All of the alternative proposals for development put forward for consideration in Aberdeenshire's next local plan have been made public.

In an unprecedented step, Aberdeenshire Council has published the details of hundreds of proposals made to its planning policy team on its website.

The submissions have not yet been evaluated professionally by the team, but are being published in order to promote discussion and debate among the wider community.

More than 700 development proposals were received by Aberdeenshire Council, ranging in size from new settlements of 6,000 new homes to sites for single houses.

Each of these will be assessed and a recommendation published in an options paper, the "Main Issues Report", expected to be available in May 2009. But even at this stage decisions will not be made on the new Local Development Plan.

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Representations received to the Main Issues Report will inform the Proposed Local Development Plan, which will probably be published in December 2009.

It will only be at this point that the variety of options put forward at the current stage will be whittled down to a firm set of final proposals by the council.

Thereafter a Local Plan Inquiry will be held to resolve any objections to the plan.

Development interests and landowners were invited in September 2008 to submit proposals they want to see included in the new Development Plan.

Community councils have also been asked to identify land they would like to see included in the options to be considered for the plan.

But Aberdeenshire Council is not seeking comments from the general public on the proposals received at the moment.

Planning officers are now assessing all the proposals submitted to try to identify sites suitable for development and which sites can be brought together into a "settlement strategy" to achieve the best outcomes for Aberdeenshire.

Planning Policy team leader, Piers Blaxter, urged conversation between Aberdeenshire’s communities and potential developers.

"The discussion needs to take place between developers and communities and at this stage the planning service can only act as a middleman in that conversation," he said.

"It is much better to encourage a clear dialogue between the parties most affected by proposals."

Chairman of the council’s Infrastructure Services Committee, Peter Argyle, said: "Over the course of the next year we need to make some hard decisions about where development for the next 15 years will be located."

(GK/JM)