I attended my first meeting of the Strategic Development Planning Authority this afternoon. There were some snippets of general interest:
There is sufficient land identified in local development plans for building homes for 23 years, given current build rates in the North East.
The National Records of Scotland has published its estimates of population across council areas, and during 2015/16 the number of people leaving the area exceeded those arriving by about 300. This brought to an end 14 years of continuous net in-migration. It is unclear how long this new phase will last.
The average house price in the North East in April stood at £206,952, approximately £22,000 lower than the peak in 2015/16. It is still around £40,000 more than the Scottish average.
Rental prices have also fallen over the last two years in the Aberdeen area, down by 31% since the end of 2014, from £1100 pcm to around £770 pcm.
The meeting also heard that Statoil is developing a 30MW windfarm off Peterhead which will include 1MWh of battery capacity. Apparently this equals 2million iPhones. This will be a world first.
Good