SPLs and the Plan Creator - Known Issues

Owned by Editor9
Feb 22, 2023
3 min read

Although new SPLs (plotted supplementary plans) are no longer created, many are already assigned to existing titles and these have been migrated over from the DMS database as part of the mass migration of titles from the DMS database into CadMap.



Numbering of SPLs

An issue with how the DMS stored, referred to and printed SPL plans has been discovered during data migration. The issue may affect titles where multiple SPLs are present and assignments have been made from other titles.

Plans officers in DMS would have set up the order of SPLs as required, with legal officers narrating accordingly in the title sheet. However, if at any point, one or more of these plans was re-opened for editing, the original order in which these were stored in the DMS database will have changed in the background. This results in the SPL number of the plan printed / sent to ScotLIS potentially being different than the DMS SPL Index number. Consequently, there will be a discrepancy between the SPL plan number and the narration in the title sheet.

There is no automatic fix for this. Due to the way the DMS stored and captured SPL authorisation information there is no way of recreating the intended order of SPLs without reference to the title sheet.

How to deal with this scenario:

Plans officers have two options when the title is opened in plan creator.

1) Check the index layer and see if the SPL has already been styled and classified as a grouping in another title. This could be duplicated to save time and work in the title being worked on. Check that the groupings order agrees with the narration of the plans in title sheet and provide clear instructions in notes to legal as to the original SPL number narrated in the title sheet to what it has changed to in the updated title, to match the grouping number in plan creator.

2) If this is the first time the SPLs have been brought into Plan Creator, references will need to be classified. Check the ordering of the groupings references in relation to what is narrated in the title sheet, and depending on the complexity of the SPLs either

a. classify the references and assign to the correct grouping to match the narration in the title sheet

b. classify the references and provide clear instructions in notes to legal as to the original SPL number narrated in the title sheet to what it has changed to in the updated title, to match the grouping number in Plan Creator.

It is expected that plans officers make the necessary changes in Plan Creator to fix the ordering of the groupings, unless it would be very time consuming to do so. If unsure, please speak to a Plan Senior Advisor.

The good thing is, once the ordering of groupings has been sorted in Plan Creator, this will not be altered in a random fashion as happened previously in DMS. Mapping domain are looking into the possibility of allowing the ordering of groupings to be altered within plan creator, but this will not take place until all DMS title and index data is migrated to CadMap.

If you have any further questions around this process, please speak to a Plans Senior Adviser.


Registers of Scotland (RoS) seeks to ensure that the information published in the 2012 Act Registration Manual is up to date and accurate but it may be amended from time to time.
The Manual is an internal document intended for RoS staff only. The information in the Manual does not constitute legal or professional advice and RoS cannot accept any liability for actions arising from its use.
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