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That is absolutely true. As I said, my colleague, the housing minister, is working on a range of measures to address that, and the empty homes issue is part of that solution. You said that the number of empty houses is 3,000; I do not know the number right across the whole country.

Absolutely. On policy 22 on flooding, I am aware of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s input in specific cases and its general approach. The Government is engaging on the issue to ensure that things are in the right place. We want to ensure that our approach is proportionate in delivering what NPF4 is meant to deliver, as I said in response to your previous question, while not preventing innovation or development that should take place. We are working through that as part of the bedding-in process. Perhaps Andy Kinnaird will comment on that.

Without knowing the specifics of the case—there might be other factors involved—I refer back to what Andy Kinnaird said, which was that rural revitalisation is one of the overarching principles in the document. That is clearly a hugely important policy direction, in line with policy 17.

If we are finding ourselves in a situation where we are taking a step back from what happened before, it is important to flush that out through the engagement work with stakeholders in the planning community, to help us to understand whether we require more clarification or guidance on specific local issues. However, it is good that those issues have been raised, because they allow us to dig through and address whether the process is working as intended.

Absolutely.

The first thing to say is that the case is still potentially live, because the appeal period has not yet timed out, so we must bear that in mind. It is still early days and, as a Government, we will assess the possible implications of that ruling. It is fair to say that there will be applications that were not progressed or that were on hold as a consequence of the court case, so it may be that some of those will now start to move. I will provide some clarity with regard to how NPF4 and that approach are being taken forward in practice.

We would like to think that the ruling will ensure that the provision of land that is in the local development plans is taken forward, but it is probably too early to say and we need to get our heads around exactly what the implications are. Andy, do you want to provide more detail on that?

There are a couple of points about that. That is the budget that the Government is spending on the work that it is taking forward; it is not the budget for planners and planning resource in local authorities. As I said, we had that conversation, and that is not ring-fenced.

There is a focus on the digital delivery plan, which that budget contributes to. The work there is to take forward the new payment service as a first stage, and then further digital work on the back of that. There is a plan for what gets rolled out as part of that service.

We also have the national planning improvement champion in place. It is quite a tight team, but it is very focused on bringing other partners together. It is not a big organisation. It is very much about engaging with stakeholders and identifying opportunities for improvement, which I think is the most effective way to improve planning. The point is that there are clear steps in place to deliver on digital and on the improvement work across the whole system.

You are right to raise that. I do not have data on that with me today. I can certainly commit to go and look at that more thoroughly to understand exactly what the challenges are and how addressable they are. I am pretty sure that that will be in the scope of the work that the national improvement champion for planning is taking forward to understand that whole system. You are right; we need to get the whole thing joined up and everyone working together.

There are clearly requirements or targets in terms of how long it should take for things to go through the process and for various bodies to come back on their piece of that. I would commit to do more work on drilling down a bit more into that and understanding where the bottlenecks are.

Do my officials want to say anything about that?

It certainly is—I would not doubt your figures, Mr Coffey. I appreciate your raising that point for the committee’s attention. I do not know whether my officials are across the detail on those figures.

I would like to mention the recognition that NPF4 has gained. It won the planning to address climate change award at the United Kingdom-level planning awards last summer, and the UK Climate Change Committee stated in its 2023 report “Progress in adapting to climate change” that NPF4 is a significant step forward in delivering adaptation. It has also won a number of other awards at UK level. We are delighted about that. It is recognised in many ways as being groundbreaking in its approach.

Clearly, as we recognise, it is early days for NPF4, but it has been very well accepted by the planning community. As we know, significant work is happening to line up local development plans with the approach in NPF4. Obviously, we will not go into the details of the recent court case, but that has helped to clarify some aspects of that. The fact that we have won that case, pending appeal, gives us confidence that NPF4 is pointing in the right direction in terms of what it needs to deliver.

On the issues that need to be focused on, the team has a thorough and impressive delivery plan that it is working through, which is rated using the red, amber and green system. That has been very effective in giving an overview of which aspects require focus. Clearly, quite a bit of work is happening on local development plans. There are a number of areas—for example, the masterplan consent areas, further work on compulsory purchase orders and work on the infrastructure levy—that are in the pipeline and are being considered.

As the planning community and, indeed, local communities become more familiar with NPF4, we expect there to be more community-level engagement, which would be very encouraging.