 The final item of business today is the member's business debate on motion number 10226 in the name of Cameron Brecanon on strategic planning in the Lothians. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I would be grateful if those members who wish to speak in the debate could press the request to speak buttons now. I call on Cameron Brecanon to open the debate. Seven minutes please, Mr Brecanon. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'm grateful for the opportunity to discuss strategic planning in the Lothians this evening. We're likely to extend my thanks to those members who've added their support to the motion and allowed this issue to be debated. I realise that strategic planning is not a subject that exactly sets the heavier alight. Indeed, I've seen eye's role when I've mentioned it to my colleagues. However, when you begin to understand the planning system and the significance of the strategic city-based plans within that, then its importance is obvious. It profoundly affects how our communities, towns and ultimately Edinburgh will physically grow in future. Indeed, when I discuss planning with people, I come back to the point well-made by John Wilson on the local government committee, who noted that most people view the planning system through the prism of their own individual experience with it. Specifically, they become aware of the wider planning system when a development is proposed within their community. The questions they will invariably ask themselves are those who planned this and who approved it. This is the crux of the planning system. These questions must be answered relatively straightforwardly, and that requires a transparent planning system, where those making the key decisions can be held to account. The importance of the strategic plan is that it answers so many of these questions, if not in a straightforward or a transparent manner, along with our local development plans, which it also shapes. So the housing developments, retail parks and changes to our communities have their origins rooted in these documents. As such, their importance can hardly be overstated. As we have just finished the consultation exercise on the main issues that we contain in SES plan 2, and as many local authorities are in the midst of drawing up a new local plan, now I think would be an opportune moment to review how the strategic planning is working. As my motion suggests, the bedrock of a healthy system is community and grassroot participation in the process, and we cannot encourage enough of our community councils and other representative bodies to come forward and make themselves heard. However, that itself is not enough. I brought forward today's debate in order to air some of the issues and frankly frustrations that I have heard repeated by community councils and local authority councils across the Lothians and further afield. One of those strikes at the heart of this transparency, an accountability agenda, namely the development of housing land requirement by the strategic planning authority and the use of housing needs and demand assessment. Of course, the most recent supplementary guidance sees a reduction of housing required for medimer in the short term. Furthermore, I note with interest that there has been a renewed guidance, for the conduct of the HNDA, which was issued early this month, but for so many communities this is a small step following persistent doubts about the integrity of the assessment being raised and the myriad of questions people have over the process. This is a huge cause of controversy due to the significant pressure it places on our greenfield sites and indeed the greenbelt. With brownfield sites in the Lothians identified in previous local development plans, it is still lying undeveloped and with a significantly lower population than estimated, leading to reduced local government and health board funding in the area. It is easy to see where the frustration and doubts come from. Indeed, I understand only last week representatives in the highly regarded coban association which was established to promote conservation in Edinburgh called into question some of these figures with the planners from the city of Edinburgh council and there appeared to be a concession from those same planners that the figures may be awry. We must have full confidence in the demand for housing land supply, particularly given that communities are being asked to give up valuable green space. I would ask the Minister to commit this evening to reviewing these targets and their methodology and above all ensure that the process is transparent. He has until only tomorrow to comment on the updated land supply guidance and he should take this opportunity to demand improvements. One site presently threatened is Carymuyn Park, where almost 500 people have objected to the proposed development of it. Plans to invest in facilities for locals have been shelved in anticipation of the sites developing for housing, which raises the questions. Why do these locals hold responsible for housing supply figures? As matters stand, they are struggling to find anyone responsible. Presiding Officer, when local councillors are challenged about the decisions in the local development plan, they point to the government. When the public raises a matter with their MSP, they are told it is a fall to the all-powerful strategic plan. As such, I would suggest that there is a strong feeling that these plans allow politicians to avoid the responsibility for tough decisions. I think that it is perhaps time for these significant decisions, particularly around housing, to be formally debated in this Parliament, so that we can be clear that we all stand on them so that the public can see who has taken the decisions and above all hold those people accountable accordingly. Put simply, we must really stop the blame game and stop politicians running away from their responsibilities. Which brings me to the issue of approval of our local plans. In Edinburgh, serious concerns over the infrastructure implications of several housing developments have been raised. Indeed, anyone who knows the level of congestion in the west of the city will understand