Minister announces new planning hub to speed up housebuilding developments

Scotland’s public finance minister has come under fire as he pledged changes to the planning system will be made to help it play a “full part” in tackling the country’s housing emergency.

Ivan McKee announced a specialist hub is to be created to help increase the rate at which homes for which planning permission has been granted are delivered.

The new hub, which should be up and running early next year, is being staffed and funded by the Scottish Government.

Mr McKee also pledged the government would treble the number of bursaries being made available to post-graduate students looking to study planning, and added that a “fuller package of training” is being developed for local councillors who have to make planning decisions.

The public finance minister announced the actions the day after he admitted he is “concerned” about the length of time it takes for projects to get planning permission.

But in a statement to Holyrood he insisted that “planning is not the only, or even the most significant, reason for the challenges we are facing in housing”.

Mr McKee said that “across Scotland, we estimate that more than 164,000 homes have planning permission but have not yet been built”.

He added: “In the Glasgow and Edinburgh city regions alone, planning permission has been granted for 121,000 homes that have not yet been built. Of these, around 38,000 units have been started but are not yet complete.”

Saying that what was needed was “action to turn those permissions into homes”, he claimed that making progress on the number of “stalled” planning applications would be an “absolute priority” for the Scottish Government.

To help with that, Mr McKee announced the creation of the Housing Planning Hub, saying ministers want it to “enable more efficient, responsive and timely decisions and delivery”.

But after he said that steps had already been taken so that councils could increase planning fees so they can “recoup more of the costs” Tory housing spokesperson Meghan Gallacher raised fears this could deter developers.

Hitting out at the government over this and the plans for a new planning hub, she accused Mr McKee of making “an admission of defeat”.

The Conservative said: “I was hoping for some ground-breaking planning legislation to build more homes, a plan to fix the challenges we are facing right across our housing sector.

“Yet we have been left with another hub, and an increase in planning application costs that will deter future housing developments.”

The Tory told the minister: “It is his government that are standing in the way of building more homes.”