 Siwtau'n ddoliadau, ac rydw i gyfnodol 25 y ddiwylliant y Llywodraeth Llywodraeth Pwrdd i ddodol. A chyda'r amser o'r mhynt yn dd yarnhau yn ddarlang o'r sgwylfa ffórgu, ac yn dod o'r ffordd pethol oherwydd, kyn â roi meddwl â'r ffordd ac yn ei fydduc i'r dd wealthy iawn. Felly, mae'r iwn meddwl â chi, Felch, yw Llywodraeth Cymru, Meri, Mcnair, Mark Griffin ac Annie Wells. The first item on our agenda today is to decide whether to take items 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 in private. Our members agreed. We're all agreed. Turning to agenda item 2, which is to take evidence on the LCM for the levelling up and regeneration bill, we're joined in the room by Craig McLaren, who's the director of the Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland, and we're joined remotely by Jim Miller, who's the chair of Heads of Planning Scotland and Liz Hamilton, who's the head of planning at homes for Scotland. I warmly welcome you all to the meeting and we've got just a few questions, so it might not take us that long this morning. We're focusing particularly on the planning data aspect of the LCM, so I'd be interested to hear from you if your perspective was the handling of data by Scottish planning authorities, an issue raised with the Scottish Government during the engagement that preceded the Planning Scotland Act 2019. If so, at that point, what concerns did you highlight and how did the Scottish Government respond? Maybe I'll just start with you, Craig, because you're right here in the room. I thank the invitation to speak this morning. In terms of the 2019 planning act, I don't think that we raised any issues particularly around the planning data, but we did highlight the potential that I had and the need to try and invest upon that. I think that particularly the way in which we can use spatial data is real applications, not just for planning but for things across the whole of the public sector and the private sector as well. We highlighted the importance of trying to invest in that. I'm fortunate at our TPI. We were lucky to be a commission by the Scottish Government to do some research looking at the benefits of digital planning, which included spatial data within it, which went to support their business case for the new digital planning transformation strategy, which is now in place. It's got a budget of around £35 million over five years. That digital planning transformation strategy, one of its five core missions, is about trying to make sure that we tackle or make the best of planning data and unlock the value of that data. I think that we're quite pleased that that's happening. We're quite engaged in that digital transformation process and we're keen to see it progress as quickly as we possibly can because of the potential that it presents for us. On the planning data, does that cover the built environment? I'm very interested in spatial planning. I feel like at the moment in Scotland we really don't know land use. There are so many critical issues and things crunching up against each other. Biodiversity response, renewable energy, housing, all of those things are all making the same demand for similar spaces or the same space. If we captured that data through the programme that you've mentioned, would that start to help us to understand how we could use our land in a more appropriate way? Absolutely, I think that it could. Certainly some of the work that we did recently was looking at a range of different policy objectives that the Scottish Government had done with spatial data. A coherent, trusted set of spatial data would help to make that work, particularly if it's organised in a spatial way. That spatial approach doesn't apply just to planning, it applies to lots of different things as well. I know that there was work done by Improvement Service and the Royal Geographical Survey, which had a look at some of the spatial data for planning and said that one of the conclusions was that the range was vast. One of the issues is trying to see what the core elements are of that as well and how it joins up and how we can make it work together. Absolutely, it's something that can help other aspects of local government and Scottish Government as well. That's great. Liz, do you want to come in on anything related to that question about planning and asking the Scottish Government on that? I don't think specifically, most of Scotland raised issues with planning data, but what I would say is that anything that makes the system create standardisation or consistency of approach across local authorities should be seen as a good thing. Anything that increases our knowledge base of planning in spatial land use is also a good thing. In the context of what's being proposed, I can see the positives in it, but without understanding the detail, it's hard to comment at this stage. As Craig said, we've already got our Scottish digital transformation that's under way and it would be interesting to see how that could take on enhanced data provisions. I don't think that we made specific comments. When we see data gaps across the planning system but not necessarily all in spatial planning, there are opportunities to increase knowledge base across all aspects of planning, to be honest, but we just need to understand what the detail would be coming through this particular part of the bill. Thank you very much. Jim, do you want to come in on this? I'd like others to thank you very much for inviting me to give evidence. I think that the ball referenced the transforming places together, the Scottish digital strategy. Hops heads of planning in Scotland have been working closely