Employment Land Audit 2024
1 April 2023 - 31 March 2024
Employment Land Audit
2023-24 Update
This is our storymap presentation of North Ayrshire's 2024 Employment Land Audit. It provides an update on the supply of employment land across the North Ayrshire Council Local Development Plan (LDP) area.
The Employment Land Audit monitors sites with a specific focus on whether a marketable land supply exists. The audit also serves to provide an overview of planning and development activity relating to employment uses over the 12-month period (1st April 2023 - 31st March 2024) of the audit.
All planning applications submitted which propose the development, redevelopment or change of use to or from employment use(s) are tracked regardless of being located within an allocated site, Employment Safeguarding Area or otherwise. Sites which are not allocated in the adopted Local Development Plan that obtain planning permission for an employment use are defined as ‘windfall sites’. These sites contribute to the available employment land supply and, in time, may become allocated sites in future development plans.
Map
You can explore the employment sites in North Ayrshire by clicking on, zooming-in, and moving around the map opposite (hold the shift key and drag a box with the left mouse button to zoom in on a specific area). The home symbol will take you back to the original view and the + and - symbols zoom in and out. If you click on the blue circle at the bottom left a legend will appear. Clicking on the button at the top right will expand or contract the map area. You can rotate the map by right clicking and dragging and can reset the map orientation by clicking the button above the home symbol.
You can also search for a site using the search facility. Click on the magnifying glass symbol and type an address, postcode or Site Reference Number if you know it (e.g. 32A).
Clicking on a site will 'pop-up' information about that site including the reference we have allocated it, its marketable status and if the site is immediately available. When the popup opens you have an option to dock it.
Overview
The 2023–2024 Employment Land Audit demonstrates that within North Ayrshire Council there are 59 Employment Sites, 53 of which are immediately available and a marketable land supply of 495Ha. One site was removed from the employment land supply this audit year due to a previous consent now being implemented.
Within the employment land supply there is a range of sites in terms of size and location.
Employment Site Size
The allocation of marketable sites is reasonably evenly split between small, mid-range and larger sites. Most of the marketable sites (33%) are less than 1 hectare in size. This is reflective of the scale of developments coming forwards, eight sites which were granted permission being of 1 hectare or smaller. Mid-range sites between 1 and 2.5 hectares make up 28% of the marketable sites available. Larger sites equate to 23% of the marketable supply available ranging from 2.6 hectares in size to over 25.1 hectares. The largest four allocated sites are made up of sites at Hunterston and i3 Irvine ranging from 47.5Ha to 126.5Ha. There is only one nonmarketable site which is 3.3Ha in size.
Employment Site Location
The majority of both marketable and non marketable employment land within North Ayrshire is located within designated Business and Industry land. This is reflective of the spatial strategy of the Local Development Plan.
Planning Permissions
In the 12 months from 1st April 2023 to 31st March 2024, the council granted planning permission for 28 applications proposing the development, redevelopment or change of use to or from employment use.
8 of these would result in a gain in employment land, 5 would result in a loss of employment land and 15 would have a neutral effect on the amount of employment land. Overall, there would be a net gain of 19.83Ha if all consents were implemented.
Employment Take Up
Take-up of employment land during the audit period amounted to 1.069Ha. The total amount of new employment floorspace commenced or complete equates to 9282m2.
These values are significantly reduced from last year’s values of 16.5Ha and 13853m2 respectively.
Development occurred on four sites, of which one is identified within the local development plan as safeguarded employment area.
Employment Loss
Over the monitoring period, 1139m2 of employment floorspace and 0.161Ha of employment land was lost to non-employment uses. This floorspace was lost to difference types of use.
Development occurred on three sites, of which none had been identified within the local development plan as a safeguarded employment area.
Summary of Employment Land Supply
The employment land supply is dominated by sites within the Irvine locality. Although the North Coast has the largest area of employment land, this is skewed by the size of the sites at Hunterston.
The Garnock Valley and Three Towns both have a substantial number of employment land locations within their localities however these sites are much smaller in size.
The North Coast and Irvine have received the highest level of interest in terms of planning applications, with 8 applications relating to the development, redevelopment or change of use to or from employment use.
Similarly, the Garnock Valley and the Three Towns had 6 North Coast had 6 applications relating to the development, redevelopment or change of use to or from employment use. As was the case in the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 audit, Kilwinning had the lowest level of interest with only 1 application relating to the development, redevelopment or change of use to or from employment use.
Overall, the location of both new proposals for employment use and development has been focused mainly outwith allocated employment sites and employment safeguarding areas with 6 of the 28 decided applications occurring within these locations.
