Welcome to LIVE Park

I’m Anna: I’m a mum who lives and works in the National Park. I’m going to be one of the bloggers providing you with regular updates on what’s happening.

Although the team here at the National Park have been working on LIVE Park, the name for our next Local Development Plan, for some time now, most of you reading this won’t know much about it, so let me explain.

Firstly, you’ll probably wonder, why we decided to call it LIVE Park?  Well, we wanted to find a simple way to explain what our Local Development Plan is about.  We want the National Park to be a vibrant, thriving area, and we know that Planning can improve Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park as a place to:

Live

Invest

Visit &

Experience

And so the name, LIVE Park was born.

Your next question is probably, what is a Local Development Plan then?

Put simply, it’s a key Planning document that sets out Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park’s policies on what type of development (or building) will be supported in which areas, and why that development is needed.It will also clarify where it’s inappropriate for development to take place too, making sure the natural qualities of the Park are respected.  The document will update our existing Plan and set out our approach for a 5 year period, taking into account likely changes expected up to 20 years ahead.

As you can imagine, pulling a document as significant as this together, takes time, partly because it’s important we speak to and hear from a whole variety of people from our communities, to landowners, from local businesses to other partners like the four Local Authorities within the Park area.  The next Local Development Plan will set out Planning Policies in the National Park from 2016-2021.

We are now at a crucial point, called the Main Issues Report stage, where we produce (as the name would suggest!) a report on what we see as the Main Issues (and opportunities) for the National Park (and the towns and villages within it) over 5 years, but also looking ahead as far as 20 years from now.

When we publish this Main Issues Report (as we’re doing today) we want to hear from everyone who should have a say in whether we’ve got it right, or indeed where you think we’ve got it wrong, and why.  We’re really keen to hear from you, whether you live here, work here, visit here and want to invest here.  And from today, we’ll look forward to hearing your views.

There are lots of ways you can get involved from commenting on this blog, giving us a call, sending us a text (to 07860 01 71 53), tweeting us, leaving us message on our Facebook page or dropping us an email. Whichever way suits you best, we look forward to hearing from you.