The Scottish Government has announced a new Major Projects Office to accelerate nationally significant investment in housing, energy and other strategic sectors.
Scotland does not have a shortage of proposed projects.
Across the country there are housing developments waiting on infrastructure, renewable-energy schemes waiting on grid connections, industrial projects requiring land and power, regeneration proposals dependent on several public agencies, data centres seeking substantial electricity connections, transport projects moving through lengthy development processes and university research capable of producing companies if finance can be assembled around it.
The recurring problem is not always the absence of an idea or an investor.
It is often the distance between proposal and delivery.
That is the problem the Scottish Government says its new Major Projects Office is intended to address.
The office was announced in the Programme for Government for 2026 to 2031. Ministers say it will begin operating during 2026-27 and will concentrate on nationally and strategically significant investment and private-capital projects, initially including housing and energy.
Its stated purpose is to identify barriers, coordinate government and accelerate decisions.
That makes the proposal worth examining carefully, because Scotland has spent much of the devolution era creating agencies, strategies, funds and planning frameworks intended to encourage economic development.
The question is whether the Major Projects Office represents another institution within that landscape, or an attempt to change how the landscape itself works.
Scotland already has an investment system
The new office will not begin on an empty field.
Scotland already has Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise. It has the Scottish National Investment Bank. Local authorities exercise planning and economic-development functions. Transport Scotland manages national transport programmes. Scottish Water controls important infrastructure capacity. The electricity networks determine where and when major power connections can be made. NatureScot, SEPA and other regulators may become involved where developments affect the environment.
The Scottish Futures Trust works across infrastructure, investment and public assets. Universities, colleges, regional economic partnerships, city-region deals and local development bodies add further layers.
None of those organisations exists without a reason.
The difficulty arises when a project requires decisions from several of them at once.
A large housing development, for example, may have planning permission in principle but require road improvements, drainage capacity, schools, electricity infrastructure and public transport before construction can proceed at scale.
An industrial development may have an investor and a site but require a grid connection that cannot be delivered within the investor’s timetable.
A renewable-energy project may be technically feasible but encounter separate planning, environmental, grid and transport processes.
Each individual decision can be rational when viewed from inside the organisation responsible for making it. Collectively, the sequence can make a project commercially difficult.
Economic development is not simply a question of whether Scotland approves or rejects projects. It is also a question of how long Scotland takes to reach a decision.
Time has economic value
For an investor, delay has a price.
Land may be held without producing income. Construction costs can change. Interest accumulates. Equipment prices move. Government incentives expire. Planning therefore forms part of Scotland’s economic infrastructure even though it does not normally appear beside roads, ports or electricity networks in discussions about infrastructure.
The Programme for Government recognises this explicitly. Alongside the Major Projects Office, ministers say they intend to reform the planning and regulatory environment, strengthen Scotland’s inward-investment capability and increase planning-system capacity.
The important word is capacity. Planning delays are sometimes presented as a consequence of regulation itself. That is only part of the picture.
A planning system can have strict environmental and development standards while still making decisions efficiently. Conversely, changing regulations does not necessarily accelerate decisions if planning authorities lack staff, specialist expertise or the resources required to assess complex applications.
Scotland therefore needs to distinguish between regulation that prevents development and administrative capacity that determines how quickly regulation is applied.
The housing connection
The inclusion of housing among the Major Projects Office’s first strategic sectors is significant.
The Scottish Government has committed to investment intended to support 111,000 affordable homes by 2032, with at least 70 per cent intended for social rent. It has also established a First Homes Fund and a £50 million homelessness-prevention fund.
But housing numbers cannot be produced by housing policy alone because communities require water, sewerage, roads, schools, electricity and transport. In some areas the constraint is not planning permission for the houses themselves but the infrastructure required to support them.
That creates a coordination problem. The development can therefore be approved in theory while remaining difficult to deliver in practice.
A Major Projects Office capable of identifying those dependencies early could be useful. But usefulness will depend on authority. If the office can only convene meetings between organisations, it may improve communication without fundamentally changing delivery. If it has the ability to establish priorities across government, escalate unresolved decisions and coordinate infrastructure investment around nationally important projects, its role becomes materially different.
The Programme for Government has not yet established publicly where that boundary will lie.
The energy connection
Energy presents an even more complicated case.
