Fife Employment Land Audit 2021

Employment Land is land allocated for general industrial and business/office use, storage and distribution uses, business parks and specialist technology parks including research and development uses. This comprises Classes 4 (Business), 5 (General Industrial) and 6 (Storage or Distribution) of the 1997 Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) (Scotland) Order.

Employment land sites are those sites allocated within the adopted local development plan for development of employment uses (class 4, class 5 or class 6). Also sites which have planning permission for employment uses which are not designated in the local development plan and these are referred to as windfall sites.

This employment land audit provides the status of employment land sites as of 1st of April of the audit year (1st April 2021) . The 2021 audit covers the period 1st of April 2020 to 31st March 2021 and is:

Monitoring 128 adopted local plan employment land sites accounting for 1119 hectares of land.

Monitoring 27 employment land windfall sites accounting for 11 hectares of land.

Total of 155 employment land sites and accounting for 1130 hectares of land.

Annually each employment land site through the audit process is assessed by Economic Development Officers to determine the constraint category the site falls into. Using the guidance with  Scottish Planning Policy 2 (SPP2)  each site is categorised as immediately available, minor constraints and major constraints.

Immediately Available – Land judged to have no significant constraints (includes all windfall sites/sites with planning permission).

Minor Constraints –This is land that has some constraint(s) but is judged to be marketable under the guidance of SPP2.

Major Constraints –This is land that has constraint(s) of a significant nature and not judged to be marketable under the guidance of SPP2.

Marketable Land - all land categorised as immediately available or minor constraints. Marketable is a definition from SPP2 and often used when referring to the status of employment land.

The employment land audit is used to monitor Fife's Employment Land Strategy (FELS).

The primary aim of FELS is to ensure a marketable supply of employment land is available to meet market demand though promoting and offering a range and choice of sites. FELS aims to do this by identifying 20 key settlements (settlements with a population of 5000 or more as of August 2014) across Fife and allocating a 7 year general supply requirement and an additional strategic requirement in those settlements assessed as of strategic importance.

• General requirement is to service local demand which requires lesser quantity of land but with site servicing.
• Strategic requirement addresses the demand for greater quantity of land in areas of highest demand with less servicing requirements.

The 2021 Fife Employment Land Strategy traffic light table is shown below showing both the requirements defined in the FELS document and the amount of land allocated and available for development through the Local Development Plan or has secure planning status. It is important to note that this table only shows marketable land which is that land which is immediately available or has minor constraints as outlined in FELS. The majority (84%) of Fife's land is majorly constrained and therefore is not shown in the traffic light table.

• GREEN – where the allocation of marketable employment land meets or exceeds the requirement defined in FELS (100% +).
• AMBER – where the allocation of marketable employment land accounts for 80 – 99% of the requirement set in FELS. These settlements have limited employment land available which needs to be augmented in terms of area and/or range of uses.
• RED – Where the allocation of marketable employment land meets less than 80% of the requirement set in FELS. These settlements have an inadequate amount of employment land available.

The following map allows you to view the 20 Key Settlements, highlighted by their FELS traffic light status. The Settlement selector on the left provides a filter and zoom function allowing you to filter by key settlement and view the sites contained in that area. The sites have been symbolised as BLUE for 'General Allocation' and Purple for 'Strategic Allocation'.

The Employment Land Audit monitors the development of sites. Note prior to the 2020 audit site visits were used to assess the status of sites. In 2021 the primary source of development information continues to be building warrants and officer's knowledge of the sites. Note employment land sites may be developed for uses other than employment and this is referred to as a change of use. Windfall sites which has planning permission for employment uses may not be developed and their planning status lapse - theses sites are removed from the audit. The map below allows you to see what has happened in Fife between 01/04/2020 - 31/03/2021.

The following schedule lists all sites contained in the Employment Land Audit 2021. Should you require there is the ability to export to CSV file via the icon in the top right corner of the table. A map view of the data is available through the tab at the top.

If you have any questions about the content of this report please contact the Land Audits team at land.audits@fife.gov.uk or visit our   website  .