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Thank you. Your point about a streamlining approach is true; the issue is where the intervention point is that will give us the most impact for the activities that we carry out.

That leads nicely on to questions from Willie Coffey, who will lead on the theme of leadership, accountability and audit.

Is it pretty much up to the planning authority to decide how it goes about engaging with young people or any of the groups that you have identified?

Councillor Heddle, do you want to come in on that?

You have set me up very well for my next question. I think that I am starting to understand community wealth building. The committee will consider that bill at some point. As my understanding of the subject has deepened, I have started to see that a good part of community wealth building could be delivered through community planning partnerships. Therefore, I am interested in what you think the role of CCPs will be in community wealth building, as well as in relation to Covid recovery, which has been talked about in our evidence sessions, and the new deal for local government.

Given that you mentioned the words “community wealth building”, I will start with you, Councillor Heddle.

I will open with a number of questions about culture change before we move to the other themes that have been explored in our evidence session so far.

Back in 2015, community planning was seen as being central to public service reform in tackling inequalities and aiding prevention, as you have both articulated. The committee has heard that the picture on the ground is very variable, as you have both said. I am interested in your sense of the impact that community planning has had. Perhaps the minister could answer first.

It is unfortunate that we have lost the connection. It would be good to have heard about that.

We had better move on. Have we lost everybody now? No. Good.

I thank Mark Griffin for his question. We move on to the third sector and communities, with questions from Ivan McKee.

Thank you very much for that.

I am going to pick up the theme of local outcomes improvement plans and locality plans. The 2015 act replaced single outcome agreements with the practical tool of local outcomes improvement plans. I am interested to hear your thoughts on what impact they have had. I will start with Councillor Heddle.

The next agenda item is to take evidence on the Town and Country Planning (Development Planning) (Scotland) Regulations 2023 from Joe FitzPatrick, the Minister for Local Government Empowerment and Planning. He is joined by Scottish Government officials. Kristen Anderson is principal planner, Andy Kinnaird is head of transforming planning and Carrie Thomson is head of development planning and housing. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting, and I invite the minister to make a brief opening statement.

I look forward to seeing those regulations.

I think that that is it. Thank you for your evidence; it was very helpful, and I think that we got some useful bits of information. The minister will stay with us for our next evidence session, as he said at the beginning of the meeting. I suspend for five minutes to allow for a changeover of supporting officials.

Thanks very much for that. It is good to hear about the additional clarity on the climate change agenda.

How do you expect a planning authority to go about developing an evidence report, and what opportunities will there be for communities and individuals to input to the process?