaces not just in the central belt but across the whole of Scotland.”