the plight of residents in Cammo who have taken the extraordinary step of threatening legal action against the city council. This response of the city's planning councillor Ian Perry is more extraordinary still because it is to suggest that any delay to the development plan would put in danger all of Edinburgh's green belt sites, which is plainly nonsense. The residents of Cammo and Edinburgh overall deserve a better choice than being told it's either a dud plan or uncontrolled and unfettered development of the green belt. There are profound questions about the suitability of the local development plan in terms of its implications or infrastructure. That being the case, we should have time to step back and reflect on whether it can be improved. Instead, we face the prospect of it being forced through in spite of those concerns, and I would ask the minister to clarify whether he thinks such advice is appropriate in those circumstances. Presiding Officer, accountability and transparency, these are the key aspects of an effective planning system. In the development of the SES plan 2, these two areas, I think, must be improved. In the more immediate term, I think that urgent action is needed. I would ask the minister again to undertake to reject housing land supplementary guidance until we have confidence in his figures. I also look forward to his comments on the situation in Edinburgh, particularly. I hope that his agreement that forcing through approval of a local development plan in such circumstances is in no way appropriate. Many thanks. We now turn to the open debate and I ask the members to ensure that they have pressed the request-to-speak buttons if they wish to participate. I say to the boy act to be followed by Colin Kear. Thank you very much Presiding Officer. First of all, I want to congratulate Cameron Buchanan for getting us to debate this issue tonight. I think that some of the issues that he has mentioned are issues of concern to many, many people. I have certainly been concerned about the issue about housing land and the priority of development and the order in which development takes place to the extent that I asked for a briefing from the City Council for all the relevant MPs and MSPs in the Lothian. We had that meeting in January this year and I think that it was very useful. I think that one of the key challenges that was put in front of us was that when the previous local plan was put in place, there was a presumption and an allocation of 18,000 houses in the Leith Ports area. When that was removed by Leith Ports, it has created a real challenge for the city. There is a real difficult issue at the heart of this agenda, which is that we need more houses in Edinburgh. We need more affordable houses for rent, for social use, for housing associations or council houses. We also need more affordable housing to buy and the lack of new provision and the fact that many houses have been taken out of general residential use and were used as short-term lets for the tourist industry means that we have a phenomenal pressure on housing. For those reasons, I am very glad that we are able to debate this issue. I think that there is a challenge that we may see increasing social polarisation as people in low and modest incomes or even relatively good incomes can't afford to buy property in the city because they don't qualify for social rented housing, are either faced with the relatively high cost of rented accommodation or they have to leave the city. That's not good for us. Having previously lived in London, I do worry about Edinburgh going in the same route. More investment in social rented properties, particularly on brownfield land, is absolutely crucial. That has got to be one of the priorities in the new plan, plan number two that's coming forward. I very much support the council's policy of 25 per cent social rented on major developments. I think that that becomes more important as housing is short in short supply. One issue that we need to focus on is the different types of houses that are needed. It's not just the cost, it's availability of the right kind of housing. I see in my casework a lot, not just families who are looking for housing but older people who can't afford the housing that's available at the moment. I also want to just finish on the issue of the challenge for house builders. The cost of development has gone up, the cost of banking finance has gone up and that is a real challenge that runs through CES plan. It's referred to in the comments by the reporters' findings on the spatial strategy in CES plan where he comments that there will be challenges to the delivery of housing in the short term because of the limited resources available for development and supporting infrastructure. So it's partly a challenge of development infrastructure from the council and the lack of capital investment that the council has for new houses, new infrastructure, particularly transport infrastructure but it's also an issue of finance for the development industry. If you look at the housing land audit carried out last year, a key part of this story is the number of sites identified in the local plan that are not being taken forward. 12 sites where the consent has expired, it was in the development plan, it was given planning permission but the development wasn't taken forward. Local plan sites with no consent or activity on them, 16 sites where consent was actually given, the plan was in the local plan but it wasn't taken forward and 10 sites where the developer or the company went into administration. That is a key part of the story which needs to be part of tonight's debate. There are sites that were identified for development that are no longer being taken forward and I think that moving forward you've got to see those sites, questions have got to be asked about the capacity to develop those sites, they were the top priorities for the council last time, there are massive implications for the loss of the fourth port sites and that I think has led to the difficult situation the council now faces and I hope the minister is summing up will listen to the representations from the council but also I suspect for those of