This marks the near completion of a four-year process of identifying how housing and business developments should progress over the next five years to foster continued economic growth.

More than a year after it was submitted to the Scottish Government, Aberdeenshire Council received the results of the examination of its Proposed Local Development Plan (LDP) this week.

The Proposed Plan was drawn up after two years of extensive consultation and engagement with communities, landowners and developers.

It is a blueprint for the future development of the area and sets out ambitious long-term and site-specific visions.

It will provide a practical framework within which the outcome of planning applications can be decided with a degree of certainty and efficiency.

Getting to this stage has taken more than four years and is the culmination of a lot of hard work by the council’s Development Plan Team.

The examination considered representations to the Proposed Plan and was carried out by the government’s Directorate of Planning and Environmental Appeals (DPEA), on behalf of Ministers.

Following examination, the DPEA has now submitted a report to the council with conclusions and recommendations on each issue.

This report is largely binding on planning authorities, meaning that they may only depart from the recommendations if there are limited exceptional circumstances.

The examination was conducted by auditing written representations to the proposed plan and there was one hearing session held in August relating to the issue of “Housing Land Supply”.

It focused on whether the plan is “appropriate and sufficient” for the development needs of Aberdeenshire over the next 5-10 years and took just over a year to undertake due to the scale and the complexity of the issues raised.

The Proposed Aberdeenshire Local Development Plan 2016 was submitted to the Scottish Government on December 1, 2015 as the settled view of Aberdeenshire Council.

The examination considered 73 issues, responding to 840 unresolved representations. The report has recommended changes to some policies as well as sites, following consideration of the issues.

The report follows on from the Public Examination which considered unresolved issues arising from representations received to the proposed plan.

Aberdeenshire Council will now consider the recommendations set out within the Examination Report and will ask local councillors for their views in January and February.

It is then expected to be considered by the Full Council in March, when councillors will be asked to agree and adopt the Local Development Plan for everyday use.