with the Scottish Government on that digital strategy. We attend many meetings with them. We have our own sub-committee to look at that and deliver what has been stated as a world-class digital system. We fully endorse that and support that move forward. That is another requirement within that for local authorities to provide more of their data sets in an easy-to-use and consistent format. On that basis, we will support and principle this move. As Liz has just said, certainly the devil will be in the detail. When you look at some of the explanatory notes within the bill, questions are raised. It is only certain that data sets are going to be specified in terms of the bill, so why are there just certain ones and not all of them? There is a question of, in my mind—maybe it is my regulatory planning background—that we could return data sets to applicants if they do not comply with the data standards. Does that mean invalidating an application for delaying development? Those might be questions that could be answered easily, but in the notes that I have seen so far, there are some questions in my head. That is already very useful information. I am so glad that we are having this conversation. I am going to move over to Paul and he has a couple of questions. Paul McClellan. Good morning, panel. I suppose that the main reason that we are here today is that this is a legislative consent motion that has come before us. This is obviously coming from the UK Government in terms of the principles behind it. Is the procession of planning data something that would benefit from a GBW-wide approach, given the differences in operation of the planning systems across the three nations, and he is almost touching it, and I am saying that there are, I suppose, differences or benefit or hindrances? Can you go pull the camera yourself in that regard? It is a good question. I think that it is difficult to tell, to be honest with you. As already has been said, there is very little detail on the provisions in the bill, so it does not say what the data standards will be. It does not provide any detail on the process that should be undertaken to take them forward, other than the fact that UK Government ministers will need to consult with Scottish ministers. There is no indication of timetable or for implementation. It does not talk about the stakeholders who have to be involved in the process all in the Scottish Government, the UK Government and the Welsh Government. I would wonder if there is a role in there for the users of the planning system, and the people who manage the planning system, Jim's members and Lizzie's members, who have been users of the system as well. In many ways, it does not really define what planning data is, so I think that there is still a bit of work to be done to provide some clarity as to what this could look like and what implications there would be. I think that that is an important point, because I think that that is obviously a committee that is something that we have to take into cognisance. Jim and then Liz, just the same question in that regard, probably feedback from your own members on this. Jim, yourself first. It is me first. We do not deal much cross-border, but it does come up from time to time that our current application of modern authority has been dealt with by agents from London. There is that certain confusion between the different legislative requirements in terms of processing a planning application, so maybe there would be benefit across UK, but it would be a very small business, as far as my authority is concerned. Jim, thanks for that. Just on that point, I mean obviously some of your member organisations will trade both north and south of the border. Are you picking anything up from your members in that regard? Not at the moment, Paul. Although you have the nationals who will operate north and south, as you say, they will have different divisions, and they will know the system that they work in. Can I see benefits across the UK? I do not know. Without seeing the detail, it is so hard to answer that question, because we just do not know what those data provisions will be. Would it help businesses? It might, but I have not had any direct feedback from my members on that, but certainly the ones that work across the UK could help them. I am not going to say it would, but it is just so hard to say at this stage without knowing what that data is going to be. I think that there is a theme coming across in about lucky detail on that one. I just wanted to move slightly on. Jim, I will probably come back to yourself on the next question. It is about the current IT systems that are used by Scottish planning authorities in terms of their effectiveness. Are they a barrier? Are they to the support? Is there more work being done in terms of that? Do you consider yourself that there is significant investment needed in planning department IT? Jim, I will try to move the system as quickly as possible, but Jim, I will probably come to myself first of all, because it is obviously the local authority that is interested in that. A long history, you might help with a great year of long history in dealing with planning digital systems. It was involved in the first one. Working, as I said earlier, closely with the Scottish Government and the digital strategy, we welcome the improvements that are coming forward. There will be investment required in back-office systems to improve those. We are all getting a wee bit old. I am saying that twice now, so we have much more to say. We are all getting a bit old. I think that there will be investment required, but the benefits that will flow