Chamber and committees

I have asked all the questions that I wanted to ask, but I can certainly come in with more.

Willie Coffey has questions about urban transformation.

No one is indicating that they want to speak, so I will bring in Paul McLennan, who wants to pick up on the renewables theme.

We will have a few questions from Paul McLennan, then Willie Coffey will come in with a supplementary. We might go over time a little, but I think that we are okay.

Good morning, and welcome to the second meeting in 2022 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. I ask all members and witnesses to ensure that their mobile phones are on silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting.

The first item on our agenda is evidence on the draft of the fourth national planning framework, or NPF4. This morning, we will hear from Scottish Government officials. This is the first of five evidence sessions that the committee will hold on NPF4. I welcome from the Scottish Government Fiona Simpson, the chief planner, and Andy Kinnaird, head of transforming planning. Thank you for joining us.

We will move straight to questions. I will begin by asking Fiona Simpson, initially, to briefly outline how the Scottish Government engaged with communities and planning stakeholders in the development of the draft NPF4.

It is helpful. I want to pick up on the local place plans, because the committee has some concerns about those, and we have heard concerns about them in talking with stakeholders. A statutory instrument just came to our committee on the issue. How will local place plans be respected and honoured if the local development plans are in place for 10 years? Three or four years into the period of a development plan, a community might realise that it wants some agency and input into how things are being shaped or the response to the climate and nature emergencies. How will that be respected and how will the community be given the power to have its say?

The NPF4 takes a plan-led approach, and there is a lot of focus on planning departments. That is quite concerning, because we have taken evidence from planning stakeholders about the lack of resources. Do you think that planning departments have the required resources to cope with things such as life-cycle emissions assessments? They are already stretched and we will be asking them to do more. How can we ensure that planning departments have the proper funding and enough planners and specialists such as ecologists to look at the aspects that need to be considered? That is the other thing that we have heard about.

Thank you very much, both of you. You have certainly been doing some very thorough work, especially during the pandemic, when activity has been restricted.

I am aware that the consultation is still running, but several stakeholders have questioned the Scottish Government’s running a consultation on the draft NPF4 during the 120-day period of parliamentary scrutiny. You can imagine that that does throw up some challenges. Can you explain to the committee the Scottish Government’s interpretation of the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 in that regard?

Thank you for that response. We will now move on to a question from Mark Griffin.

I will continue on that theme. I have heard some concerns about the way in which housing development happens in communities. Developers own land and, as I understand it, the local planning department puts out a call for land—the generosity element that we have spoken about. People have raised with me that, until recently, we had not realised how important it is to protect our peatland and—as we move forward, given that we want to shorten our supply chains and grow more food locally—how important our farmland, of which there is a limited supply, will be.

What do we do about situations in which developers have land that would, in the long run, given the just transition and the shift to doing things more locally, be better for farming or better as protected land than it would be for being built on? How do we handle that?