THE body tasked with driving forward plans for a major film studio in Scotland is called the Film Studio Delivery Group. But so far it has woefully failed to live up to its name and has delivered precisely nothing.

The problem that the group is tasked with fixing has been obvious to industry figures for years now. Several have said publicly that the facilities in Scotland for film and television companies are poor and that a major studio needs to be built and built quickly. Undoubtedly, the film industry in Scotland is suffering for the want of a new, modern studio.

The problem is not a lack of ideas – indeed, there are several on the table. In the east, there is a proposal for a £140million studio on the outskirts of Edinburgh, and in the west, there are plans to expand the Cumbernauld studios where the successful TV drama Outlander is filmed. There is also now another plan for a studio in the grounds of Heriot Watt University.

The Heriot Watt plans look ambitious: the studios would be built on a 24-acre site, there would be six sound stages, and the company promoting the plans, Guardhouse Productions, say they have support and investment from prominent Hollywood figures. However, they also say they are frustrated by a lack of support from the delivery group, which is made up of the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise and Creative Scotland. Surya Iacono, the president of Guardhouse, says she has been begging the delivery group for months to show their support for the plans.

They are not the first to be frustrated with the bodies that are supposed to be driving the plans forward. Earlier this year, the producer and director Tommy Gormley, who worked on last year’s Star Wars movie, wrote an open letter to Holyrood’s Economy, Energy and Tourism committee in which he accused Scottish Enterprise and Creative Scotland of lacking the true ambition to deliver the studio.

What was particularly troubling was Mr Gormley’s suggestion there are some in the organisations that still do not understand the urgency of the issue and believe that Scotland’s film industry can flourish without a studio - in his letter, Mr Gormley referred to a comment by Natalie Usher of Creative Scotland that the lack of a new studio was not a barrier to growing the film and TV business.

Clearly, the film industry thinks differently and the Heriot Watt plans mean there are now three proposals on the table. Heriot Watt may not be the right option in the end, but the point is that a studio of some kind is needed quickly. In 2014, for example, Scotland missed out on the chance for a film and TV studio backed by Pinewood (in the end, it went to Wales) and Scotland continues to compare badly with other parts of the UK that have the large modern facilities that film companies need.

The news is not all bad - major productions are still coming to Scotland (with scenery like ours, it’s inevitable). But if our television and film industry is to challenge those in the rest of the UK – indeed the rest of the world – then Scotland must have a new modern, large film studio. It is time for the delivery group to do what its name suggests.