The bank had applied for permission to demolish the existing office buildings at at Dundas Street/Fettes Row to create up to 400 flats as well as retail, restaurants, a hotel, care home, offices for financial, professional and other services.

Michael Laird Architects had submitted a planning in principle application for the redevelopment to the City of Edinburgh Council in November 2016.

However, RBS has now pulled out of the application, claiming it is “more appropriate” for whoever buys the site to seek their own planning permission.

An RBS spokeswoman said: “As we are not ultimately intending to develop the site ourselves, it became more appropriate, after detailed discussions with the council’s planning department, for the final developer to submit their own more detailed planning application and agree the design detail with the council directly.

“Developer demand for the site remains very strong, and we will now market it with the benefit of extensive preparatory work being completed.

“We look forward to working with interested parties to deliver a market leading scheme for Edinburgh.”

A spokesperson from the council’s planning department added: “The PPP nature of the application made it difficult to resolve some of the issues that arose during the assessment process. It is understood that RBS now intend to market the site and a new detailed planning application is expected in due course.

“This will require the submission of a new PAN (Proposal of Application Notice) and provide the opportunity for further community engagement.”