Scotland produces large quantities of renewable electricity and has extensive proposed investment in onshore wind, offshore wind, transmission infrastructure, storage, hydrogen and energy-intensive industrial development.
But electricity infrastructure does not sit entirely within devolved government.
Energy markets and much of energy regulation remain reserved to Westminster. The electricity system is governed through UK-wide regulatory and market arrangements. Ofgem regulates the networks, while the National Energy System Operator has responsibilities extending across Great Britain.
Scottish planning powers can therefore determine whether some infrastructure is built while Scottish ministers do not control every economic and regulatory mechanism determining when it connects or how the electricity market values it.
This is one reason large Scottish energy projects can involve several governments, regulators, network companies, councils and communities.
The Major Projects Office will enter that environment.
It may be able to accelerate decisions within devolved competence. It cannot simply remove decisions belonging to regulators or the UK Government.
Scotland is also changing how it raises capital
The Major Projects Office forms part of a wider change in the Scottish Government’s economic policy.
Ministers are advancing plans for up to £1.5 billion of Scottish Government bonds. The proposed borrowing has been described informally as Scottish government “kilts” and is intended to diversify capital funding and support long-term infrastructure investment.
The Government is also proposing a Scottish High Growth Unit, stronger relationships with institutional investors and pension funds, a Scottish Innovation Fund involving the Scottish National Investment Bank, and an expanded pipeline of investible projects.
Taken together, these policies suggest that Scotland is trying to build something more systematic than a collection of grants.
The emerging model appears to be one in which government identifies strategic sectors, prepares projects, removes delivery barriers, attracts private capital and uses public institutions to retain more economic activity in Scotland.
That is closer to an investment state than a conventional grant-making administration. Whether it works will depend heavily on project selection.
The danger of accelerating the wrong project
Speed is not automatically an economic good. Planning exists because developments have consequences. Major infrastructure can affect landscapes, biodiversity, water, roads, communities, archaeological sites and existing businesses. Housing development without adequate infrastructure can create different public costs later. Energy projects can produce national benefits while imposing highly localised impacts.
Modern Scot has previously examined precisely this tension in the Highlands, where major electricity-transmission proposals have raised questions about scheduled monuments, landscape change and the relationship between nationally required infrastructure and the places through which it passes.
The objective therefore cannot simply be to make decisions faster. It must be to make complex decisions faster without making them worse.
The regional question
The Scottish Government is simultaneously proposing substantial reform of local government.
John Swinney has opened a three-month discussion about creating stronger strategic regions while increasing decision-making within local communities. He has said some existing councils are too small to operate strategically while others are too large to feel local.
If that reform proceeds, Scotland may be moving towards a different economic geography.
Large infrastructure and investment decisions could increasingly be organised around regions rather than individual council boundaries. That would make sense for many economic systems because markets, transport networks and electricity infrastructure do not stop at council boundaries. Economies extend into surrounding authorities.
A Major Projects Office operating alongside stronger regional economic structures could therefore become part of a significant reorganisation of how Scotland plans investment.
What should be measured
The office should eventually be judged through evidence rather than the number of projects attached to its name.
Useful measures would include the time between investment proposal and final decision; the amount of private capital converted from announced interest into committed investment; the number of stalled projects resolved; the geographical distribution of investment; the amount of Scottish supply-chain activity generated; and the proportion of projects delivered within their revised cost and timetable.
SOURCES
Scottish Government, Programme for Government 2026 to 2031. Used for the Major Projects Office, High Growth Unit, infrastructure, housing, planning and public-service reform commitments.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/programme-government-2026-2031/
Scottish Government, Programme for Government 2026 to 2031: Growing the Economy.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/programme-government-2026-2031/pages/3/
Scottish Government, First Minister’s Programme for Government speech, 1 September 2026.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/programme-for-government-2026-to-2031-first-ministers-speech/
Scottish Financial News, John Swinney pledges to advance £1.5 billion bonds to attract private investment, 1 September 2026.
https://www.scottishfinancialnews.com/articles/john-swinney-pleadges-to-advance-ps15-billion-bonds-to-attract-private-investment
Scottish Government, Scottish Budget 2026-27, Spending Review and Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2026-27-spending-review-infrastructure-delivery-pipeline-strategic-integrated-impact-assessment/