us around the room who are concerned about the lack of progress both in the brownfield and the proof sites in the last development plan, thank you Presiding Officer. Many thanks. I now call Colin Kear to be followed by Annick Taggart. Thank you Presiding Officer and could I congratulate Cameron Buchanan for bringing us forward this evening. When it comes to the strategic plan and the effects of the proposed local development plan, there is absolutely nothing that comes through my inbox more than this. It is the thing that we have to deal with in our constituency office. I find myself in agreement with Cameron Buchanan's opening statement and there's much to what Sarah Boyack has also said. In my constituency we have a situation where quite frankly the consultation from the city of Edinburgh council has been nothing short of abysmal. There's also a feeling that deals have been done. The local people, particularly in Calmo and Maybury, who has been mentioned already, have no faith in the process simply because of the dismal way the city of Edinburgh council has handled their objections. It is mentioned in an article in the evening news by John Macleillan the other day that something like a quarter of the total amount of objections to the local development plan is set to deal with western part of Edinburgh. That is because the traffic situation, particularly in the environmental situation, is dire. Queensferry road, a corridor particularly Barnton and the Crestorffan road corridor, particularly Maybury and on St John's road are some of the most polluted areas in the UK and yet some planner has decided in the main issues report that it would be a great idea to, despite the fact that there are fields, plenty of space for development, absolutely no plans to put forward an idea of how the infrastructure actually supports this development, not just within those particular areas but along the corridors of the two busiest roads in Edinburgh. I feel that I have to support my constituency. For many, many years there have been talk about the transport and pollution problems in these areas and still despite various questions and plans which come from Newbridge to Maybury but no further. The only thing that we generally hear, a very common thing, is don't worry about it. The tram will deal with that. Will the tram won't deal with that? The transport assessments are such that they are quite frankly unbelievable on the grounds of the fact that they say that they can mitigate against future growth in traffic when, in fact, the problem is here right now. I do hope that the minister listens to this. I know that the City Council has a very difficult decision to make. Nobody is denying that there is a housing shortage in the area but you cannot just dump houses down and hope that the roads will supply or be able to support the amount of traffic that goes through them. In a shocking position, there is only one road out and that is on to Maybury Road, which has two of the busiest junctions at Camelw and Barnton. The City Council has done nothing in trying to discuss the problems with those people and come up with solutions. We have held public meetings in terms of strategic planning that nobody believes down there because they just feel as if they are way off the mark with information that has come back. I would make a plea to the City of Edinburgh Council to start getting the right together in terms of the work that they have to do to convince the people that the houses that are required can go into those places. Queensferries is another area that has just been told that we are going to throw another 1,000 houses down there. There is no consultation, but it is absolutely abysmal. Before I carry on and get into other degrees problems with my council colleagues, I would say once again that there are difficulties. Cameron Buchanan has brought them up, and I do appreciate Sarah Boyack's efforts here in putting together that meeting. As was pointed out at the meeting, the convener, unfortunately, did not have any real answers. That was the difficulty, and that is what we are facing. I will end there. Many thanks. I am delighted to contribute towards tonight's debate on the importance of local development plans. I sincerely congratulate Cameron Buchanan on securing this time in the chamber to consider the important issues raised by the second South East Scotland strategic development plan. As a Glasgow MSP, I have no direct association with the work of the South East Scotland or its associated local authority areas. However, I understand the importance of a coherent planning system across the regions of Scotland. I have previously enjoyed learning about the work of Glasgow and Clyde Valley strategic development plan areas. We have done that within the local government and regeneration committee that we sit on. Although the regional bodies and the work that they carry out may appear far removed from our everyday lives, the effect of the decisions that they take cannot be underestimated. Strategic development plans will inform future planning applications and will be instrumental in creating the kind of towns and city centres that we all want to see and live in. Whilst the context of each of the regional plans will vary, the existence of a strategic approach to planning will help to move forward a number of shared aims. For example, we share a common commitment to increasing the availability of affordable housing, which has just been mentioned in the prayers in the speaker before me, particularly around our largest cities. That plan will allow for that aspiration to be realised through designating the geographical zones that each local authority should allocate for future building projects. That will fight against continuing price rises in urban and city centre areas and will allow families on lower incomes to live nearer the places that they work. Those plans also allow key public bodies to work together at the earliest stages of town planning. Our transport, waste, water and energy infrastructure will also be covered by strategic plans, as will the promotion of green belts and networks. We must ensure that our local community groups, alongside our local