Chamber and committees

Jane, do you want to add anything?

Good morning to you all. First of all, I want to ask Chris Brodie about the “Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan 2020-2025”. Obviously, the plan has a longer-term outlook—over the next 25 years, I think—but it specifically relates to the period from 2020 to 2025. Now that we are coming up to its midpoint, can you tell us how the plan will be evaluated? How will you know whether it has been successful in delivering its climate objectives?

I am sure that, as a former planner, you caught some of the previous evidence session this morning. When I looked through the action plan, I found only one reference to planning and planning jobs, which was in a list of potential areas for skills development. There did not seem to be a particular focus on planning and planners. Do you recognise that that needs to change, particularly given the amount of infrastructure we will need to build, the amount of place making that we will need to do and the other changes that are going to be needed in communities?

Thank you. My final question is for Jamie Brogan. You are working on developing partnerships with local authorities to tackle climate change and I imagine that there will be some big areas there around heating and energy, alongside transport.

Who do you see as being the biggest partners for local authorities to engage with? Where is that big workforce for delivery going to come from? Thinking about energy, are the utility companies going to come in and do street-to-street retrofitting, investing in district heating schemes, installing household insulation and whatever? Where is the big workforce? When I look at housing departments in local councils, I do not see a vast workforce to be deployed to retrofit and change entire communities. Where is the partnership? Where is the bulk of that workforce in, say, an area such as energy that can engage in partnership working with councils to make the shift to net zero?

I have a number of quite specific issues to ask about. The first is on full cost recovery for development management functions. Given the funding difficulties that planning departments have at the moment, where do you see full cost recovery sitting, and how do you think that that can be delivered equitably between minor and major applications? I will start with Pam Ewen.

The engagement work with LDPs is critical to them getting the right development applications later on.

Jane, do you have anything that you would like to add to those points?

Can you give examples of where that kind of expertise and capacity to manage and develop those kinds of new partnerships is working well in local authorities?

Jane, do you have any thoughts on that?

The context here is very much the decisions that local authorities must make around household developments such as energy efficiency improvements or the installation of solar panels on roofs or whatever, or decisions around electric vehicle charging points or whatever infrastructure is important.