Chamber and committees

I notice that a consultation on masterplan consent areas is happening at the moment. Perhaps this is a bit too detailed for you, but how will that work with NPF4? Obviously, you will get a result from and some feedback on the consultation process, but how will that work with or support NPF4 delivery?

Gordon MacDonald has a supplementary question.

Before I bring in Mark Griffin, I have a couple of questions on those two areas. In terms of the resourcing of local authorities, obviously there is the local authority planning department, but there are also the statutory consultees, who seem to be quite underresourced. Again, talking to planning departments, it seems that it can be quite a long time before a statutory consultee will get back to them. That is maybe going beyond the planning department—you would be starting to talk about NatureScot or SEPA—but I think that we need to recognise that planning is part of a bigger ecosystem and that lots of different bodies feed into it. How do we support the process there? I know that there are some thoughts around streamlining some of the processes, but how do we help the statutory bodies to contribute more swiftly?

We have talked about new entrants and bringing more people in to planning, as well as training people who are already in the system, but a concern has come up in our evidence sessions about retaining people in the public sector, because it can be a much more attractive offer to work for a private company. What can we do about that?

Brilliant.

Willie Coffey has a supplementary question on the budget.

That concludes our questions. It has been a very useful session, minister. It was great to hear that you were paying attention to our previous sessions, as you pulled out a lot of things from those conversations. A highlight for me was the work that you set out at the beginning on data sets and getting information. We are planning to hold these events annually, so there will be at least one more such meeting. Our last one will probably be next year, before we move to 2026. It will be interesting to see, at that point, what you have gathered in those data sets. By then, the planning fees consultation and the work on masterplan consent areas will be all done, so it will be interesting to see how those things start to come into play with NPF4. You have welcomed and taken on board the other issues that we have raised, which is very much appreciated. It was good to see you today. Thanks so much for coming.

It is great to get clarity on that simplicity and to hear that a plan could be just a couple of A4 sheets of paper and a map.

We will go back to the issue of brownfields, as members have a couple of supplementary questions on that, but, before we do so, I want to go back to Ivan McKee’s point about data gathering. In relation to housing, I have picked up in conversation with planning authorities that it might be good to track the number of consents given, whether the housing is moving forward and, if not, why it has stalled.

Could the Scottish Government consider some way in which planning authorities could track that and have a feedback mechanism that allows developers to say why they have not got on site and that kind of thing? Apparently, that is happening across the country, and we really need the housing to happen. If consent is being given, which is already a challenging process, but we are not getting the development that is needed, that might be another issue for the Government to pick up in its data tracking.

On the back of Pam Gosal’s question on the housing emergency and NPF4, I want to take us down a tributary on rural housing, so bear with me.

I will ask about a couple of issues that have been raised with me. The first is that the language around rural groupings and clusters has been removed from NPF4. That has been raised as a concern, because it means that those are not identified in NPF4 and, therefore, it is harder for rural housing to be taken forward. Has that come across?

The second issue is about infill sites. I have spoken with an architect in a design and build company that used to work with infill sites and extension sites. In one particular planning authority, those no longer seem to be an avenue. As a result, three houses will not now be built. You will be aware that, in a rural community, one or two houses can be quite critical.

Another issue on rural housing that was raised is what happens if all your area is peat. How do you tackle that? That is maybe something else to gather data on.

It is good to hear that you are across that.