Chamber and committees

I am conscious of the time and that other colleagues have questions, but I have a quick question before I pass back to the convener. It has been good to get your commercial insight today. You have just given us some examples of the lack of sustainable buildings on the commercial side. That is in Scotland, but you and colleagues in your company must work across the UK. How does our situation compare with that in other parts of the UK?

Before we hear from Tom Norris, I want to ask about building warrants, which we have had some discussion about. From the Homes for Scotland perspective, does the current process of building standards verification and issuing of building warrants adequately assess the energy efficiency and general standard of a property? We have heard about the need to address the quality of work to ensure that energy efficiency measures have been adequately fitted. Do you have a view on that?

Good morning, Franziska. It has been a pleasure to hear your contribution, so I thank you. Perhaps the committee could visit Freiburg at some point in the future.

In our inquiry into local government, we have heard many complaints about how slow councils can be in making decisions, particularly in the planning process. I am interested to hear that, in Freiburg, your city planning office is regarded as a think tank and an agenda setter.

Could you tell us a bit more about that? How do you ensure, in your municipality, that your work is widely recognised and appreciated, and that the staff feel motivated? Clearly, you feel very proud of the work that you are doing. Is that a feeling that the staff share? Do people want to work for the municipality?

Thank you.

I know that we do not have a lot of time, convener, so I will shortly pass back to you, but it would be interesting to hear from Freiburg in the future about the planning workforce, because we have questions about that workforce in Scotland. We have had a reduction in our planning workforce, so it would be interesting to see a comparison. In the interests of time, however, I will pass back to you, convener.

Over the past decade or so, there have been reforms to the planning system. We have seen that in primary legislation. There has been an emphasis on front loading so that there is lots of dialogue with applicants, developers, communities and planning authorities at the early stage. That is supposed to be the place where some of the detail can be thrashed out to ensure that the information is robust and reliable for everyone involved.

Is that part of the process working as well as it should? As an industry, are you reflecting on what more you could do to build confidence at the start of it? We know that planning has a difficult job to do in taking into account all sorts of competing interests. We also know that studies on, for example, biodiversity or flooding are expensive and take time. Could more be done to front load planning, and could you guys contribute to that?

You made an important point about time constraints. Perhaps I could come to David Hammond about those in a second. First, though, Morag Watson, you spoke earlier about community benefit funding, and you gave an example involving £900,000 of funds. Do you agree that there is an opportunity for such funding to increase? Could it perhaps plug some of the gaps that we see—for example, by facilitating capacity building and engagement both in communities and with public sector partners, not just planning authorities? As the committee has seen and heard during this inquiry, in the contexts of the role of local government on the journey to net zero, and of financing, we seem to need a cross-sectoral approach. Could more be done to make community benefit funding a bit more generous?

There are no questions left. It has been a long and interesting discussion.

I thank the witnesses for their contributions. In their opening remarks, Morag Watson and Stephanie Anderson talked about planning as a barrier to development and described a process that can be long and slow. To put that into context, do you have any up-to-date figures on how many applications are successful? The impression that I have is that we still have a pro-development culture in Scotland and the majority of applications are approved. Is that fair to say?

I imagine that we do not have much more time for this agenda item, but I wonder what advice was given to ministers on those issues, ahead of 1 April 2022. Did anyone foresee what would happen—that services would be reduced by one third a month after the move into public ownership?

Good morning to the minister and her officials. Thank you for your opening remarks, minister.

People who welcome the nationalisation of Scotland’s rail services want to see improved accountability and clearer lines of responsibility. On a point of clarification, although I welcome your intention to have good relationships with the trade unions, I noticed that the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers—the RMT—accused you in the press of lying, which was obviously not a good allegation to hear. It also said that “the buck stops” with you, minister. On that point of accountability, which is what we are here to look at today, how can the public be reassured that it will not be a case of officials and managers taking responsibility when things are going badly and ministers taking credit when things are going well? How can we be sure that the lines of responsibility are clear? How do we very quickly get to a place where trade unions, which I know you respect, have confidence in you and are not accusing you of lying, which was an unfortunate headline to see at this early stage of the project?

Are you saying that a disproportionate number of wind farm applications end up in public local inquiries compared to other developments?