Seòmar agus comataidhean

I do not really have a view. I want to hear the views of those who will be making those decisions and the views of the communities. One of the reasons why we went out to consultation was that we felt that the 50MW threshold was getting out of date, because there are more substantial developments than previously and the level might be too low.

Even anecdotally, there are a variety of views. Some councillors do not want that responsibility; they want the level to stay as is. We will hear from those people, but we will also hear from the councillors and the communities who want local decisions to be made locally. I do not really want to dictate through a consultation—that is not what consultations are for. I do not want there to be one offer; I want to know what people think. Do they think that the threshold should be 100MW, 75MW or the same as it is now? Once we have heard those views, we can have a full discussion on what is appropriate.

Yes, that has been put to us. We said that we were going to consult on the issue, and I think that the time is right to do it.

That is one of the areas in which things could move with regard to community benefit. If a developer comes into an area and has a wind farm development, it could work with the community to share the grid connection for a community energy scheme. That could be a welcome offer for communities.

Substantial developments have been waiting for a long time to get a grid connection. The developers might be told that the development will be connected by a certain time, and then a review is done—as it has been recently—and they will be told that it will actually be five or 10 years beyond what they were originally told. That means that community energy schemes, which generate small amounts of energy, are all the way at the back of the queue.

There will be ways and means in the exercise that I hope we will be able to undertake once—this is wishful thinking—community benefit is made mandatory. That could be one of the opportunities for communities to get a benefit that is not so much about having money on the table—it would certainly not be about having football strips for local primary schools, as important as those are—but involves facilitating communities to have their own community energy scheme that has access to the grid via a shared connection. I think that communities would be excited about those opportunities, for the reasons that you described.

The draft energy strategy and just transition plan has been published, but there are a number of things that we need to bottom out as a result of Supreme Court judgments, particularly those relating to oil and gas licensing. Oil and gas licensing is reserved to the UK Government, but people expect us to take a view on it.

There is no shortage of other energy policy documents that set out our ambition on all sorts of energy. The draft energy strategy has been published for the public, and I have also produced onshore and offshore wind statements and a hydrogen strategy. A great number of policy documents have been published already.

I cannot give an answer to the question about when the final energy strategy will be published.

First of all, I want community benefit to be mandatory. The UK Government has consulted on the issue—the consultation is closed and it is assessing the responses—and I am hopeful that we will have a situation in which community benefit is mandatory. Once that is the case, all the issues of the sort that you have mentioned will have to be worked out. Consideration will have to be given to what “community benefit” means and how “community” is defined.

A community’s proximity to the geographical siting of a development, whatever that might be, is the reason why it should benefit. Because the community is hosting that development or infrastructure, there should be a benefit associated with that, as it is right on the community’s doorstep.

The point that you made about Castlemilk relates to line of sight. As I said, I hope that the UK Government agrees to make community benefit mandatory. Once that has happened, we will need to do a piece of work that involves going out to the public to assess what community benefit should look like, what conditions should be associated with it and who should get it.

There is a trade-off to be made, because if we spread the community benefit too thin, people will feel as though they are not getting much of anything, and communities that host the infrastructure will think, “It’s all very well for that neighbouring city over there to get community benefit, but we’re the ones who’ve got this on our doorstep.” There will be different views on that.

However, the first step is to make community benefit mandatory. At the moment, the picture is too piecemeal. I have been to certain communities where really good work has been done on community benefit and people are delighted with how things have gone. However, we all hear from communities that feel extremely aggrieved, because they have been promised something that has not been delivered, they have not been engaged with properly or they have felt that their views have been ignored. Such things need to be made mandatory—the conditions, the guidance and the protocols on such matters need to be set in stone, and the process needs to be based on good practice.

We published guidance on effective community engagement in local development planning in December 2024. Transmission operators are expected to follow that guidance, which was produced by the ECU, so that they deliver consistent and meaningful pre-application consultation and engagement. Because of the extent to which we were hearing from communities on that issue, we could not wait for the UK Government to set out a mandatory process. We wanted to put in place something that meant that I could hold developers to account by saying, “Here’s the good practice that we’ve asked you to follow.” Of course, we do not have the power to make following that guidance mandatory, but it is there.

In addition, we got Planning Aid Scotland to produce an information sheet for communities—that was published in September last year—and there are guidance notes that explain the role of community hearings.

However, to be honest, until community benefit is made mandatory, the rogues who might be out there, whom people feel aggrieved about, can ignore all that. It needs to be made mandatory.

I agree with that, but I would also expand it. As you rightly said, the Scottish Parliament agreed to national planning framework 4, which set the narrative that we want to facilitate as much low-carbon energy as possible to reduce our emissions, but also for energy security reasons. The Scottish Government does not have responsibility for energy security, but we have an interest in it. We also have an interest in economic growth in Scotland, making sure that we provide jobs for the future and that we have an energy industry in Scotland that is able to adapt and pivot to new energies.

So, yes, we set a narrative, but Parliament also set a narrative by agreeing to NPF4, which gives guidance to planning authorities throughout the land—at local authority level and more generally—on what is expected in relation to planning applications.

