Planning and Architecture

The National Planning Hub – A year of delivery!

March 16, 2026 by planningarchitecture No Comments | Category Planning, The National Planning Hub

Overview

This month completes the first full year of the National Planning Hub. In 2025/26, the Hub has provided over £1m of support in surge capacity with 50 projects across 20 planning authorities, alongside a cross-cutting programme by the Improvement Service and direct Scottish Government brokerage for stalled housing sites. This represents a significant package of support and a good basis to build from as the Hub team plan for the year ahead, subject to the view of the next Scottish Government administration. 

Image of a boat and buildings on Leith waterfront in Edinburgh.

Policy context

The Hub supports planning authorities to accelerate decision making and development delivery by providing direct additional resources and wrap around knowledge, practice and professional development support. It is led by Scottish Government working in partnership with the Improvement Service.

As a Programme for Government (PfG) commitment to support economic growth, the Hub provides direct and immediate additional support to planning authorities for housing and renewable energy (including onshore wind, hydrogen, and battery energy storage solutions) and local development plan delivery. It also responds to emerging priorities, such as recently pivoting to supporting investment opportunities for Data Centres.

Key to the Hub’s approach is partnership working, as well as the Improvement Service, there is collaboration with Heads of Planning Scotland (HoPS) and individual Planning Authorities. Together we have tackled the shared challenges of delivering investment and development through the planning system, within the context of on-going resource challenges and constraints.

Oversight was provided by the High-Level Group on Planning Performance, co-chaired by Ivan McKee MSP, Minister for Public Finance, and Councillor Gail Macgregor, COSLA spokesperson for Environment and Economy.

Approach to delivery

The Hub, using its modest core staff and funding resource, takes a pragmatic and flexible approach based on the ‘art of the possible’. Key to this is building and maintaining good relationships with planning teams in local authorities, getting under the bonnet to understand the practical issues and challenges for delivery.

The Chief Planner wrote to all Planning Authorities in May 2025 outlining the Planning Hub offer and inviting proposals, with follow up engagement from the Hub team to help shape and make support available.

The Hub offer is: 

•  Providing direct and immediate support to planning authorities through surge capacity.  
• Providing brokerage, bringing stakeholders together to tackle issues and remove barriers.
• Wrap around support for planning authorities, through a programme to support professional capacity, efficiency and practice. 

This helped shape the potential asks from planning authorities with a focus on the value-added benefits and ensuring impact and value for money.  This created the space for exploring issues, constructive challenge, and enabling the Hub team to offer brokerage support on delivery. 

We have also been working in co-ordination with the planning housing team as part of the Hub programme.  The Housing Emergency Action Plan commits us to four new planning actions to accelerate investment in new housing delivery. The team are working with authorities and industry in a shared effort to accelerate delivery of stalled sites where planning has been raised as an issue impacting delivery.  Further information can be found on the Stalled Sites Short Life Working Group blog.   

The Improvement Service leads the Hub programme for wrap around support for planning authorities. This was developed with the National Planning Improvement Champion and team, drawing on insight and evidence from the National Planning Improvement Framework and Hub engagement across the planning system.  

Delivery highlights 

This year the Hub has delivered a wide range of support focussed on the priorities outline above. The Hub has supported surge capacity with 50 projects across 20 planning authorities, while working with a further 12 planning authorities that are not requiring additional support at this stage. 

Some of the highlights of this year’s surge capacity support include: 

• Hands-on, site-specific support to directly unlock housing delivery – including Cranhill to support delivery of more homes in the East of Glasgow, including affordable housing, and support for development of contaminated land in Glasgow for housing development. 
• On-going brokerage from the Planning Housing team on sites identified through the Stalled Sites Short Term Working Group;  
• Supported through funding ongoing work to update SCOTS guidance on Road Boards to support housing delivery; 
• Supporting development delivery across islands authorities, including Orkney  where lack of up-to-date flood risk information is a barrier to development despite recent significant investment in flood defences; and support for Comhairle nan Eilian Siar to progress on-going development of significant energy infrastructure;  
• Masterplan Consent Areas (MCA) delivery, including funding resource to progress the MCA for Inverness & Cromarty Green Freeport; 
• Additional resource to progress Local Development Plans, including funding for a dedicated planner at Clackmannanshire Council; along with a wide range of support for planning authorities in the development of their evidence plans; 
• Commissioned and funded the production of guidance on Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) through independent consultants, to assist with the technical, environmental and wider issues associated with planning for BESS; 
• Supporting communities on planning for renewable energy applications, by funding Planning Aid Scotland (PAS) to deliver public sessions on Local Place Plans and community-led planning and renewable energy. 

The Improvement Service delivery programme was finalised in August and since then has delivered: 

•  3 standalone webinars for planning authority staff including Place Promotion and Housing Delivery, Hydrogen Guidance and Data Centres with an average registration of 160-200 attendees. 
• Published 8 case studies to showcase to facilitate the sharing of effective practice. 
• Delivered an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) training programme ‘boot-camp’ for planners including surveys, stakeholder engagement sessions, 7 webinars, process diagrams, explainer articles and case studies. 
• Developed a support programme for planning authorities on delivering local development plans to meet the May 2028 deadline.  
• Further roll out of the Hydrogen support programme, including publication of a hydrogen process map to assist with understanding the regulations and processes in this type of planning application.  
• The Hub is also positioned to support planning authorities on taking forward improvement action on customer services.  

 Next steps 

With the passing of the Scottish Budget, we can confirm that the funding for the Hub has now had initial approval through the Scottish Government internal budget control processes for 2026/27. This allows the Hub to continue into the next financial year and for the team to continue operational delivery while planning for the next phase of support. This will be subject to the decision of Ministers from the next Scottish Government administration and further information on this will be provided from early June. 

Further information about the National Planning Hub can be found at: www.planninghub.scot  

Tags: The National Planning Hub

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