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You are right to raise that. I do not have data on that with me today. I can certainly commit to go and look at that more thoroughly to understand exactly what the challenges are and how addressable they are. I am pretty sure that that will be in the scope of the work that the national improvement champion for planning is taking forward to understand that whole system. You are right; we need to get the whole thing joined up and everyone working together.

There are clearly requirements or targets in terms of how long it should take for things to go through the process and for various bodies to come back on their piece of that. I would commit to do more work on drilling down a bit more into that and understanding where the bottlenecks are.

Do my officials want to say anything about that?

It certainly is—I would not doubt your figures, Mr Coffey. I appreciate your raising that point for the committee’s attention. I do not know whether my officials are across the detail on those figures.

I would like to mention the recognition that NPF4 has gained. It won the planning to address climate change award at the United Kingdom-level planning awards last summer, and the UK Climate Change Committee stated in its 2023 report “Progress in adapting to climate change” that NPF4 is a significant step forward in delivering adaptation. It has also won a number of other awards at UK level. We are delighted about that. It is recognised in many ways as being groundbreaking in its approach.

Clearly, as we recognise, it is early days for NPF4, but it has been very well accepted by the planning community. As we know, significant work is happening to line up local development plans with the approach in NPF4. Obviously, we will not go into the details of the recent court case, but that has helped to clarify some aspects of that. The fact that we have won that case, pending appeal, gives us confidence that NPF4 is pointing in the right direction in terms of what it needs to deliver.

On the issues that need to be focused on, the team has a thorough and impressive delivery plan that it is working through, which is rated using the red, amber and green system. That has been very effective in giving an overview of which aspects require focus. Clearly, quite a bit of work is happening on local development plans. There are a number of areas—for example, the masterplan consent areas, further work on compulsory purchase orders and work on the infrastructure levy—that are in the pipeline and are being considered.

As the planning community and, indeed, local communities become more familiar with NPF4, we expect there to be more community-level engagement, which would be very encouraging.

Absolutely.

Absolutely, and it should follow the process all the way through. I think that it was Tony Cain who identified that issue, and I have been having conversations with officials about how we take that forward. The housing land audit guidance is important, because I understand that, at the moment, everybody does that in a different way, which makes adding it all up at Scotland level difficult. The first stage is to get everybody on the same page and then, exactly as you have said, we need to be able to identify what is happening at different stages of the process.

One data point that I have—and this is not from official stats; it has been pulled together from approximate data and is slightly historical, as it is from 2018-19—is that land that has been identified as being suitable for housing could accommodate approximately 390,000 units. That is a significant number, given that we are doing only 20,000-odd completions per year. That is how much is in the pipeline at the early stage. We now need to identify how much of that has gone through the planning process and then, as you have said, exactly where that is sitting and why it has not been taken forward to the development stage.

There will be a mixture of reasons for that. However, drilling down into the issue is absolutely critical to understanding how the planning process is supporting provision and where the bottlenecks are, if there are any, or whether the bottlenecks are elsewhere in the housing provision landscape and are to do with investment, skills, the attitude of developers, local issues or whatever it happens to be.

The data point is really important, because the data sheds light on where the hold-up in the process is and helps us understand a bit better all the different perspectives that people are putting into the mix at the moment.

The age profile of brownfield land, as well as the age profile of land that has been approved for development but which has not been developed, is an important part of this. We absolutely need to understand that and have as much detail as we can get on the age profile by local authority area.

Anecdotally, I know that some brownfield sites can lie around for a long time and then come into use for various reasons, either because funding becomes available for remediation, or because technology moves on, or whatever. I frequently drive past the meat market site in Glasgow, which has now—thankfully—been developed after many years of lying vacant. Age is a factor, but just because land is old, that does not necessarily mean that there is no scope for it to be developed.

There are a number of different things in there. It is early days. We will share that work; the monitoring framework will help to evaluate what is being delivered. In the NPF4, there is a requirement for an infrastructure-first policy and for 20-minute neighbourhoods. Those concepts are embedded in the planning document. Planners will consider the framework in relation to local development plans and planning approvals.

There is a range of things to consider when you get into infrastructure. With a brownfield site, you might be in an environment where there are local communities with local services in close proximity; with a greenfield site, it could be something that is brand new.

Local authorities would develop public service provision plans for schools and so on in relation to their assessment of need. I have had conversations with Glasgow City Council with regard to some communities on that point. Locally, we are working through what schools are available, how many more places they need, based on new housing development, and whether that means that there is a need to expand schools or that there is sufficient capacity already because rolls are falling elsewhere. The local provision is tied up with local capital budgets.

Private sector provision includes GPs, who have the scope to set up their practices where they want to, but also retail and leisure facilities and so on. It will come down to the commercial viability of a lot of that. We are not in a position to mandate people to set up shops in certain areas, but the provision of facilities is included in the planning assumptions in NPF4 in relation to infrastructure first and 20-minute neighbourhoods.

I do not know whether you want to go into more detail on that, Andy.

The planning system does not—and cannot—fix all those issues. You rightly identified that different parts of Government are responsible for the provision of different services. I do not think that we can get too much into that, because it is outside the scope of what we are talking about this morning.

Although I recognise the point that you are making, NPF4 has a focus on 20-minute neighbourhoods and infrastructure first, which are important in determining whether planning applications get taken forward. You rightly identified that, if challenges exist in other aspects of public service provision, be that in health or education, local authorities are tasked with the provision of adequate services in those areas.