Scottish Town and Retail Centres for Planning Applications

Scotland's network of town and retail centres, as defined by local authorities to meet Scottish Planning Policy requirements. The dataset provides key locational information for applying the sequential test to retail planning applications. It is published by the Scottish Government via SpatialData.gov.scot and was last updated on 2026-04-28.

Use Cases

• Identify priority locations for retail development based on the defined network of centres.
• Apply the sequential test for retail planning applications using the official locational data.
• Support local development plan creation by referencing the formally identified centres.

Strengths

• Directly supports a formal policy requirement (Scottish Planning Policy paragraph 61).
• Provides the official locational basis for the statutory sequential test in retail planning.
• Sourced from the authoritative Scottish Government SpatialData.gov.scot platform.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic or policy bias inherent to the uk_data source and local authority definitions.

Provenance

Source

Scottish Government SpatialData.gov.scot

Collection Method

Defined by local authorities to meet Scottish Planning Policy requirements.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-28 08:06:41.629123; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Scotland