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That will be part of the consideration that we give it in the round, but I do not see anything else.

That is absolutely true, and that is a basic principle with regard to customer service. In the public as well as in the private sector, it is very important to tell customers what is going on. It makes people feel much more comfortable and understanding of the situation. The work that the national planning improvement champion is taking forward in the framework for evaluation of how different local authority planning departments are performing is a key part of that. That is not only with regard to what they are delivering, but how they engage with customers—that is a big part of that work.

The situation is more complicated than that because there are shortages in the private sector as well and the different sectors are looking over their shoulders at each other, because they are worried about the others stealing their people. The fact that we had everybody in the room together at the event last week highlighted the need for people to work more closely together on some of that stuff.

If planners in different parts of the process are duplicating work, there might be an opportunity to get an understanding of that across the whole system in order to streamline the process. By comparing notes, people might be able to take us to a more effective place. That is one part of the solution, but there are clearly a number of other legs to that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, committee.

It is good to be back, if on the other side of the table. I welcome the opportunity to give evidence to the committee on national planning framework 4, and I look forward to discussing it with you.

As you know, I have only very recently taken on responsibility for planning. However, as Minister for Public Finance, I understand the significant contribution that planning can make to the key priorities of the new First Minister, and I am very much looking forward to my new role. Planning can be challenging, but that is also what makes it so interesting and so important to us all.

National planning framework 4 is now the cornerstone of our new planning system. It sets out a clear and ambitious future for all stakeholders to work collectively to deliver. It gives clear support for good-quality development in the right locations when that is needed. It is more than a high-level vision; the plan is backed up by national planning policies and national developments. We are committed to making NPF4 work in practice. It is not just a plan or an aspiration but a firm commitment to delivering positive change.

NPF4 has been in place for a little over a year, and it is helpful that the committee is now taking stock of where we have got to. A lot has happened over the past year. In the autumn, we published the second iteration of a delivery programme for NPF4, which includes a wide range of actions that we have already delivered and continue to take forward as the Government and in partnership with others.

This is the first national planning framework to have statutory development plan status. That makes it very influential in the planning process, but it is designed to work with local development plans, which ensure that local circumstances are taken into account.

Planning authorities are now beginning to prepare new local development plans, which will be instrumental in taking forward NPF4 in different parts of the country in a way that responds to their unique challenges and opportunities.

Planning authorities and developers have been working hard to take NPF4 forward, and it is good to hear that communities are also very interested in it. However, implementation will take time, and we are working together to understand how the policies should be applied in practice. The planning profession recognises the scale of the challenges and opportunities that are in front of us.

Throughout the past year, we have worked closely with stakeholders to identify areas in which there has been debate about how the policies should be applied in practice. That includes policies on housing, rural housing and flooding.

Climate change and biodiversity have been an important focus for guidance and good practice. There will always be different and, often, opposing views on development proposals as well as planning policies. Policies might appear to pull in different directions, but planning is all about taking into account all relevant considerations and weighing them up to make sound decisions.

A number of those giving evidence have indicated that it is still early days for NPF4. There is no doubt that it has been a significant change to the operation of the planning system in Scotland, and, of course, development timescales mean that it takes considerable time to see the impact of planning policies on the ground. However, it is clear that change is happening, and those changes will help to ensure that our long-term spatial vision is realised.

This committee played an important role in shaping NPF4—you put a lot of work into it, and your approach was open, positive and inclusive—and, of course, the Parliament as a whole was responsible for approving it.

Over the past year, NPF4 has helped to promote a more positive approach to planning, with planners proactively planning our places rather than just acting as reactive regulators. I hope that that positivity and can-do attitude will continue over the coming year, as we put in place further tools and work together to deliver economic growth and support a just transition to net zero.

I will bring in Andy Kinnaird in a minute, but I will first make a couple of points. In policy 16(f), there are exceptions that allow unallocated land to be brought into the process for local proposals, or depending on the size—I think that it is fewer than 50 units in the case of social housing. There is also a provision, which gets to the heart of the case that we have been talking about, for land to be brought into use when the existing land that is allocated has been developed. There are ways of working through this that will prevent a bottleneck in the provision of land.

Andy Kinnaird might want to give a bit more detail.

Will you explain what concerns you mean?

Those are very fair questions. One of the overarching principles of NPF4 is the requirement to deliver those homes, so it is very focused on that, as you would expect it to be. There are a number of other factors involved in that. We have talked about the different policies on climate change and biodiversity, the infrastructure-first approach and 20-minute neighbourhoods, which are all part of the mix, but it is central to NPF4 that we have a planning system in place that is able to support the delivery of those houses to deal with the situation as it stands across the country.

Although we all agree that the solution to that will involve building more houses across all tenures where they are needed across the country, the local plans are critically important. They will ensure that local communities in planning authority areas have an input on where those houses should be built, which is a key consideration. The framework is absolutely focused on taking that forward.

However, it is clear that planning is only part of the solution, because a number of factors, including commercial aspects and skills, impact on housing provision. I know that the Minister for Housing is very focused on progressing the work in that area, and I am working with him on what needs to be done to help to address some of those challenges.

On the resourcing issue, planning is delivered by local authorities and there is no ring fencing, so they make the decision on the amount of resource that they allocate to the planning process.

There has been a reduction in resources allocated at that level, as you rightly identify. Work is on-going to understand what we should do with fees in the future. There have recently been increases in fees, and work is on-going to understand how that should be taken forward, and whether fees bring more money into the system to support planning authorities to have sufficient resource in place.

There are a number of other aspects, too. There are challenges with regard to the number of planners coming through the system. One could name 50 different professions across the economy where workforce numbers are a challenge, so that is not unique to planning, but it is something that we are seriously addressing.

Last week, I was at an event at the University of Glasgow that involved a combination of academics who do the training, planning authorities and industry partners all putting their heads together around the table to figure out how we can improve the flow of planners into the system. The Government is contributing to that work through the bursaries and other support that we are putting in place to support graduate planning roles as part of the education piece.

I met the national improvement champion for planning yesterday to understand how we can use technology to make the process more effective and efficient, so that we can get more applications through the system, and increase the number of planners who are making use of the technology that is becoming available.

There are a number of different strands of work happening to increase the capacity in the system, but we absolutely recognise that that is a challenge.

The point is that the fee system is not ring fenced.

You are right with regard to the message that I get from developers, and certainly from industry partners. As an aside, I note that part of the challenge is that we are a victim of our own success, to some extent, across the whole economy, in that the significant expansion of renewables capacity and the planned further exponential expansion means that there is a much greater requirement for planners. There is a whole sector—the energy sector—now looking to hire planners, and they are coming from local authorities or private sector employers, so there is a further requirement to increase the number of planners going into the system.

The point about fees is that they are not ring fenced, so the money goes into a local authority’s general pot and local authorities make their own decisions as to what they spend those funds on. That link is not clear—it is not about the fees going into hiring more planners. It is up to the local authority what it does with that money.