Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and welcome to the 25th meeting in 2022 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee.

I ask all members and witnesses to ensure that their mobile phones are on silent mode and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting.

We have received apologies from Willie Coffey, Marie McNair, Mark Griffin and Annie Wells.

Agenda item 1 is to decide whether to take agenda items 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 in private. Do members agree to do so?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 2 is to take evidence on the legislative consent memorandum for the United Kingdom Government’s Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. We are joined, in the committee room, by Craig McLaren, who is director of the Royal Town Planning Institute Scotland. We are joined remotely by Jim Miller, who is the chair of Heads of Planning Scotland, and Liz Hamilton, who is the head of planning at Homes for Scotland. I warmly welcome you all to the meeting.

We have just a few questions, so the meeting might not take all that long. We will focus particularly on the planning data aspect of the LCM. I am interested to hear, from your perspective, whether Scottish planning authorities’ handling of data was raised as an issue with the Scottish Government during the engagement that preceded the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019. If so, at that point, what concerns did you highlight and how did the Scottish Government respond? I will start with Craig McLaren, because he is in the room.

That is great. Does Liz Hamilton want to come in on the question about planning and asking the Scottish Government about it?

Does the planning data cover just the built environment? I am very interested in spatial planning. I feel that, at the moment, we in Scotland do not know how it affects land use, for example. So many critical issues are crunching up against each other, including biodiversity response, renewable energy and housing. All those things are making demands for similar or the same spaces. If we capture that data through the programme that you mentioned, will that help us to understand how we could use our land more appropriately?

Thank you very much. That is very useful information. I am so glad that we are having this conversation.

Does anyone else wish to comment on the NPF4 aspects?

I have one more question. National planning framework 4, which is in draft form—and which we hope to see soon—is a big piece of work that will set the direction for the next 10 years. However, the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is going to dictate things around planning, gathering data and so on. Will it have an impact on the national planning framework or anything else that we in Scotland are doing in terms of planning?

Indeed. We need to get busy and find the 700 new planners.

I do not think that anyone has anything else to say at this time. It sounds as though we need a bit more detail before we can take things further, but it has been important to flag up the issues, note what could be coming our way and highlight the impacts. It has been helpful to hear the witnesses’ perspectives, so I thank you very much for joining us.

Does the committee agree that we do not wish to make any recommendation on the instrument, and that we will gather the information to which Miles Briggs referred?

Members indicated agreement.

We agreed at the start of the meeting to take the other items on our agenda in private so, as we have no more public business, I close the public part of the meeting.