Chamber and committees

No review has been undertaken of the threshold for the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) Additional Dwelling Supplement (ADS) threshold since its introduction. The setting of the threshold for the ADS reflects that The Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (Scotland) Act 2013 provides that land transactions with a chargeable consideration of less than £40,000 are not notifiable and that no tax return is thus required.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

The following table provides the number of mobile phone handsets that have been confiscated at HMP Inverness, each month, since May 2021:

The Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme (VDLIP) is available to local authorities which bring forward suitable project proposals associated with remediating and unblocking long-term vacant and derelict land, supporting place based approaches to delivering regeneration and sustainable inclusive growth, as part of a just transition to net-zero. Additional funding to support the delivery of new homes, where this is part of the project proposals, is considered as a part of the application process by the independent investment panel.

The Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme (VDLIP) has invested £6,258,299 in projects that support the development of affordable homes since 2021.

The Scottish Government’s Strengthening Communities Programme (SCP) is a revenue fund which provides support to community anchor organisations to build capacity and sustainability.

No new houses have therefore been built as a direct result of funding from SCP since 2021. However, SCP provides organisations such as Raasay Development Trust (Highlands), Sanday Development Trust (Orkney), Tomintoul & Glenlivet Development Trust (Moray) and Fair Isle Development Trust (Shetland) with capacity building funding which includes support for delivering new housing developments.

Data on collisions which cause injury and take place on the road network, including adjacent pavements and cycle lanes, is collected by Police Scotland as part of the GB-wide dataset known as STATS19.

Within STATS19, vehicles involved in injury road collisions can be recorded as ‘bicycle’ or ‘electric motorcycle’. However, there is currently no systematic way of determining which of these vehicles would be described as illegal e-bikes.

The Scottish Government’s 2024-25 budget includes record police funding of £1.55 billion, which is an increase of £92.7 million on the 2023-24 Scottish Police Authority budget.

Official statistics show there were 16,427 FTE police officers at 30 September 2024. On 30 October the Chief Constable told the Criminal Justice Committee that she expected to reach the target of 16,600 officers soon - and this happened on 4 November.

Deployment of these resources to meet policing priorities is an operational matter for Police Scotland, under the scrutiny of the Scottish Police Authority.

Data on collisions which cause injury and take place on the road network, including adjacent pavements and cycle lanes, is collected by Police Scotland as part of the GB-wide dataset known as STATS19.

Within STATS19, vehicles involved in injury road collisions can be recorded as ‘bicycle’ or ‘electric motorcycle’. However, there is currently no systematic way of determining which of these vehicles would be described as illegal e-bikes.

This information is not collected by the Scottish Government but The Scottish Government’s Community Safety Policy team has recently received one piece of correspondence concerning a collision involving an e-bike in the Aberdeen area.

Officials are working collaboratively with the UK Government to understand potential legislative change in this area.

This information is not held by the Scottish Government. When local authority trading standards services find products that are non-compliant with the relevant product safety legislation this should be input into the Product Safety Database. This is operated by the UK Government’s Office of Product Safety and Standards.

This is an operational matter for Police Scotland. I have asked Police Scotland to write to you on this matter.