Chamber and committees

Of course, with any secondary legislation we will conform to standing orders.

There is a continuing process of engagement. We have the public consultation and the work that Parliament is undertaking, and a range of community-based engagement is taking place as well. I would be happy to bring in Fiona Simpson, if the committee would like to hear more detail on that.

Our aim and ambition are to be in a position to bring back the finalised NPF4 for Parliament to consider before the summer recess. NPF4 differs from previous NPFs in that it requires Parliament’s approval before ministers can adopt it, as the legislation says. NPF4 will be adopted only if Parliament approves it. As I said in my opening remarks, that provides added strength, which is important given that, unlike previous NPFs, NPF4 will be part of the statutory development plan.

With the convener’s permission, I ask Fiona Simpson to outline the extensive community engagement work that we are undertaking to support consultation on and consideration of the draft NPF4.

Yes, I do. It is important to recognise the flexibility in the concept: a 20-minute neighbourhood will perhaps be applied differently in a densely populated built-up urban area than it would be in a more sparsely populated rural area. Different approaches will be taken.

The measure ties in with a lot of other policies, such as infrastructure first, which is policy 8. It is about ensuring that people have quick and reliable access to the services and facilities that they require. We can have in our minds a concept of what 20-minute neighbourhoods look like in relation to our own environments, but it is also important to think of such neighbourhoods as a lens through which we look at planning and as a way of thinking.

I go back to the earlier point about the need for flexibility. The concept of such neighbourhoods will have different applications in different areas. It will be for planning authorities, through the LDP process, to determine how best the concept applies to their area.

An important opportunity comes from the approach not just being top down. The need for increased consultation in the new LDP process and local place plans will give local communities an opportunity to feed in to and shape the vision of a 20-minute neighbourhood for their locality.

That is an important point. I respect the fact that it is entirely for the committee to determine how it wishes to proceed with scrutiny. I am happy to appear before the committee at any time to discuss NPF4.

The consultation closes on 31 March, and I appreciate that parliamentary scrutiny of the draft will wrap up in the next couple of weeks. There will be a window of opportunity for further discussion before a final vote.

I ask Fiona Simpson to talk about how consultation and scrutiny feed into the final version and about the statutory requirement to demonstrate how we have listened and engaged.

So far, the general feedback about the direction of travel has been very positive. A lot of the interest has been in the detail of the language. We still have to wait for the public consultation to conclude. As Fiona implied, it would be premature to suggest what level of engagement will be required when we publish the final draft. I want to achieve maximum buy-in and for everyone to feel that they have an opportunity to contribute and comment. I reiterate that I would be more than happy to appear before the committee prior to the final vote in Parliament.

As you will appreciate, we have been closely following all the evidence that the committee has received. Clearly, there will be shared views about the goal that the language is trying to achieve, but disagreement over whether that language is the most effective way to achieve the goal. Other critiques will be offered when there is disagreement over the substance of the policy. There is a qualitative difference between those two types of commentary, and I am open to hearing both.

Fundamentally, we now have a shared ambition about what we want NPF4 to achieve. Notwithstanding wider views, I am particularly interested in the specialist technical commentary on whether the language achieves the policy intent. We are looking at that point carefully, and it will be fed in through the scrutiny process that the committee is undertaking and through the public consultation.

However, we have to see this in the round. With 35 policies, 18 national developments and six spatial principles, the framework has to be read in a holistic way; there is, so to speak, no one policy that you can fully understand without relating it to all the other policies. Moreover, the national planning policy handbook opens with six universal policies under the theme of sustainable places that form a lens through which all the other policies have to be read. In that respect, I particularly highlight the second such policy, which relates to the importance of the climate emergency.

There is therefore a need to look at this holistically, but I very much want to hear the detailed commentary on the language that is used to ensure that we get this right. As I have said, we are very keen to listen to comments and will consider in detail all the submissions that we receive through the public consultation and the engagement process.

The key word there is collaboration. The land use strategy captures many of the points that you have raised. When it was published, the land use strategy made much reference to the emerging draft NPF4—you will be familiar with the fact that a great deal of alignment exists between the two.

I will bring in Fiona Simpson to talk more about the links between land use strategy and what we are doing in NPF4.

To preface a more general point, I note that, specific to NPF4, we have six universal policies under sustainable places. We previously discussed policy 2, on the climate emergency, and the significant weight that should be given to it. That runs throughout.