from the new digital strategy are so welcome. As soon as we can get them to the better, recently, with the work of the Scottish Government, we have decided to phase the implementation of it, which again is welcome as well, rather than having all delivered at one time. That will give us time to actually get head round and working with the new practices, but the improvements and enhancements of existing systems are not expected in huge wholesale changes in terms of the interpretation and use of them. Jim, thank you for that. Let's just yourself, obviously, your members will be dealing with local authorities on a daily basis, I would imagine. I do not know what your experience is of your members dealing with local authorities, particularly on the IT issue. On the IT systems, Paul? Particularly on that, particularly on that. They are all different. That is probably the biggest issue. Some are better than others. I could point to three areas where IT is used in planning. One would be in planning applications. In every local authority, it is slightly different, albeit that there is the e-planning system, but it is slightly different in the way that it is used. Would it be beneficial to have that as a consistent approach? Yes. Is it beneficial to have it all online and digital? Yes, absolutely. Also, the way that local authorities publish local plans online varies significantly. When you are looking at a spatial plan, it can be difficult to pull up some of those documents. It just depends on which local authority you are looking at. The third area that I was going to raise is where digitisation and standardisation of data could be really useful is in how local authorities work with and publish their housing land audits. Those documents are so critical to how we forecast and measure the delivery and effectiveness of housing sites. There are three areas that I can point to straight away, where they are all slightly different within local authorities in the way that they are dealt with. Some are slightly significantly different. As a user of the system, it would be much better if they were consistent in the way that they are operated in the way that they are intended. As Jim Smith pointed out, some of the systems are getting a bit old. Use that word again. I know that we have discussed housing land audits before. That is a really important point for us to consider. Craig, you have just done the same question about where you see IT systems in Scotland. Obviously, we are not at the cold face, but from where I am sitting, I think that it is an interesting picture. I think that some successes in the development services have been really successful for the very last majority of planning applications that are now being processed online, or submitted online, I should say. I think that that is some of the best figures across the UK. My impression is that there are different platforms, particularly in terms of development management, used across different local authorities. I think that there are different providers. I think that there is also the issue with the different local authorities having different lengths of contracts. If you are trying to make those all fit into the one, it is quite a complex picture to try and pull together. There are some issues there with that. I will say that the Scottish Government, through the digital transformation strategy, is trying to work collaboratively with local authorities and allows us to try and make this work. One of the big issues that we have with this is that although we are talking specifically about planning, quite often digital contracts are done at a corporate level, so they are not always just specifically for planning. That attaches some significance to planning data as well. We need to be aware of that, that these are often corporate decisions, which are made not just necessarily for the planning side of things as well. That makes it even more complicated, as you can imagine, if you are trying to bring everything together once again in peace. Thanks, convener. Thanks, Paul. Now I am going to bring Miles Triggs in. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us this morning. A number of my questions have already been answered, but I wanted to go into some more detail with regard to software systems, because the UK Government are mandating the use of particular software systems in England for planning authorities. I wondered if you had any concerns about what that might mean in practical implications for Scottish planning authorities in the future. You have all touched upon that in terms of being able to communicate data, and I wondered if there were any specifics there that you wanted to raise with us. In terms of software systems, we do not know what they are. It is very difficult to comment on whether they would be useful or not. It is a difficult question to answer, to be honest with you. The issues that I have mentioned are the way in which the Scottish Government is trying to attempt to work collaboratively. It is important that the idea of working collaboratively is key to that. We need to make sure that the people who manage the system, the people who use the system, as well as national governments, can feed into the process as well. I would certainly advocate for that approach to happen as much as we possibly can. I am not an expert on the actual software elements of those things, but, as I said, we do not know what is planned, so it is difficult to comment on what would be useful and what would not. Does anyone else want to come in on that point? In the dark as well, in terms of the software system. Jim? Again, I reference me