Meeting of the Parliament 11 January 2023
Without wanting this to sound like an Oscar awards speech, I start by thanking the clerks of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee for their help and support during the passage of NPF4 through Parliament, as well as the hundreds of individuals, charities, interested parties and organisations that have provided incredibly helpful briefings and input in trying to improve NPF4. It has been a pleasure—I am sure that the minister agrees—to engage with all those people, who have a passion for our planning system and really want to contribute to the conversation on how to improve it.
From the outset, we, on these benches, have engaged constructively, and I welcome the fact that the Scottish Government has made many changes. I specifically put on record my thanks to the minister for the positive approach to discussions that he has had, which has been—sadly—a refreshing change from how the Parliament sometimes operates. Indeed, in recent years, we have seen limited outreach from Scottish Government ministers following the Bute house agreement and the formation of a Scottish National Party-Green majority Government. I hope that we see a change in that situation after this new year. I put on record my thanks to the minister for how he has conducted himself during the passage of NPF4.
We all recognise the importance of tackling both the climate emergency and the nature crisis through our planning system. However, from the outset, I have called for the housing emergency to be central to the development of the new NPF4 if we are truly to ensure that Scotland’s housing needs are met in the future. As Homes for Scotland says in its briefing, it
“remains disappointed that the housing crisis is not specifically mentioned”
and is
“concerned over the seeming lack of ambition”
in NPF4
“to address it.”
It is most likely that housing—whether private or social—will be delivered in spite of NPF4 rather than because of it, with underwhelming minimum all-tenure housing land requirements doing little to drive forward the number of new homes that Scotland requires.
To date, we have seen a lack of transitional guidance, which risks causing considerable unnecessary delay to applications that are already in the planning system and to decisions on those applications.
The fact is that the SNP-Green Government has failed to address Scotland’s housing crisis, which is making it harder for people to get on the property ladder and get the homes that they need. The Scottish Government’s latest housing statistics, for example, reveal that housing completions across all tenures in Scotland are still below pre-Covid levels.
Why does putting the housing crisis in NPF4 matter? Today, there are 28,000 homeless households across Scotland—32,592 adults and 14,372 children are registered homeless. I hoped that NPF4 could help to address that situation and could ensure that our focus is not just on the climate and nature emergency, but also on the housing crisis. I do not think that we have achieved that, which is disappointing.