Chamber and committees

Thank you. That concludes our questions. I think that we have done a good job in covering a lot of ground. The witnesses have made good and important comments in response to our questions. It has been a helpful session. Thank you all for giving up your time and joining us today.

I will suspend briefly to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

Welcome back. We will continue to take evidence as part of the scrutiny of NPF4. I welcome our second panel of witnesses: Dr Caroline Brown is a lecturer in environmental planning and healthy environments at Heriot-Watt University; Professor Cliff Hague is emeritus professor of planning and spatial development at Heriot-Watt University, and chair of the Cockburn Association; and Professor Leigh Sparks is deputy principal and professor of retail studies at the institute for retail studies at the University of Stirling.

Thank you for joining us. We have already had a rich evidence session with the previous panel and are looking forward to hearing from you. We will move straight to questions. We tend to direct our questions to one person initially, but if any other witnesses want to come in,?they should please put an R in the chat function. If we start to run out of time, witnesses may be asked to come to a point to ensure that all questions are answered.

I will kick off with the first question, which I will direct to Dr Caroline Brown first.? The draft NPF4 represents a significant shift in national planning policy, with a new focus on issues of place, liveability, wellbeing and emissions reduction. Will the Scottish planning system be able to deliver those ambitious outcomes?

We have a lot of work cut out for us.

I appreciate that perspective. I love statistics, too. You said that 85 per cent of our buildings will still be standing in 2045. I walk around any town or village that I am in wondering how we are going to do this. How will we meet the aims of the heat in buildings strategy? That must be addressed.

Our second agenda item is consideration of the Council Tax (Dwellings and Part Residential Subjects) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2021. The instrument is subject to the negative procedure, so there is no requirement for the committee to make any recommendations on it.

As no member wishes to comment on the instrument, does the committee agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instrument?

Members indicated agreement.

I am sorry to jump in, but I have a supplementary question on that.

Both witnesses have mentioned community investment. Yesterday, we were with a group called Celebrate Kilmarnock, taking evidence and learning a lot about its experience. There was a request for local authority processes to be improved in a way that accommodates community involvement. For example, there is consultation fatigue, because people get really involved, engaged and excited and then it takes quite a long time for the results to come through. How can we improve the community process in local authorities?

Mark Griffin has another question to ask. In the interests of time, I will be a little bit more—[Inaudible.] Perhaps we could have just a couple of people answer the questions unless there is something burning that we absolutely need to hear.

I see that everybody wants in on this one.

I really appreciate that. That kind of detail that you are giving us—on the use of the word “unacceptable” in policy 19, for example—is very helpful for us, because we need to understand what you need to know and what people in the sector need to have spelled out so that we are all moving together on this in a good way.

I will bring in my colleague Miles Briggs, who has a number of questions for the panel.

Thank you for that perspective.