Chamber and committees

Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, committee. I am delighted to be here and to take over responsibility for the bill from my colleague Tom Arthur. The synergies are strong between the bill and the work that I am already taking forward across the wider public service reform agenda, so I am delighted to have it in my portfolio.

In leading this work, I aim to connect the economic dimension with key elements in my portfolio, including procurement, planning, community empowerment and, of course, the PSR strategy. As I am new to this, in answering your questions, I am keen to listen to ideas and views that are influenced by the significant number of responses to the committee’s call for evidence.

Community wealth building is about making local economies work better for people and communities. If money flows into and is kept in an area, whether through investment in local business growth, more good jobs or profits being reinvested locally, new opportunities are created and more wealth is retained.

Several key questions came up as the legislative proposals were being developed, and I will touch on three of those.

The first is a question that I have asked myself—do we need legislation? There are already good examples of local authorities and other organisations across the country delivering impressive results through their implementation of community wealth building, and the financial memorandum was informed by investment information from local authorities, whose staff—along with public servants in the national health service and other areas—have, to a large extent, driven community wealth building. Focused, proportionate and enabling legislation has the potential to amplify the impact and contribute to the operation of Scotland’s economy.

The second question is about the purpose of the bill. Collaboration and the consistent application of community wealth building can help to maximise the combined impact of public spending, ensuring that all local and wider regional economies benefit. That is why the bill focuses on the creation of a new and consistent platform to underpin a formal public sector-led partnership approach to local economic development. The bill also provides for the development of guidance that will be co-produced with key partners and informed by current good practice.

The final question is about getting the balance right between local flexibility and national consistency. Local partners and communities are best placed to understand the challenges and opportunities in their areas, which is why the bill gives local authorities and other public bodies the flexibility to develop and implement meaningful actions to meet local needs. Care has been taken to ensure that the advancement of community wealth building in the public policy landscape is light touch and that it complements existing partnerships and policy in linked areas.

The bill is very much about looking forward and laying foundations for an economic development format that sees every public pound as having economic agency. The public sector needs to lead the agenda while working in partnership with businesses, the third sector and communities. Securing in statute our commitment to community wealth building has the potential to support local economic development and ensure that it is focused on real places and delivery for people.

I welcome the committee’s scrutiny of the bill and look forward to receiving its recommendations in due course.

Sure.

Yes. There are a lot of important things, but that is very important.

You are absolutely right. I do not disagree with any of that. Certain things need to be spoken about in legal language when we are talking about legislation, and other things need to be talked about in quite technical language for good reasons, but we should always focus on the impact on people. To be fair, some of that is about the language that is used and some of it is just about explaining how things work and what things mean. We use a lot of terminology as shortcuts. We might know what the terms mean, but you are right that they might not necessarily make sense to community groups.

When the rubber hits the road, community groups should have access to procurement opportunities and have better support from local authorities and others that can help them to deliver what they are trying to deliver for their communities.

Yes.

Indeed. Point taken.

The data across planning authorities shows that none of them have planning fees that cover the cost of the planning department. The best that the fees generate is about 80-odd per cent of the overall cost; the average is about 67 per cent. Even with the fee increase, there is still a gap between what it costs local authorities to run their planning department and what the fee income generates. Clearly, the economic and other social benefits of the planning system justify the support for it, but that is the reality of where we are at. The steps that we have taken to introduce different planning fees and index-link them has helped provide planning authorities with more resources.

The point about ring fencing is important. The Verity house agreement between the Government, local authorities and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has a presumption against ring fencing. We strongly encourage planning authorities to use the fee increases to further invest in their planning functions, but, as a consequence of the Verity house agreement that we have signed up to, we are not in a position to mandate that through ring fencing.

As well as resourcing, the efficiency of the process is an issue. In that regard, the work that the national planning improvement champion is progressing—the peer-to-peer audit work between planning authorities to identify best practice, the digitisation work and the whole series of process improvement activities that are being actively pursued—can deliver more with the same resource.

In the past few months, we have taken a number of quite solid measures to increase the number of people who come into the system, such as trialling a number of funded bursaries. That has triggered others in the industry and elsewhere to come in on the back of that and further invest in bursaries in order to bring more planners into the system. At our own expense, we have brought 18 planners into the Government so that we can train them to go and work in the planning system. I have been heavily involved in other work. In the Government, my team has been leading on encouraging individuals in the early or middle stages of their careers to choose a career in planning, and we have been raising the profile of the career in general. A lot of things are happening to take that work forward.

It is important to recognise that a lot of people who leave planning authorities go to work in industry. We are also having conversations with the industry about how we can work together on that, because it does not do anyone any good if developers cannot get their plans through because they have hired the planner who used to work at the planning authority.

I understand clearly that planning decisions are made at the local level, so it is up to local planning authorities to make those decisions, and NPF4 gives them the framework within which to do that, so, as you are aware, those policies cover everything that should require to be covered. The structure means that there is no hierarchy, so all aspects of NPF4 would be considered in the round in relation to any individual planning decision. There are a number of other factors that affect how planned developments are taken forward or decisions are made not to take them forward.

NPF4 is relatively new, so there has been a settling-in period during which we have had to communicate, through guidance and letters, to provide clarification of different aspects as the framework has settled in. However, the framework provides a very solid foundation for planning decisions at the local level. A number of other factors affect what happens but, together with the guidance that has been issued, we are now in a good place with regard to the effectiveness of the system.

I will ask officials to answer with the specifics of the biodiversity guidance, but, in general, we will issue guidance where we see a need, either because planning authorities come forward with questions or because we think that further clarification is needed. There is an awful lot of guidance out there, so there is also an on-going exercise to streamline it and make it more focused. The comments that we get on the guidance are either that there is too much of it or that there is not enough, so getting the balance right is important. However, as I said, this is a settling-in period in which stakeholders, planning authorities and others can come forward with requests for guidance on specific aspects, and we will then produce that guidance.

Well, it depends on what you mean by “not working”—