Is Tom Hunter right about need to speed up planning?

In Singapore, it takes around 36 days to build a warehouse. According to a new report from Oxford Economics, in Scotland it's closer to 152 – at best.

Well, that's what the executive summary of the Hunter Foundation–commissioned paper says. When you get down to the detail, it turns out the 152.3 figure is the average across all OECD high–income countries.

So, that is how long it takes in the whole of the UK, France, Germany, and so on.

Still, the point stands. Planning permission in Scotland moves at a snail’s pace – it is just perhaps not much worse than anywhere else.

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The Scottish Government says it wants to supercharge housebuilding, accelerate green energy investment, and transform our economy into a world leader in biotech, data and AI.

All of that runs through the planning system.

Are there, as Sir Tom Hunter suggests, lessons to be learned from Singapore?

Obviously, there are significant differences between Scotland and the city–state, often described as a “managed democracy”, where the People’s Action Party has been in power continuously since 1959.

Unsurprisingly, in a country where there are constraints on opposition parties and limits on freedoms of expression, assembly and association, public objections to planning proposals are rare.

It's a system designed for speed and certainty rather than participation.

Scotland, by contrast, has a plan–led system built around transparency, consultation and the right to appeal.

That inevitably means a more complex process and slower decisions.

The real challenge is how to keep those democratic protections while making it all even just a little bit quicker.

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It is a live issue in Balloch, where the controversial Lomond Banks resort – featuring lodges, a hotel, waterpark and monorail – was rejected by the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority last year.

That decision was recently overturned by a Scottish Government–appointed reporter, who backed the scheme on appeal, subject to legal agreements.

Whatever you think of the saga – now entering its seventh year – it shows just how fraught and protracted the planning process can become.

To its credit, the Scottish Government is trying to fix things. National Planning Framework 4 aims to move quicker while keeping environmental and social concerns at the heart of decision–making.

But is it enough?

One of the interesting calls in the Hunter Foundation report is around zoning – where areas are designated into clearly defined categories, such as housing, commercial, industrial or green space.

If a piece of land is zoned for housing, for example, developers already know that homes can be built there. There is less need for negotiation or case–by–case approval, because the rules are clear from the start.

While there are some simplified planning zones in place already, and while every council's local development plan assigns or designates how different areas of land could potentially be used in the future, the discretionary system here means almost every planning application is judged individually on its merits.

That means developers must negotiate with planners, local councils and statutory consultees such as transport or environmental bodies.

This process can be slow, uncertain and – for developers and the taxpayer – costly.

Zoning, the foundation suggests, could speed up development and cut costs for developers and councils.

Scotland does not need to become Singapore to improve its planning system – but it could perhaps make faster decisions on the straightforward stuff