Chamber and committees

Good morning, and welcome to the 16th meeting in 2024 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are in silent mode.

We have received apologies from Stephanie Callaghan.

The first item on our agenda is a decision on whether to take items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Do members agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

The next item on our agenda is an evidence session with the Minister for Public Finance on the committee’s annual review of the fourth national planning framework. From the Scottish Government, the minister is joined by Fiona Simpson, who is the chief planner and director of planning, architecture and regeneration, and Andy Kinnaird, who is the head of transforming planning in the planning, architecture and regeneration division. I welcome the minister to his first meeting in his new role. We look forward to working with you.

Before we move to questions, I remind members and those participating in today’s evidence session that there are active legal proceedings concerning the interpretation of NPF4 policies and the interaction between those policies and existing local plans. The Parliament’s standing order rules state:

“A member may not in the proceedings of the Parliament refer to any matter in relation to which legal proceedings are active except to the extent permitted by the Presiding Officer.”

Although we do not wish discussion and debate to be unduly restricted, I ask members and witnesses to avoid making reference to the specific matters that are currently before the courts.

I invite the minister to make a short opening statement.

It is great that you are across that.

Miles Briggs has a supplementary on brownfields, and then I will go to Mark Griffin.

That question covered a broader area than our NPF4 theme, but I appreciate your answering it.

You mentioned the CPO review and looking at compulsory sales orders. Can you give us a timeline on that?

Do you think that those glitches are around the need for guidance on the intention? It seems that our local authority has moved away from that and is potentially thwarting rural revitalisation.

Great, thank you. I will bring Pam Gosal back in.

I am curious about how the existing national outcomes, and potentially new ones, relate to NPF4. Minister, I had conversations with your predecessor on the gender-sensitive planning work that is being done in Scotland. Are you across that work? It seems to me that it could help us with the new national outcomes and feed through all those aspects.

Are you seeing the connections to the national outcomes through that work?

Thanks very much for that. I have a couple of questions, which I will package together. As we all understand, it is early days for NPF4, but it would be interesting to hear any particular highlights from the 14 months since we adopted it that you would like to outline to the committee. You mentioned a few things in your opening statement, but will you pick out some aspects that would be good for us to be aware of? Also, what is the Scottish Government planning to do over the next 12 months to support the delivery of NPF4 policy priorities? Those opening questions will set the scene for the session.