to the transforming places together, the digital strategy. That will deliver new software in terms of the operation by local authorities. If you look at the planning portal, if you are familiar with that, where you submit online applications, that is managed by the Scottish Government on behalf of all the authorities. If that is being delivered and enhanced by the Scottish Government through this new £35 million investment, it seems a bit obscured that that could be changed by the UK Parliament to some other software system since that is already enhanced for development. Again, if it is to do it knows that we are thought to come back with exactly what has been asked, it seems that all the applies to certain data sets by and by and not others, as I said earlier. Thank you for that. Is it your understanding that the same software providers provide this across the UK? We are not talking about necessarily different providers being chosen separately. I ask that question because in formal life on health and support committee different NHS boards had chosen different IT systems, which meant that they could not communicate and health IT in Scotland is so bad because of that. I wondered, are the same providers basically doing this across the UK, so those systems should be compatible? There is one main provider of that name in this committee, but I was surprised when Liz said earlier that there are authorities of different systems, so I understand that most use the same system as for the back office records management system. That is across the UK. Finally, on a wider issue, which you have all touched upon with the Scottish digital strategy, is there likely to be any local authorities who are doing something different given the different contracts that we have discussed this morning, such that it sometimes stretches into other parts of local government IT systems? Do you think that that genuinely is going to resolve this and have a single system that can communicate not just with Government but potentially between local authorities as well? I do not know if it will happen, but I certainly think that that is the ambition. I think that the ambition is to, as I said earlier on, to work collaboratively with the different players involved and come up with some solutions. That might mean, and I am making assumptions here, that there will be some core things that are delivered across a piece and others that are done separately by different authorities. As I said earlier on, it is quite a difficult task because just the logistics of managing this and pulling it together to make it coherent is quite difficult and will take some time. We have done some research on behalf of the Scottish Government looking at almost the preparedness of local authorities and planning authorities to embed digital planning. One of the things that certainly came out of that was that there was a real enthusiasm to take it forward. There was a feeling that it could help with effectiveness and efficiency. We could reinvest some resources in some of the more important things in the system as well. People were up for it. I think that there is still a bit of work to be done, if I am being honest, about trying to make sure that everybody recognises the true potential. They do not just think in the here and now of how we process planning applications are things that we have mentioned and how we join things up, particularly around data. I personally think that that could be the real game changer in helping us to have a much more effective system, to be honest with you, and a much more open, transparent and robust system as well. Does anyone else want to come in on that, Jim? I think that when we make it clear that the digital strategy in racism is planning but building standards as well. It is across the development sector. When you heard earlier from Liz about the local plans, it is also going to address the local development plans as well. It is wider than just planning applications. It is across the whole development sector, regulated development sector for planning authorities. On HLAs, housing and land audits, it is obviously dealt with by housing colleagues, but there is no reason why those data sets cannot be brought into the same standardisation across the services. That is helpful. Given the pressures on planning departments and access to planning specialists, there might be an opportunity for councils to start sharing some of this decision making as well and individuals who are in high demand around planning. There might be opportunities there. It is important because timing is an issue here as well. As I said earlier, the digital strategy is now being phased, which gives authorities time to embrace those changes. If these data standards are going to come in next year, then there is a huge resource issue for us to amend our standards to comply with those legislation, but if it is going to be over a period of time, it gives us time to actually bring them in. Something similar to what Jim said, some of the work that we have done with planning authorities and others, the resource issue is still big. You will know the figures about the problems that we have in terms of the poor state of resources in the planning system. I have quoted in this committee before that 32 per cent of planning also has been lost since 2009 and 4 per cent of budget has been lost. That is not getting much better to be honest with you. One of the things that has come out from us in talking to people involved in the system about embedding digital planning is the resource issue. That will have a change management aspect to it. That change management