national and public bodies, are consulted at the earliest stage of the planning process. I am confident that, through meaningful engagement in all our planning areas, we can create the kind of Scotland that we all want to see. I thank Cameron Buchanan for securing this debate. There are lessons arising from the development of the local LDPs and SES plans, but we need to remember that they arise because Edinburgh is one of the economic powerhouses of not only Scotland but the UK. People are attracted here because of employment opportunities and the quality of life. As a result, there is unmet demand for housing in and around the Edinburgh area. That is not just as a result of an increasing population, but due to the growth of single adult households. The responsibility of local authorities throughout the Lodians is to calculate the demand for housing in their areas. Councils then have a duty to allocate sufficient land to meet the demand that they have identified. That then forms a local development plan and that, in turn, feeds into the SES plan. The problem lies, Presiding Officer, in identifying sufficient and suitable land within the city reboundary for meeting the demand for housing. There are a number of issues for Edinburgh in general and the west of the city in particular that should, I believe, be considered by councillors and local authority officials before allocating land. Traffic congestion. Peak times is a major issue, particularly in the west of the city. Data supplied by a leading sat nav company places Edinburgh as the third most congested city in the UK. Estimated journey times are on average 34 per cent longer, rising to 60 per cent more than usual during the morning rush hour. That will only get worse as thousands of new homes already approved are built in West Lodian and the Fife areas, all commutable into Edinburgh. Councils need to answer how the road network will cope with further increases in traffic before deciding whether to build in the west of the city. As a result, we have poor air quality in and around the four main arterial routes into the west of the city. Of the four routes, Queensferry Road, Glasgow Road and Gorgie Road regularly fail the EU air quality standard, with the Lanark road recording increasing levels of pollutants. That is an issue that I have raised before, and I continue to believe that if Edinburgh councillors accept the revised LDP proposed by officials, they could be adding to the problem with the resultant reduction in the quality of life for residents living close to these roads. If Edinburgh councillors are looking after the best interests of residents in the west of the city, they should ensure that they comply with Scottish planning policy, ensuring that housing is built on brownfield land first and green built land last, if at all. In my constituency of Edinburgh-Pentlands, some of the land identified in the Edinburgh LDP is agricultural land. Scotland is rightly proud to be one of the few countries to be able to feed itself. However, we cannot continue to lose good quality arable land to developers when brownfield sites continue to exist. I appreciate the list that Sarah Boyack read out of all of the brownfield sites that have not been developed on, because it suits developers to build in greenfield sites where they have lower costs of development and have a price premium, because it is a nicely fee suburb. The council also has to deal with the issue of empty homes in the capital that was estimated recently at £4,300. The employment of an empty homes officer announced recently needs to help owners to bring these properties back into use as a matter of urgency. Finally, the Scottish Government has invested heavily in the Airdrie Bathgate line and the new border railway. Should planning policy not encourage councils outwith the SES plan area to build new homes to take advantage of these commuter routes, rather than replicating the problems of our other capital city? Our towns and cities are where we live and the way that they are designed and built has a profound effect on our lives. People want to live in nice places that provide a community with good quality housing and connections to local shops, green spaces, libraries and other things. One person's idea of a good place to live will be different from others, but those are some basic entry level things that planning should be delivering. Land use planning is a profession for a reason. It is a difficult art to balance all the demands on our land, particularly when you are not in control of the building itself. Just because it is a profession does not mean that the experts have all the answers far from it. Land use planning should be done by people who live there. We should not be frightened of opening up this kind of decision making. Of course, architects and developers have an important role in this, but so do the people who will live in and alongside their houses. What is holding us back from a step change in public engagement? The organisations involved and the RSA published from fairytale to reality are reporting dispelling the myths around citizen engagement. Those myths trap us in a way of thinking that says, public engagement is too expensive, it is too difficult, people are not up for it. The report has myth-busting examples from around the world of engagement that works. Land use planning is always going to be political and contested, so we should not run away from that. I congratulate Cameron Buchanan on bringing this debate to the chamber today. Cameron Buchanan has identified the most contested part of the current SES plan. Things are moving very fast in Edinburgh Council this week as a result. However, does anyone genuinely believe that 107,000 new homes are required in South East Scotland over the next 10 years? It has taken 300 years to reach the 500,000 households or so that we have at present. In community meetings across my region, those unrealistic housing targets have come up time after time. People see land already zoned for housing in the hands of developers left untouched. Housing targets from the SES plan mean more land is to be zoned, and those targets are bloated by a 10 per cent generosity