Woman with clipboard wearing high visibility jacket and hard hat.

We're Scotland’s busiest planning authority, handling over 3,000 applications a year in a city with internationally-valued built, and natural, heritage.

We've ambitious plans to achieve Edinburgh’s vision of a fair, welcoming, pioneering and thriving city.

Our Council priorities are

  • to end poverty by 2030
  • become a net zero city by 2030
  • enhance wellbeing and equalities for all
  • our City Plan 2030 sets out challenging aims on quality of place, resilience to climate change, 20-minute neighbourhoods, net zero development and more.

We have adopted PassivHaus as the default standard for all our new build projects and are developing a carbon-focussed approach for the large number of up-and-coming RetroFit refurbishment projects. This leads to a portfolio of interesting and market leading projects that require high levels of technical understanding.

What our teams do

A significant part of the role the teams do is the preparation of the Local Development Plan and supporting documentation. We also have specialist officers who deal with a range of matters including, heritage, landscape, biodiversity, transport policy and street naming.

Development Management team

Process a range of applications for planning permission, listed building consent, advertisements, Tree Preservation Orders and have an enforcement role.

The team is split into the following categories.

  • Major developments – two teams deal with all significant large scale developments.
  • Local developments and listed buildings.
  • Householder and trees.
  • Planning improvement and enforcement.

Building Standards team

Process building warrant applications and associated completion certificates.

The team is split into three categories.

  1. Major applications: All aspects of all applications over a value of £250,000.
  2. Plan reporting: Building warrant assessments for applications with a value up to £250,000.
  3. Site inspections: Site inspections for applications with a value up to £250,000.

Jobs in our teams

We have a range of roles across Edinburgh including

  • Building Standards Surveyor
  • Construction Project Manager
  • Planning Officer
  • Planning Technician
  • Portfolio Planner
  • Space Planner
  • Strategic Planning and Commissioning Officer
  • Surveyor

View planning and building jobs