The Scottish Government published Planning Circular 4/2025 in December 2025.

Published: 3 February 2026
Author: Lee Murphy

The Scottish Government published Planning Circular 4/2025 in December 2025. It updates Circular 3/2012, reflects the changing planning environment and practices developed since 2012, is very welcome and has generally been well received. It follows a period of consultation open to stakeholders as is evidenced by the content of the Circular.

The Circular aligns closely with the current planning system and integrates the “Infrastructure First” approach set out in National Planning Framework 4, relating to the use and justification for planning obligations. Greater consistency, transparency and certainty should be the result for all parties concerned, but there is a greater burden on planning authorities to clearly detail infrastructure needs, and associated costs in their development plans and delivery programmes which should refer to cumulative impacts and the  methods of calculating obligations and provide greater clarity overall. The emphasis is on viability and deliverability and includes practical guidance on reaching agreement on obligations as well as the management of those obligations

Relevant obligations should (where possible) be identified and agreed at the point of approving a planning application, focussing on the individual development, and not at the stage of negotiating the terms of e.g. a section 75 of section 69 agreement some time following approval (whether “minded to grant” or not).

The Circular reaffirms the existing five tests meaning that such obligations must:

• be necessary to make proposed development acceptable in planning terms
• serve a planning purpose
• relate to the impacts of the proposed development
• relate fairly and reasonably to the proposed development in scale and kind
• be reasonable in all other respects.