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Absolutely. On policy 22 on flooding, I am aware of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s input in specific cases and its general approach. The Government is engaging on the issue to ensure that things are in the right place. We want to ensure that our approach is proportionate in delivering what NPF4 is meant to deliver, as I said in response to your previous question, while not preventing innovation or development that should take place. We are working through that as part of the bedding-in process. Perhaps Andy Kinnaird will comment on that.

Without knowing the specifics of the case—there might be other factors involved—I refer back to what Andy Kinnaird said, which was that rural revitalisation is one of the overarching principles in the document. That is clearly a hugely important policy direction, in line with policy 17.

If we are finding ourselves in a situation where we are taking a step back from what happened before, it is important to flush that out through the engagement work with stakeholders in the planning community, to help us to understand whether we require more clarification or guidance on specific local issues. However, it is good that those issues have been raised, because they allow us to dig through and address whether the process is working as intended.

Absolutely.

The first thing to say is that the case is still potentially live, because the appeal period has not yet timed out, so we must bear that in mind. It is still early days and, as a Government, we will assess the possible implications of that ruling. It is fair to say that there will be applications that were not progressed or that were on hold as a consequence of the court case, so it may be that some of those will now start to move. I will provide some clarity with regard to how NPF4 and that approach are being taken forward in practice.

We would like to think that the ruling will ensure that the provision of land that is in the local development plans is taken forward, but it is probably too early to say and we need to get our heads around exactly what the implications are. Andy, do you want to provide more detail on that?

There are a couple of points about that. That is the budget that the Government is spending on the work that it is taking forward; it is not the budget for planners and planning resource in local authorities. As I said, we had that conversation, and that is not ring-fenced.

There is a focus on the digital delivery plan, which that budget contributes to. The work there is to take forward the new payment service as a first stage, and then further digital work on the back of that. There is a plan for what gets rolled out as part of that service.

We also have the national planning improvement champion in place. It is quite a tight team, but it is very focused on bringing other partners together. It is not a big organisation. It is very much about engaging with stakeholders and identifying opportunities for improvement, which I think is the most effective way to improve planning. The point is that there are clear steps in place to deliver on digital and on the improvement work across the whole system.

You are right to raise that. I do not have data on that with me today. I can certainly commit to go and look at that more thoroughly to understand exactly what the challenges are and how addressable they are. I am pretty sure that that will be in the scope of the work that the national improvement champion for planning is taking forward to understand that whole system. You are right; we need to get the whole thing joined up and everyone working together.

There are clearly requirements or targets in terms of how long it should take for things to go through the process and for various bodies to come back on their piece of that. I would commit to do more work on drilling down a bit more into that and understanding where the bottlenecks are.

Do my officials want to say anything about that?

It certainly is—I would not doubt your figures, Mr Coffey. I appreciate your raising that point for the committee’s attention. I do not know whether my officials are across the detail on those figures.

That is an important part of it—that work is included. Communities have the opportunity to put forward their local plans for their local area, for those to be fed into planning consideration through the local development plans at planning authority level or even just to allow local people to express what they think their local area should look like, and for that be considered in the planning process. That is a key part of NPF4, both through engagement for monitoring and evaluation and through the broader work on how communities input into local plans.

I engaged with that organisation when I was on the back benches, so I am familiar with what it does. Planning Democracy has done some thorough work on specific projects, and I know that officials have met or will meet it, as a stakeholder, to talk about some of the issues. That plays into the broader NPF4 policy on the importance of biodiversity and tackling climate change as a central approach to planning. Perhaps Andy Kinnaird will provide a bit more detail on that.