I absolutely agree that community engagement varies. I feel very strongly that that should change. There should be a level playing field, and I do not think that community engagement should be voluntary. Regardless of the type of energy that is being produced or the activity within energy infrastructure, community engagement should be mandatory. There should be very strict guidance associated with what good practice looks like. The Scottish Government does not have the levers in that regard, but we have good practice principles. As I said, through the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, we have secured the ability for the Scottish ministers to mandate community engagement, which is a very welcome development, because everything around that used to be voluntary.

Such engagement might mean that company A goes into a community to undertake early engagement, with lots of public meetings and many innovative ways of talking with everyone. The company might also make offers of community benefits, work with the community to give them a percentage share of the profits that are associated with the activity, carry out housing retrofit to bring down people’s bills or give the community some kind of endowment to do things that it wants to do in its area. In such cases, neighbouring communities will look at the opportunity that another community is getting and say, ‘‘That’s great. I wish we had that opportunity as well.’’ That is a very positive story.

However, we might have project B, which is of a very similar nature but which is run by a different company that does not do any of that and leaves a very nasty taste in people’s mouths. As far as the public is concerned, the companies are all tarred with the same brush. All that it takes is one company in one area of Scotland—again, let us say the Highlands and Islands—to leave a very bad taste in people’s mouths: it might fail to act in a way that brings the community with it, avoid engaging with or offering anything to the community, or, worse, promise to do things in that community, but then, once the development is through, the community does not see them for dust. There are a number of companies like that and, in future, should another developer—even if it has good intentions—want to do something, it will be told to take a hike.

All the developers should be held to the same standard, which should be mandated at UK level. I also want community benefit to be mandated at UK level. It should not be voluntary; it should be a statutory obligation, whether for battery storage, solar, hydro or onshore wind. That way, everyone will know what is on offer and what they are getting, and developers will all be held to the same standard. Communities should have that engagement and decide how any benefit is used. That dialogue must happen well before the plans are made—it must take place before the application even goes in. Developers or transmission owners should work with communities, understand their concerns and work with them to find engineering solutions, which can then be put into the plans before they get submitted to the ECU, the council or whichever body it is. Developers or transmission owners must also be held to account on delivering the community benefits that they have promised or said that they will give to the community.

10:00

The devolved Governments and the UK Government have commissioned NESO to develop the strategic spatial energy plan. NESO is also developing a regional energy strategic plan for Scotland. Those documents will help to shape the way in which Scotland’s energy infrastructure will need to develop over the coming decades to meet demand and energy security requirements and to assess things such as cumulative effect.

On an individual project basis, cumulative effect is taken into account by the council that determines the applications—at the moment, those are applications for developments that are under 50MW—and by the ECU.

However, not all applications can be predicted. The convener mentioned battery storage, which is an area that has a lot of speculative players. Communities, including my own community, certainly feel the impact of such speculation. They hear word of particular actors that seek to put forward developments—there are lots of actors and they are all speculating. Not all of those developments will go into the application process, but the speculation is enough to make communities feel worried about the cumulative impact. There is probably far more battery storage speculation out there than developments that will come to fruition, but that does not stop communities feeling a bit helpless.

Community engagement is important, and it should not be voluntary. The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 now gives us the opportunity to liaise with all stakeholders, including communities, on what they think community engagement should look like. Once we have taken all that evidence and feedback, we will be in a position to say to developers, “This is the mandatory community engagement that you are now subject to and that you must do, and it has been informed by Scotland-wide consultation.” Such consultation will be done in the way that you suggested should have happened in years gone by.

I welcome your views, Mr Russell. You asked me what my view is. The consultation is out there, and I look forward to seeing what you put in by way of a submission to that effect, and the arguments with which you back up what I imagine is your opinion on the matter. Others will have the same view as you.

10:30

In the consultation that we have put out, I want to hear feedback from people so that we can see what the general view is. It is also important to hear the views of those who will be making the decisions. If councils and councillors overwhelmingly want to make all the decisions that are associated with energy developments, we need to take those views into account. However, there will be some—or perhaps many—councils and councillors who do not hold that view, and there might also be communities that do not hold that view. That is why we are doing the consultation.

That was the result of a combination of a couple of things. There was powdery snow rather than the sort of snow that sticks to overhead transmission lines. I am giving my layman’s assessment, given that I was at the relevant Scottish Government resilience room meetings. There was also a lack of wind—on the whole, it was not particularly windy. Storm Arwen was particularly bad in causing outages because there was an unusual wind pattern that brought down trees in winter, when there would not normally have been wind coming from that particular direction. Trees grow to withstand the wind that they expect. Every day is a school day when you speak to people who deal with such outages. Storm Arwen caused a lot of tree fall, which brought down a lot of lines. On this occasion, there was mainly a particular type of snow and there were not the kinds of winds that would bring down power lines.

I agree with that, but I would also expand it. As you rightly said, the Scottish Parliament agreed to national planning framework 4, which set the narrative that we want to facilitate as much low-carbon energy as possible to reduce our emissions, but also for energy security reasons. The Scottish Government does not have responsibility for energy security, but we have an interest in it. We also have an interest in economic growth in Scotland, making sure that we provide jobs for the future and that we have an energy industry in Scotland that is able to adapt and pivot to new energies.

So, yes, we set a narrative, but Parliament also set a narrative by agreeing to NPF4, which gives guidance to planning authorities throughout the land—at local authority level and more generally—on what is expected in relation to planning applications.