Better Regulation: supporting economic growth and investment

5. Beyond Regulation

When growing a company, developing a project, or investing in Scotland, regulation is part of a wider set of considerations for businesses.

Stakeholders outlined that government should not consider, develop, or implement regulation in isolation.

Alongside regulatory processes, businesses engage with a range of government frameworks – including planning and consenting, funding and procurement processes, and sector-specific policies and mechanisms.

Just as we are considering improvements to the regulatory environment to make it easier to do business in Scotland, so too are we undertaking work in other areas.

National Infrastructure policy

Scotland’s infrastructure strategy sets out a ten-year framework to guide infrastructure planning, investment, and delivery across the country. It is designed to ensure decisions are strategic, place-based, and outcome focused, supporting inclusive economic growth, enabling the transition to net zero, and strengthening national resilience in the face of demographic, environmental, and economic change.

The strategy is structured around three core outcomes; enabling net zero and environmental sustainability, driving economic growth and building resilient and sustainable places.

To deliver these outcomes, the strategy identifies three key enablers: public assets ensuring Scotland’s infrastructure estate is well-managed, maintained, and aligned with modern service delivery models; place-making embedding local priorities and spatial planning into infrastructure decisions, in line with the Place Principle and National Planning Framework 4; and private investment creating the conditions to attract and unlock private capital to complement public funding and accelerate delivery.

Planning policy

We are focused on removing barriers, streamlining delivery, and ensuring planning does all it can to realise its potential as a driver of economic growth, with actions including:

• Taking forward actions in the Housing Emergency Action Plan (HEAP), building on 23 actions within the Planning and Housing Emergency Delivery Plan that are already underway to support the delivery of more homes.
• Publication of the Key Agency Rapid Planning Audit independent report in January 2026. This was commissioned by Scottish Government and undertaken by Paul Cackette in response to the 2025 Programme for Government commitment to work with planning teams in agencies to reduce complexity, cost and speed up processes. The report focuses on those five key agencies which have the most input into the planning system, Historic Environment Scotland; NatureScot; Scottish Environment Protection Agency; Scottish Water; and Transport Scotland. The report contains 17 recommendations on how we can improve speed, reduce complexity, and enhance shared goals to ensure high quality planning decision making. Scottish Government and Agencies are collectively reviewing the recommendations and considering how an implementation plan can be established and delivered.
• The National Planning Hub is providing surge support, expert brokerage, and capacity building for energy and housing, and to support local development plans.

Public Service Reform Strategy: Ensuring the right delivery landscape

The Public Service Reform (PSR) Strategy (published June 2025) supports a shift in operating models, with a focus on efficiency, collaboration, and protecting frontline delivery, and will significantly increase our focus on delivering the most efficient and effective public services system to deliver long term fiscal sustainability. Ensuring the right delivery landscape is a foundation of PSR, and a key element to delivering the strategy.

The main objective of this foundation workstream is to identify opportunities across the service delivery landscape to reduce duplication, encourage collaboration and make better use of digital innovation. The review also aims to deliver fundamental reform activity and ensure that the system is proportionate, streamlined and designed to meet Scotland’s needs in the most efficient way.

Clusters will be a vehicle that facilitates and enables public bodies and Scottish Government directorates to work together to deliver the workstream objectives. A cross-cutting cluster of regulatory bodies will be established to identify and remove duplication, to make the delivery landscape more efficient and effective and contribute to the £1 billion PSR target by 2029/30.

Procurement

In procurement, we continue to work within the rules to help businesses bid for and win contracts. We have a continuous programme of engagement with businesses which includes initiatives such as our Procurement Supplier Group, targeted round tables, collaborative workstreams, supplier surveys and ‘Meet the Buyer’ events. These efforts help us benchmark, test, and inform our policies and approaches to ensure they are impactful, proportionate, and do not create unnecessary barriers.

In 2024/25, nearly 17,000 suppliers won Scottish public contracts. 77% were small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – and 60% were Scottish SMEs. 47.5% of known Scottish public sector procurement spend goes to SMEs. That’s more than double the UK spend, which was 20% of public sector spend in 2024, according to a British Chambers of Commerce Report.

A consultation on whether the financial thresholds from which the Procurement Reform Scotland (Act) 2014 apply should be increased closed in January 2026. Responses will be analysed over the coming period. This could mean that fewer contracts are subject to the requirements of that Act, and that public bodies would be freer to use more streamlined means of awarding lower-value contracts, such as our Quick Quote tool.

The Public Contracts Scotland advertising portal aims to simplify the bidding process for public contracts by providing notifications that alert suppliers to relevant opportunities and enabling main contractors to advertise sub-contract opportunities. This gives suppliers the chance to bid for contracts further down the supply chain.

Additionally, we offer a comprehensive, free-to-use, set of tools and guidance designed to simplify public procurement processes and support suppliers in accessing and managing procurement opportunities; and, in 2025, we continued to invest in the Supplier Development Programme, providing access to free training and support for Scottish SMEs.

We remain committed to doing more, publishing our SME and Third Sector Action Plan in April 2024, with an update on progress published in August 2025.