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When I say “we”, that means the Scottish Government, but we can see whether the committee could take that on, too.

I really appreciate you making the point that we have existing housing stock. The issue is about how we make that work better and how we help people who are stuck in houses that are too big for them and want to downsize. How do we create space to enable people to move?

We are facing a climate emergency, so we need to be looking at the existing housing stock in Scotland and the whole piece around the need to retrofit 80 per cent of that. That is another bit of the puzzle that is really quite challenging in rural communities.

I absolutely take that on board.

I will bring in Willie Coffey in a moment to pursue the planning issue a little, but I want to pick up on economic development, which we have explored a bit. I think that we are going to talk more about the rural and islands housing funds in a moment. HIE’s submission talked about a strategic planning exercise, which was interesting. We have touched on the idea of a more joined-up approach and working together with stakeholders. The submission states:

“This would include ministers or officials from the Economy, Planning, Business Support, Rural and Homes divisions, all in the same room at the same time to consider a joined up strategic response to both the economic boom and the rural housing crisis that we face.”

Somewhere in our papers, I read that the Scottish Government indicated that it is working with HIE and SOSE on economic and housing issues. Have you had any traction with the idea of a strategic planning exercise?

Thank you for that. Willie Coffey has a couple of questions.

What kind of tweaks are you talking about?

Before I bring in Mike Staples, I want to probe that answer a little more deeply. At the Rural Housing Scotland conference that many of us attended, I was talking to an architect based in England—I think that his name is Craig White—who told me that there is a piece of legislation in England that requires local authorities to keep a register of land that is available specifically for self-build and community build. Do we have something like that in Scotland?

That is great. Stephanie Callaghan is next.

Where should the support mechanisms that need to be wrapped around communities sit?

Okay, I think that we are done. That was a tremendous session, and at the end we started to highlight some more things that we could touch on, such as the role of the private rented sector and aspects of retrofitting.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning. It has been really helpful to have this conversation to identify some of the areas where the Scottish Government could smooth the way and remove the blocks—I think that the word blocks was used. We very much appreciate that you have joined us and given us evidence.

As we agreed at the start of the meeting, we will take the next item in private.

As the enterprise agencies have been picked out, I will bring in Stuart Black and Russel Griggs.