itself takes time and resource. There is a feeling that planning authorities are already on their knees in terms of resources. There are more demands being put upon them through the planning act. There is going to be a further demand for more planning officers, according to some research that has been done by Skills Development Scotland. There are 700 planners over the next 10 to 15 years. We need to handle it carefully and make sure that the resources are there. That is just people for change management but also ensuring that we have people with the skills to work with these digital applications as well. Thank you. Thanks very much. I have one other question that we have the national planning framework for. It has been draft. We are going to be getting to see it any time soon. That is a big piece of work that is going to set the direction for the next 10 years. I wonder if we have this levelling up and regeneration bill and this piece of legislation coming in that is going to make some dictation around planning and gathering data. Do you think there might be any impact on our national planning framework in that regard? Is there any other things that we are doing in Scotland in terms of planning? We have a position where the Scottish Government is moving ahead. At a relative speed of knots in taking forward both the national planning framework and the digital planning transformation strategy as well. There has been quite a lot of work going on in it around data as well and there has been subgroups set up to try and look at how we can clean the data, how we can store the data, how it can be interoperable across different aspects of local government as well. For me the digital aspects of the national planning framework can be really interesting and quite game changing. I am thinking particularly about any delivery plan that comes with the national planning framework. Having something that is almost like a live tool which lets us know who we are and gives us the evidence and I think that that could be really quite powerful. I would want to lose that. Anyone else want to come in on NPF 4 aspects? Liz and then Jim. What I was going to say is that with NPF 4 coming in and that has the delays around that what we don't need is another period of uncertainty in hiatus in our system. We need to be careful that there are new or planning data regulations coming in how we deal with that. At the moment we are not even clear how NPF 4 will be transitioned into our system causing a large amount of concern for our members in particular in terms of life planning applications in upcoming planning applications. There are opportunities in there certainly of using planning data and I know that it has been raised in the committee previously about how NPF 4 is then measured annually in terms of metrics. Is it delivering? Is it doing what it needs to do? There are definitely opportunities on the digital side and the data side and it is just how they merge and how that transition is dealt with to make sure that the system keeps moving in the right direction. Thanks for that. We've already talked about timing and resources and it's all coming to a head through new fall. It's all been delayed because of Covid restrictions in terms of the officers but it's all coming together very much at the same time. I think it's been raised previously with the skill sets required for some of the new policies that are coming through NPF 4 which will then embed in LDPs has been a concern for heads of planning and how to upscale the staff to deal with certain aspects of that. It seems as though we're heading into quite a busy time for all of us which again touches on the timing and the resources that Creeks refer to as well. Thanks for that. We need to get busy with finding our 700 new planners. I think that's our questions. I just want to open it up and see if there's anything else you feel needs to be said in this conversation at this time. Nothing from Craig. We just need to wait and see. It sounds to me like what we need is a bit more detail and then we can actually take it further but I think it's been really important to just flag the issue up and note that this is coming potentially coming our way and it's helpful to hear your perspectives. Thanks very much for joining us and we now turn to agenda item 3 which is... What is that? Oh yes. We're going to suspend briefly. Thanks so much for joining us and we're going to suspend briefly. The final public item on our agenda today is to consider a negative instrument. Council tax exempt dwelling Scotland amendment number 2 order 2022 and this is a negative instrument so there is no requirement for the committee to make any recommendation on it. Do any members have any comments on the instrument? Just briefly, convener. Happy enough with the instrument. I'm a bit concerned in terms of the lack of data which is available for which councils this would apply to so I don't know going forward if that's something we could request since the suspension of the Scottish Government Super Sponsor Scheme which councils are actually going to face a higher burden potentially of council tax not being collected so I just wondered if that data is something we should also look towards trying to gather in the future. Thanks, Miles. Okay so is the committee agreed that we do not wish to make any recommendations aside from to this instrument but we'll gather that information that Miles has proposed. Yeah content, okay. So we agreed at the start of the meeting to take the final items on our agenda in private so as we have no more public business today I now close the public part of the meeting.