margin. Take away the fact and the generosity and the need to sacrifice the green bill at Camel and Corry Murend, for example, vanishes. People are understandably incredulous and often angry that their views are ignored and estimated housing numbers from a desktop study are given precedence. Edinburgh does need more homes, but the spread of the suburbs and executive housing is not going to meet those needs. How many homeless people or people in housing need will get new homes in David Murray's garden district? The local authority is blaming the Government while the Government is pinning it on the local authority. At the end of last year, I asked the planning minister during oral questions on 12 December what role local authorities have in determining appropriate housing land supply. He replied to say that the numbers are set by the local authority. That is true to an extent, but the housing forecasts are done with a Government tool and signed off as credible by the Government. The Government do have the last word and they are enforcing it. This creates a local development plan that meets the needs of developers, not real people's housing needs, and that is the issue here. I am sure that the minister understands that the argument that more new supplies will reduce house prices is nonsense, because new supply is only a fraction of overall supply, and it makes very little difference to price. Indeed, the evidence is the opposite over the last cycle. When supply was at its highest, prices were greatest. What SES plan 2 needs to do is deliver housing that meets the needs of people, not developers. There are thousands, as Gordon MacDonald has pointed out, thousands of long-term empty homes in the capital. That needs to change and Edinburgh is lagging behind other councils on this. Brownfield sites earmarked for housing need to be used for housing, such as at Chesser and Knox gangs, where housing land has been given over to large-scale retail should not happen, given the housing need. Finally, the Government should recognise that any forecast comes with a health warning that should not be set in stone. We need to be guided by reality and aim to build the kind of homes that work for people in the greatest housing need. Those that build on existing networks and social networks are services such as shops, schools, surgeries, community centres and public transport are more viable. Thank you, Presiding Officer. As a member for the south of Scotland, which includes East Lothian, may I also add my thanks to Cameron McCannan for bringing this debate to the chamber? The south-east of Scotland population is approximately 1.2 million and is forecast to grow to around 1.4 million by 2031. The constituent authority has recently set out their vision for the south-east of Scotland that, I quote, it being the main growth area and a key driver of the Scottish economy. Edinburgh, a leading European city, is at its heart a capital city, which is the hub of the regional economy. The SES plan for 2032 sets an objective that the Edinburgh city region will become a healthier, more prosperous and sustainable place of outstanding international recognition. The plan considers housing, transport, employment, land supply, strategic employment sites and of course our town centres. A plan to accommodate a growing population with a demand for 107,000 houses to be built across the area by 2024 and an additional 48,000 houses between 2024 to 2032. Although Edinburgh is the hub and the heart, congested though it may be, the energy comes and will come from local communities for which a sense of place and identity are paramount, such as East Lothian. Maintaining the community identity is key while each develops opportunities and strengths that new communication and social links with neighbouring communities bring. Investment in transport links in the borders railway and in local rail links, again in East Lothian, creates a movable social network that aids in the bets a growing population connect with places of work. Passanger growth in the plan area continues to grow and we need to ensure that our transport can accommodate this growth, albeit a transport system that also embraces our climate change targets. Strategic employment sites of around 1,000 hectares and deployment of same have to go hand in hand with land for housing to achieve that objective also. Growth in the region, strategic growth, will be achieved by an even spread of development so that the constituent authorities around the region share in the stated aim of the plan that the area is quote internationally recognised as an outstanding area in which to live, work and do. The plan is an opportunity to create viable business opportunities close to areas of population. It is an opportunity for universities and colleges to work with local communities and employers. The commission for developing Scotland's young workforce was tasked with making recommendations to ensure that Scotland produces better qualified, work ready and motivated young people with skills relevant to modern employment opportunities, both as the employees and the entrepreneurs of the future. That is a challenge to our education system and to business and industry, which must become more actively engaged in youth employment and education and provide quality employment opportunities in the area to a lot more young people. In developing new communities and growing others, we might ensure that there are opportunities for mixed use development to bring job opportunities closer to the communities and to home. The strategic development plan supports the development of a range of marketable sites of the size and quality to meet the requirements of business and industry within the area. I wish to conclude by looking at one such opportunity that has arisen in East Lothian. Cackenzie power station in East Lothian closed in March 2013, after 45 years of producing power for Scotland. I believe that plans for developing the site are proceeding and those plans embrace all interested parties. The options for the potential redevelopment of the decommissioned Cackenzie power station site are many. It is envisaged that there might be an energy park that