Between April 2013 and March 2015 the council carried out the Aberdeenshire Land Use Strategy Pilot - one of two regional pilots for the Scottish Land Use Strategy - on behalf of Scottish Government. The two Pilots, the other led by Scottish Borders Council, were asked to create a mechanism which:

• Considered existing and future land uses in an integrated way
• Established a means to prioritise and guide decisions to optimise the use of land
• Helped resolve competition or conflicts relating to future land use change.

The work of the pilot

The Aberdeenshire pilot was primarily focused on issues of rural land use change. The key aim of the pilot was to create a framework which summarised policy and environmental information for users and indicated where particular types of land use change might be beneficial or detrimental in line with policy goals and climate change mitigation/adaption. The pilot took a strong partnership approach with the James Hutton Institute as key delivery partner and a wide range of stakeholders represented on the project board.

The outputs of the pilot

The Aberdeenshire Land Use Strategy Pilot ran from April 2013 until March 2015. The findings fed into the revised Land Use Strategy which was published in March 2016.