Chamber and committees

Great. Thanks so much for that.

That brings us to the end of our questions, and it has been another really useful panel. It has been good to hear all your perspectives on national planning framework 4. I will now briefly suspend the meeting to allow our witnesses to leave. Thanks very much.

The next item is consideration of a negative statutory instrument. There is no requirement for the committee to make any recommendations on negative instruments.

Do members have any comments to make on the instrument??

Good morning, and welcome to the 14th meeting in 2024 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent. Mark Griffin and Stephanie Callaghan are joining us remotely today.

Our first agenda item is to decide whether to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private. Do members agree to do that?

Members indicated agreement.

Does anyone else want to come in on that?

In a way, that makes sense. When I think about the 32 local authorities and the parks authorities, they are quite different—take a central belt planning authority versus an island grouping for example.

Would anyone else like to come in?

This is our first review of NPF4, which is taking place a bit more than a year after it has come into play, and quite a lot of elements in it need to get bedded in, including the changing approaches to planning. Jenny Munro mentioned some of the policies. At this point, do we have any evidence that the NPF4 policies on climate change and biodiversity are impacting on decision making in planning authorities? Are you seeing that?

Can you say a bit more about that idea of homes as infrastructure?

If homes were recognised as infrastructure along with the whole idea of reusing what we have, would we have a stronger retrofitting agenda?

I want to come back on 20-minute neighbourhoods. I know that we are talking about new builds, but I would also point that 80 per cent of Scotland’s housing stock still exists. How do we transform those areas into 20-minute neighbourhoods? It is something that I have been trying to get my head around, but do you have any thoughts on that?

I will pick on somebody—Jenny Munro.