Chamber and committees

National planning framework 4 has a policy section on coasts. Have you read it? What do you think about it?

Thank you for that, Rachel.

I will pick up on a couple of things that Danny Renton said. What amounts of funding are we talking about for a coastal community to do a local restoration project?

I was in Danny’s area during my summer recess. When I was on Loch Melfort, I spoke to some folk who run a restoration project on the other side of the loch, I think. They mentioned your work and talked about the difficulty of the planning process for bringing about their native oyster restoration. Is it a common issue that the planning process is onerous? What do we need to do to support local planning authorities to support such restoration projects?

Oh no.

My questions will be directed towards Danny Renton, but other witnesses may want to come in, too.

I am impressed by your project and your aim to empower communities to manage their own inshore marine environments while addressing biodiversity loss, sequestering carbon and creating green jobs. Will you say a little more about the benefits that you have seen from community-led marine restoration and enhancement? Has it led to increased employment, community empowerment and cohesion, and perhaps even repopulation?

Yes, we can.

We go to my colleague Willie Coffey, who joins us online, for questions on the next theme, which is public engagement and local communities.

Thank you for those responses. We will now move on to the final theme, which is infrastructure.

It was good to hear those responses.

Meghan Gallacher will ask the next question. I note that we have only 14 minutes left for this evidence session, so I ask for succinct and to-the-point answers, although people can come in if they feel that a particular issue has not been raised.

Good morning, and welcome to the 13th meeting in 2021 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.

Our first item is consideration of whether to take items?4 and 5 in private. Item?4?will be an opportunity for members to reflect on the evidence that they will have heard earlier in the meeting on retrofitting housing for net zero, and item 5 will be the committee’s chance to consider its approach to scrutiny of the recently laid short-term lets regulations. Do members agree to take items?4 and 5 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

The second item on our agenda is an evidence session that forms part of the committee’s work on retrofitting housing for net zero. We will take evidence from three panels this morning. The session will not by any means be the committee’s only one on the issue, but we hope to understand more today about the costs and funding of retrofitting; how retrofitting can be done in a way that considers a just transition; public engagement on retrofitting; and the skills, supply chain and infrastructure necessary for retrofitting.

I welcome our first panel. Professor Ken Gibb is director of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence at the University of Glasgow, and Chris Morgan is an architect and director at John Gilbert Architects. Chris Morgan was involved in the project that we will discuss. I thank the witnesses for joining us.

We will move straight to questions. If the witnesses wish to respond to a question or to contribute to the discussion, they should add an R in the chat box to indicate that. We will possibly direct some of our questions to a specific person, but we will probably have a bit of time because there are just two witnesses. We have around 12 questions to get through.

We will start with Chris Morgan. Will you give a brief overview of the purpose of the Niddrie Road project?