About
What area will the Plan cover?
When complete later this year, our new Plan will cover the whole of the Strathglass Community Council area.
The map below shows the Community Council area, which extends upstream from Struy to include Glen Strathfarrar, Cannich, Glen Cannich, Glen Affric, Tomich and beyond.
What is community-led planning?
Community-led plans are produced by local communities to steer their own future. They are a way for communities to set the agenda for their future, rather than wait for others to do things.
Preparing a community-led plan takes time and effort, and there is no guarantee that everything will be implemented. But it will give us new opportunities and influence to shape our community’s future that we wouldn’t otherwise have.
There are different kinds of community-led plans.
Local Place Plans were introduced recently by the Scottish Government as a way for communities to influence planning policy for their area. You can find out more about them lower down this page.
Community Action Plans have been around for many years, and normally focus on action that the community can take itself. Find out more about them and see some examples lower down this page.
Some communities have combined Community Action Plans and Local Place Plans into one plan, which covers everything to do with their “place”. For example, housing, transport and community facilities, cutting across community action, planning policy and public services. The idea is that it is easier and cheaper than doing two separate plans, as well as being less confusing for residents.
Our intention is to do a combined Plan for Strathglass.
More and more communities around Scotland have started to produce combined Local Place Plans and Community Action Plans recently.
The three recent examples below to give you a flavour of the kind of things that other village plans have covered. Each is a combined Local Place Plan and Community Action Plan.
They are all different, because each community has distinct needs. Our Plan for Strathglass will be different again.
What do community-led plans look like?
Fort Augustus & Glenmoriston
Like Strathglass, the plan covers a large Community Council area with a number of small settlements, Also like Strathglass, it was prepared by the local Community Company and the Community Council working together.
The Plan was intended from the outset to perform the combined function of a Local Place Plan (covering development and land use) and a Community Action Plan (covering everything else that’s important for the local communities).
The new Plan replaced an earlier Community Action Plan, prepared in 2018, much of which had been successfully implemented - including new affordable homes, a new medical centre, community shops and more.
Fort Augustus and Glenmoriston Local Place Plan was registered as a Local Place Plan by Highland Council in July 2025. Find out more at www.ourfutureplan.net
Kinlochleven
Kinlochleven’s community-led represents a new dawn for the community.
Like Strathglass, Kinlochleven is some distance from the nearest town.
Since its aluminium smelter closed 20 years ago, the village has seen some regeneration and investment, but more is needed. After false starts over the years, the Plan lays out a new future based on community action and more productive relationships with the main local landowner and the public sector.
According to the chair of the Community Council, the process of producing the Plan has helped to improve relationships within the village and with others, and get things moving.
Kinlochleven Local Place Plan was registered as a Local Place Plan by Highland Council in March 2025.
Ardgour
Ardgour Local Place Plan was registered as a Local Place Plan by Highland Council in April 2024. It combines quick wins and long term ambitions, all designed to stabilise and increase the population of around 700 people spread across a few small settlements.
Part of the purpose of the plan was to influence future Council planning policy about things like future housing development and improved transport links.
But the plan also aimed to steer how local community benefit funds, similar in scale to those available in Wanlockhead, could be spent.
Within weeks the Plan had helped the community to secure money from the community benefit funds to employ a development worker to take forward the proposals in the plan. Up until then, everything had been done by volunteers, so that was a big step forward.
The development worker is now busy progressing lots of projects in the plan, from new housing to better transport infrastructure.
Local Place Plans
Each of the three examples above function as Local Place Plans, which are part of new planning legislation that enables communities to identify their local priorities and develop a plan to tackle them. Highland Council is legally obliged to take account of registered Local Place Plans as it prepares its new Highland Local Development Plan.
The Scottish Government says that Local Place Plans “offer the opportunity for a community-led, collaborative approach to creating great local places… effectively empowering communities to play a proactive role in defining the future of their places” (Circular 1/2022, paragraph 3).
You can find out more about Local Place Plans on this Scottish Government webpage and on Highland Council’s Local Place Plans webpage, which includes links to videos.
Although Local Place Plans must include proposals for the development and use of land, they can include other things that the community might want to achieve too - for example improving public transport, more community activities, access to affordable homes, renewable heat and power, or whatever the community thinks is important.
Community Action Plans
Community Action Plans have been around for many years. They normally focus on action that the community can take itself.
You can find out more about them on this Scottish Community Development Centre webpage.
Here are three example of Community Action Plans and the impacts that they have had.
Langholm Community Plan
Langholm’s 10-year Community Plan, produced in 2020, led immediately to funding for two community workers who put together the successful community buyout of the local estate from the local landowner, Buccleuch, a year later.
Crianlarich into Action
Crianlarich’s 2011 community action plan led to an immediate grant of £15,000 to upgrade the public toilets, a long lease of the derelict station yard in the village centre by the Council to the community for a park, picnic tables and car parking, and - after a few years of hard work - a £200,000 path network next to the village on forestry land for locals and visitors.
Huntly: Room to Thrive
Two plans in 2018 and 2022 paved the way for 6 months rent free lease of a closed bank on the town square as a community space. That then led to community purchase of the bank and two vacant shops on the square a year later, and their refurbishment and reopening as business premises.
Read more on the development trust’s website.
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within the community and with the public and private sectors, helping things to get done rather than stuck in debate
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for example, helping community projects to get funding
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influencing services like ducation, health, transport and planning
Generally, other communities have found that preparing their own plan can: