Development plan approval


Get certainty for new developments with this free, award-winning service.

Development plan approval (DPA) gives you certainty that you and your customers will be able to quickly register your ownership and rights for new developments.

DPA is free, fast and tailored to your needs. Our team will work with you to:

  • check your development plan against your registered title to rule out any extent issues
  • examine draft deed styles to check that they meet the criteria for registration
  • significantly reduce your risk of rejection at the registration stage for individual plots

We recommend you seek DPA at the earliest possible stage of the development process to identify any anomalies or issues.

You can change your development plan as many times as you need. You can continue to change your plan after you’ve registered individual plots, provided the changes don’t affect the registered titles.

Once you have DPA, you don’t need to provide paper deed plans for advance notices or house plot deeds: you can simply refer to your approved plan. The team will process all the advance notices related to approved developments and complete registration of house sale applications within 20 working days.

DPA doesn’t affect your rights or responsibilities, and it’s not an early registration service.

The quality of service provided by Registers of Scotland and DPA has been recognised by Homes for Scotland, who named us the 2017 Supporting Organisation of the Year.

Approved developments

Find developments that have been approved using our DPA service.

Apply for DPA

You must have a title in the Land Register of Scotland before you can apply for Development Plan Approval. DPA cannot be completed against a sasine recorded title.

When you apply for DPA, you should include:

  • digital data for external and internal boundaries
  • a .pdf file of the layout to use as a visual representation
  • a draft copy of your proposed deed of conditions
  • draft dispositions of all styles
  • any other deeds that will be common to the development

Send your information to dpa@ros.gov.uk.

Support

Our DPA guidance for architects contains specific information about how to best present CAD data.

View guidance on using DPA in the conveyance.

Find out more about using digital data.

For more information, get in touch.

Email: dpa@ros.gov.uk.


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