Chamber and committees

Thank you, Nicola. I appreciate that. Andrew is next.

I want to bring in Tony Aitken, who I know wanted to come in on the previous question.

Paul, you are up next. Your main question has been partially covered, but I think that it would be great to ask it anyway.

I appreciate members expressing their consciousness of time. We have a few more questions to get through.

Sorry to interrupt, David. Your sound cut out at the beginning. Will you start again? We want to hear everything that you have to say.

Will you expand briefly on what you mean by

“support for sustainable rural housing”?

Thank you. I speak on behalf of the committee in saying that we really appreciate your evidence. We have gone over our allotted time because we needed to hear all the good things that you had to say. I appreciate your points and the specificity that we have heard from everyone. It has been very helpful for us to get a clearer picture of what, from your perspectives, needs to be addressed as we look at the draft NPF4 and take it forward.

Thank you for being with us this morning. As I always say, we could have spent the whole day talking about the subject, which is fascinating. It is clear that everybody wants to do well and make Scotland a better place for everyone to live in.

As the committee previously agreed, we will move into private session to consider our remaining agenda items.

Was there anyone in particular that you wanted to answer that question?

Agenda item 4 is the third of our five evidence-taking sessions on the draft of the fourth national planning framework—or NPF4, as we will probably refer to it for the rest of the morning. The focus of today’s session will be housing. We will look at local government issues next week, and we will hear from the minister on 22 February.

I warmly welcome to the meeting Tony Cain, who is policy manager at the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers; Andrew Fyfe, who is the chair of the Scottish housing with care task force; Anthony Aitken, who is vice-chair of the planning and development committee of the Scottish Property Federation; David Stewart, who is policy lead at the Scottish Land Commission; and Nicola Barclay, who is the chief executive of Homes for Scotland.

We will move straight to questions. If the witnesses wish to respond or contribute to the discussion, they should put an R in the chat box.

We have a range of questions to get through, and not everyone needs to respond to all of them. Our practice tends to be to direct questions to one or two people initially, but if you really want to come in with, say, a point that has not been covered, you are welcome to do so. However, I might have to cut you off; if I do, please do not take it personally—we just want to ensure that we cover all colleagues’ questions.

I will start off. I will direct my question initially to Tony Cain and David Stewart but other witnesses are welcome to come in.

Our focus is on housing. I am keen to hear whether the witnesses believe that the draft NPF4 will lead to homes being built in appropriate places to meet the demand across urban, rural and island communities in Scotland. If not, I am keen to hear the detail. Some conversations that we have had in evidence sessions have been quite high level and it will really help the committee in our scrutiny if we can understand some specifics of what needs to be outlined in the framework that would help to meet the demand.

Congratulations, Willie. I look forward to working with you in your new role.