might become a major hub with a wider fourth-tier renewable energy cluster and other locations to serve the needs of the offshore wind market in particular. It also has other possibilities to serve the freight and leisure markets to accommodate Scotland's fast-growing export markets and its tourism activities. Finally, such a development properly developed and with local consultation provides a real opportunity to create sustainable employment in East Lothian, bringing highly skilled jobs in engineering and hospitality, for example, and backed by the excellence of our schools, our college and the universities. In closing, opportunities such as Cackenzie—and it is not the only one—allow for the development of a fully integrated regional community, working as a team, traveling as a team, learning as a team and winning as a team. Many thanks. Can I now invite Derek Mackay to respond to the debate, Minister, up to seven minutes please? Thank you, Presiding Officer. It is quite appropriate that I, as planning minister, respond on behalf of the Government. I hope that members will also appreciate that there are some constraints on what I can say because of live and current planning matters. In some respects, I will speak in general terms. I do believe that it is important that the planning system is indeed plan-led. Back in January, when I presented the proposed national planning framework and a position statement on the review of Scottish planning policy to Parliament, I emphasised the four priorities for the planning system being performance, simplicity, a plan-led system and delivery on the ground. A third national planning framework and revised SPP are coming to fresh and after a period of active engagement across a very wide range of interests. I will launch both documents next week. Both the NPF-free and SPP help to provide a clear national vision and I want development plans to do the same and provide clarity and confidence to developers and communities at the strategic and local levels. Before city regions and their strategic development plans, the challenges are increased by the need to work across local authority boundaries, but that does not mean that they are not resolvable because there are some very challenging issues. Once the first round of the new SDPs were in place, I was very keen to review the effectiveness of the arrangements and ensure that the strategic development plans were fit for purpose. There has been a strategic development plan review carried out by Kevin Murray Associates and Glasgow University. It is now complete and I will also announce her next steps on that review next week. Although the review has found that the arrangements are not broken, nor are they fully optimised. Here, with the second largest projection of population and household growth in Scotland related infrastructure constraints and a sensitive landscape in which to find new locations for development, there are clearly and undoubtedly pressures in the circumstances that are presented. However, other areas have shown that the arrangements can and do work. The assess plan and the other SDPs were created to take the lead on planning for growth and development of each city region. That means delivering and making a difference for communities on the difficult strategic issues and doing that in a timely way. If that does not happen, the SDPs will lose their relevance and create additional problems in the planning system. Delivering effective plans can only be achieved through effective engagement, the sooner the better and as early as possible, to identify and prioritise the issues and then to work closely with the delivery bodies to resolve them. So what is it that the assess plan is planning for? Let us be clear that it is not a centrally imposed housing figure. As with other areas, the assess plan was required by Scottish planning policy to prepare a housing need and demand assessment HNDA and agree its own housing supply target, working with the relevant housing and planning interests. The HNDA forms part of the evidence base for the housing supply target, sometimes referred to as the housing requirement in the plan, but, importantly, it should also take into account wider economic, social and environmental factors in order to arrive at the amount of land that is required for new homes. Of course, identification of sites with early community engagement is to be encouraged. Unfortunately, when the assess plan was submitted to ministers for examination, although it set out an overall housing requirement, it did not show how that requirement would be distributed across the six constituent authorities. Without it, it would not have been clear what the individual authorities would be planning for, would it be an equal split or would it be effectively planned on the basis of need capacity and other constraints, which is surely the basis of proper strategic planning. When I approved assess plan last summer, I therefore accepted the reporter's recommendations that supplementary guidance must be prepared within 12 months to set out how the requirement would be distributed. That guidance is now with me, and I hope to issue a decision on that shortly. That will provide clarity for planning authorities in taking forward their own local development plans, giving communities the opportunity to engage fully on where this needed development should be located. To conclude, development plans are at the heart of an effective planning system, and strategic development plans provide to steer for over half of all Scotland's local development plans. In the case of the Lothians, they are not forgetting Fife and Scottish Borders. The assess plan must engage effectively with its interests in the broadest sense and produce a plan that all parties can have faith in. It needs to provide clarity and confidence around the resolution of key challenges facing the area, and crucially, it needs to add value and make a difference to the local development plans that follow and for the communities for which it is indeed planning. Many thanks minister. That concludes Cameron Buchanan's debate on strategic planning in the Lothians, and I now close this meeting of Parliament.