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Just over two months ago, we concluded the public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny process for the draft NPF4. My officials will correct me if I get this wrong, but we received, I think, more than 780 responses. It has been great to see such engagement on the framework. Throughout the consultation process, officials and I engaged directly with a range of stakeholders, including representatives of the renewables sector.

Addressing our contribution to climate change and the nature emergency are central to the draft NPF4. In the draft document, policy 19, on green energy, sets out our position. It is consistent with our ambition to increase onshore wind capacity by between 8GW and 12GW by the end of the decade, and it sets out some detail about how planning can contribute towards achieving that aim. NPF4 is, of course, currently a draft document, and I cannot speculate on what will be in the finalised version that we will bring back to Parliament. However, I assure the committee that we are giving careful and detailed consideration to all the representations that we have received.

I recognise the points that Mr Ewing has articulated. We have to be careful to remember that the role of the planning system relates to the use of land, and planning obligations have to be linked to a material concern about a development. That is a long-standing principle of how the planning system in this country operates, and it operates in that way for very good reasons.

I do not know whether Andy Kinnaird wants to add anything.

We already provide support to Planning Aid Scotland, which can provide a range of different support in relation to the planning system to individuals and community groups. I recognise the concerns that the member articulates; we will all be familiar with examples of excellent work that community groups have done in engaging with the planning system, and they have set forth their views robustly, competently and with a great deal of expertise and consideration. Andy, do you want to add anything?

I will come to that. Opportunities for progression and there being an effective worker voice are key aspects of fair work. Employers should understand workers’ concerns, which can be about skills. I will come to actions on skills in a moment. There should also be an opportunity for progression within the workplace. The fair work agreement will be an early priority for the industry leadership group. I have recently had very constructive engagement with Tracy Gilbert of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers.

My second point, which responds more specifically to the matter that you raised, is that we have made a commitment to an e-skills audit and action plan. We will progress that through the industry leadership group, by engagement with Skills Development Scotland, the Scottish Funding Council and other partners.

I am alive to the fact that retail is changing. The reality of the workforce is that the jobs that might appear in 10 years might become obsolete in 30 years. People will need to develop continually during their working lives. It is no longer the case for most professions that you can walk into a yard as a 16-year-old apprentice and do the same job until you are 65. That applies to retail too, which is why the skills audit and the action plan are key commitments in the strategy that the ILG will take forward.

Absolutely. Transport has a huge role to play. We all recognise that, which is why there is significant investment over the course of the parliamentary session, particularly in areas such as active travel, to make town centres and city centres more accessible. We are also investing in our bus service infrastructure.

I am happy to take that point away and reflect on it. It might be necessary for us to have details of specific examples in order to understand your point.

Is David Cowan able to add to that?

That is a really important question that goes to the heart of regeneration. If I have understood you correctly, your point is that regeneration is a process and not an event. It is not about rolling into town, opening up a new facility and that being the end of it; it is about what comes after that.

I will give one example from my Renfrewshire South constituency. I was there in a ministerial capacity to officially open a new community centre—Mossedge village centre. Everyone on the committee will be familiar with the history of Linwood, what happened 40 years ago when the car plant shut and the severe impact that it had. Indeed, the name has become synonymous with de-industrialisation in the west of Scotland, and the area still faces significant challenges.

However, in 2009, a group of local residents—all women—got together round the kitchen table and asked, “How do we respond to this?” They were incredibly frustrated with the state of their town centre in Linwood, and they wanted to do something about it. That is interesting, given that a lot of people in 2009 would have been thinking about how to respond to the economic catastrophe of the financial crash. We saw some responses to that, but those women sat round the kitchen table and said, “Right—we need to do something for our community.” As a result, Linwood has gone from having various unflattering descriptors applied to the state of the town centre to having a redesigned town centre with active participation and engagement from the local community and a new bespoke community centre and cafe.

The community centre received support from the Scottish Government totalling £1.4 million, but I think—David Cowan will correct me if I am wrong—that the total investment was about £2.4 million, with money leveraged in from outwith the Scottish Government. We were able to provide support, but, through various funding streams from outwith the public sector, the people involved were able to leverage in additional resource, and they now have a thriving community cafe. They will require continued support, but they also have a clear vision for becoming sustainable.