More generally, there is a job, which is best done by local planners, in balancing competing priorities. Ultimately, planning is about mediating space and creating places, which is a job that planners have to do. They have to balance competing priorities, which involves a judgment call. It could be argued that planning is as much an art as it is a science. We cannot have planning by algorithm. We cannot automate the planning process or take out all the human agency or decision making that is involved in it. Planners will continue to have the role of judging and balancing competing priorities on the basis of local knowledge.

Having said that, I recognise the points that have been made about the language and whether that should be made more detailed in order to avoid unintended consequences or to ensure that the policy intent is fully delivered.

The document must be read in the round. It is holistic. I know that there is a huge amount in it, but planning is broad and touches on almost every aspect of our lives. That is, unfortunately, unavoidable. It is why we depend on the expertise and skill of our planning professionals.

Fiona Simpson may want to add to that.

At the heart of that, you are posing a set of profound questions, Mr Coffey. Local authorities have at their disposal powers to make amenity notices. A huge number of factors are at play. Planning is a lever but is not one that we can just pull to produce an immediate response—it takes time. That is why we have to focus on town centre and city centre living. For example, when we get people back into an area, we increase demand, which incentivises economic activity, which can incentivise uptake in the occupancy of units. Several different factors will influence that. However, local living is key.

We are also trying to focus development back on to our town centres using a brownfield-first approach. As we discussed earlier, there are other levers to consider such as permitted developments, use classes and reforming compulsory purchase—we will take that forward later in the parliamentary session. They all have roles to play.

At the heart of regenerating our town centres is town centre living. We are already seeing proposals for that in different localities across the country and on different scales. There are particular policies in NPF4 that can seek to stimulate more people going into town centres and persuade against development outwith town centres and on the edge of towns, but it will need a long-term approach. No lever that we can pull will have an immediate effect. A place-based approach must involve engagement with local communities.

That is why I am consciously not trying to suggest that there is some grand plan and that a minister can come in from on high, implement that and solve all the problems of a particular local community. There is a job in supporting and providing the framework within planning, providing resourcing, and providing the tools for planning authorities where they require them, whether that is in updated CPO powers, PD rights or masterplan consent areas, for example.

The key thing is to get more people living in our town centres and empowering those communities. Local place plans have a huge opportunity as vehicles for doing that.

Fiona Simpson might want to add to that.

The detail that the cabinet secretary has conveyed about engagement specific to rural issues reflects the broader approach that has been taken to developing the draft NPF4.

The draft framework is the culmination of quite a long journey, going all the way back to the independent review of the planning system that was commissioned at the tail end of 2015, which reported throughout, and the work that led up to the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019, which has clearly informed the design, structure and layout of NPF4 in its new, enhanced status.

We have of course had an engagement process. There was a call for ideas, followed by two rounds of extensive consultation and engagement. We published a position statement in November 2020 and we consulted on that. There has been extensive stakeholder engagement through that process.

I will provide some numbers. We have had nearly 350 written responses, 180 people participated in our roadshow workshops and we spoke to around 100 people at our drop-in sessions across the country. There was strong support throughout for a bold and radical NPF4.

I think that the process has gone beyond engagement to almost genuine co-production. I think that that is reflected in the response that we have seen to NPF4 so far. Notwithstanding particular points around some of the detail, I think that there is a growing and strengthening consensus about the direction of travel on NPF4. I believe that that emanates directly from how the draft NPF4 was brought into existence, which was through extensive consultation and engagement.

Convener, I can give you some more details about the on-going parliamentary consultation. The cabinet secretary rightly highlighted that 120 days is double the time that was previously in place. That timeframe is set out in statute, in the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019, which was agreed by the Parliament.

Of course, a public consultation is running in parallel until 31 March, and we are supporting communities to engage with that. I can provide some details. There is a community grant scheme, which makes available grants of up to £250 to community groups to help them to engage. There are open invitation events over February and into March to give stakeholders the opportunity to discuss NPF4 and encourage participation in the formal consultation.

There are nine events in total, with one on each of the four policy themes and one for each of the five action areas. There is an equalities round-table discussion in March. The Royal Town Planning Institute is hosting round-table discussions on business energy development and house building during February and March. The Scottish Youth Parliament is holding a workshop at its next gathering in March. We are working with Police Scotland to support children and young people’s perspectives. Furthermore, there are discussions with community groups and online resources.

A huge amount of activity is taking place in parallel with the parliamentary scrutiny, to ensure that everyone who wants to contribute has an opportunity to do so. I reiterate that I very much want to encourage as much engagement as possible in the NPF4 process.