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Miles, you might be interested in some recent work that was led by Scotland’s Towns Partnership, the Scottish Land Commission, Architecture and Design Scotland and Scotland’s Futures Forum, which was all about town centre living. We might want to dip into that, because they have uncovered some very useful information and have recently reported to the Scottish Government and COSLA. That is something for us to pick up.

Stephanie Callaghan has had to leave—she sends her apologies—so I will pick up the two questions that she wanted to ask. In a way, the first is connected to town centre living. NPF4 seeks to deliver both compact urban growth and development that is balanced between areas of high and low demand. I am interested in understanding from Kevin Murphy what builders are doing to support the delivery of those aims, and I would then like to hear from Tony Cain on local authorities and from Donna Young and Ailsa Raeburn on community groups.

The continuing parking issue is a great example. Tony, how are local authorities managing to strike the balance?

Great. I will move on to the final question, which I asked the previous panel as well. Last week, the Scottish Government proposed a new set of national outcomes including a new outcome for housing, which is that we live in safe, high-quality and affordable homes that meet our needs. Panellists in the earlier session spoke about the difficulties of aligning various national policies, and we have talked about that with this panel, too. Could a new overarching national outcome for housing help with that alignment, and to what extent does the delivery of NPF4 already connect with the existing national outcomes—for example, those on communities and environment? Are there any thoughts on that? Do we need a new outcome for housing specifically?

Does anybody online want to come in on that?

Thanks for that. We are doing a piece of work around building quality and safety, so it was interesting to hear you say that 500,000 people are not living in appropriate housing.

We are looking into the issues around what is going on in people’s housing, and something that has come up quite frequently is the idea of having some kind of database or tracking of what is going on in housing and what it is made of, given the issues that have come to light around cladding and reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. How do we start to look at those things as well?

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?