In remarks that she made at the official launch of the centre on Friday morning, the manager, Kirsty Flannigan, who has been at the heart of that activity for the past 13 years, said something that I was really struck and encouraged by. As someone whose title includes the phrase “community wealth”, I am conscious of the varying degrees of knowledge and awareness of community wealth building, but, at that event, she said that, in order to be sustainable, they would have to look at the Linwood economy—or, as she put it, the Linwood pound. With the cafe, for example, they have employability schemes in partnership with the local college, they are employing local people, and they are partnering with St Mirren Football Club. They have also said that they will procure locally—using the local butcher and baker, for example—which means that any money that is spent at the cafe will go back into other Linwood businesses.

In relation to the land and property pillar of community wealth building, the community now owns that asset through a community development trust, having gone through the asset transfer process and been helped by regeneration capital grant funding. Under the workforce pillar, local people are being employed, and the wage that those people get gives them disposable income to spend in the local community. Under the spending pillar, in procuring the products that they will be selling in their cafe, they will be looking at other small businesses in the area. It is an example of community wealth building in action. Of course, no one called it community wealth building or used that label, but, all the same, it has evolved organically out of the community empowerment process.

That is just one example of a regeneration intervention that is moving towards self-sustainability—and not just for itself. It is also turning the dial and promoting a cultural shift to a system of economic pre-distribution rather than redistribution, given that wealth is being retained in the local community. The area might well be classed as lower income or disadvantaged, and it has had to face the long-lasting challenges of de-industrialisation for four decades, but things are happening there now and they are being done by the community.

There are, I know, countless other examples. When Phil Prentice was in front of the committee, he talked in some detail about my home town, Barrhead. It has demonstrated what can happen when significant public sector investment is used to establish council offices and a health centre and to refurbish a sports centre to provide a community hub. That draws people into a town centre, and that passing trade supports the local economic ecosystem.

Such investments can be catalysts for further change. Opening a public sector building will bring in people to spend locally, but if you support a local group in taking over an asset, the key thing is that, in the early years, they get the resource support—which we provide—that will get them to a self-sustaining position. When they reach that point, that sort of intervention is no longer required. Ultimately, that intervention has not only built an asset but changed the culture and attitudes and built the human capacity and capital required to take forward not just that particular project but others.

People might consider that area to be more challenging or more deprived than others, so what has happened is an exemplar of what regeneration can achieve—by that, I mean regeneration not as an event but as a process that is fundamentally changing the local economy.

I do not want to pre-empt the short-life working group’s work on data. We understand that there is not always a direct relationship between rateable value and the performance of a business—that is self-evident. The key issue is the lack of data, as the Fraser of Allander Institute report identified. In order to have an informed discussion and more informed engagement on the future of non-domestic rates, we must first address the data issue. Although, as I said, I do not want to pre-empt the work of the short-life working group, I do not see that as the end—rather, it is the beginning—of the process. I recognise the issues that you have raised.

As I am sure you will appreciate, Mr Beattie, I have on-going engagement with a range of sectors on non-domestic rates.

I add that we provide the most generous package of reliefs anywhere in the UK, which has totalled £1.6 billion since the start of the pandemic. This year, it is estimated that NDR reliefs will have a value of about £802 million and that the small business bonus scheme will lift 111,000 properties out of paying non-domestic rates. I am sure that, if any of us were to go on to an assessors portal and look at the high streets in our own constituencies and regions, we would see many businesses that benefit from non-domestic rates relief. That is why it is no surprise that the Federation of Small Businesses has been so clear in its calls for the small business bonus scheme to be maintained. As the Fraser of Allander Institute report has recognised, it is also clear that many small businesses see the scheme as being of immense value to their profitability and viability.

I am happy to take that away. These conversations will become more regular as we move towards introducing legislation that will reform CPOs and deal with CSOs as well. In particular, we will be thinking more broadly about land assembly and unlocking opportunities in town centres where, for example, one building that is not in public ownership can be the barrier to a regeneration project taking place.

I have made this point several times, but we all recognise that the existing assets—the community and the people—are fundamental. The approach must be driven by the local community and the pride that they take in their place.

When it comes to the support that is provided, design must be carried out and decisions must be taken at the local level, with support for delivery coming from other partners. Cultural interventions must be made with the community and must reflect the community’s identity, values and history. They are most impactful when that happens.

That brings us back to the point that regeneration is about not just bricks and mortar but a state of mind. Culture can have an important role in changing attitudes to a place and helping to reframe how people think about their communities. That is an important part of the regeneration journey.

David, do you have any comments to make about how culture has informed the work that has been going on over the past decade in regeneration?