Chamber and committees

Since the review of the Town Centre Action Plan (TCAP), we continue to implement the Town Centre First Principle and work closely with partners including COSLA and Scotland’s Towns Partnership (STP) to support progress on the delivery of actions outlined in TCAP. The National Planning Framework 4, published in February 2023, recognises town centres as national assets and aims to promote and facilitate development within them, including encouraging town centre living and limiting out of town retail development.

In collaboration with STP, progress towards town centre regeneration has also been showcased in a number of forums, including recent workshops on town centre living, place-based investment and the annual Scotland’s Towns conference.

Support for town centre action is backed by our multiple capital investment programmes, including the Place Based Investment Programme, Regeneration Capital Grant Fund and the Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme. However, the UK Government’s reduction in our capital budget will adversely impact the support that we can provide in 2024-25.

The early learning and childcare (ELC) census Early learning and childcare statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) is the Scottish Government’s current annual data collection on funded ELC.

The census collects data on the number of registrations for funded ELC by age. It does not collect data on the number of hours each child accesses.

Number of two year old registrations for funded ELC at the time of each census:

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-25980 on 14 March 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

The Town Centre Action Plan (TCAP) sets out our shared ambition for the future of town centres and is a call to action for partners, both locally and nationally, to re-build, re-energise and re-imagine our towns. This is a joint endeavour with responsibilities shared across the sectors.

We continue to take forward actions that we have direct responsibility for, working closely with cross-sector partners to support the delivery of TCAP. In collaboration with Scotland’s Towns Partnership, progress towards town centre regeneration has been showcased via a number of forums, including recent workshops on town centre living, place-based investment and the annual Scotland’s Towns conference.

Support for town centre action is also backed by our multiple capital investment programmes, including the Place Based Investment Programme, Regeneration Capital Grant Fund and the Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme, all of which help to accelerate shared ambitions for town centre action. However, following the UK Government's Autumn Statement and Spring Budget, a reduction in our capital budget will adversely impact the support that we can provide in 2024-25.

Whole Family Wellbeing Funding was provided by the Scottish Government to deliver transformational change to improve holistic family support so that families get the right support, in the right way and at the right time. This includes £32m for Children’s Services Planning Partnerships (CSPPs) to build local service capacity for transformation and the scaling up of holistic family support in local areas. The work is driven by Children's Services Planning Partnerships at the local level, who have responsibility for deciding how to spend their allocation. Our Evaluation of year 1 activity was published on 31 January 2024 and can be found here https://www.gov.scot/publications/whole-family-wellbeing-funding-wfwf-year-1-process-evaluation-final-report/

We are distributing funding through three distinct Elements co-produced with stakeholders including The Promise Scotland:

• Element 1 – Providing Direct Support to CSPPs:Funding allocated across all CSPPs to build local service capacity and transform family support services.
• Element 2 – National Support for Local Delivery - a package of activity aimed at supporting local transformation. This includes:

o establishing collaborative learning partnerships with three CSPPs [East Ayrshire, East Lothian, Glasgow City] and a dedicated national support team to support planning and provide local learning that can be shared nationally

o a Learning into Action Network and a Knowledge Hub to share learning, facilitate peer support and collaborate ;

o an independent evaluation of the implementation and initial impacts of the programme to help shape and develop activity across WFWF going forward;

o research to support continuous improvement of the transformation support provided to the CSPPs as well as to generate learning about how transformational capability is built.

• Element 3 – Taking a cross SG approach to system change – funding approved for twelve projects led by wider SG policy teams which would progress the aims of WFW.
  

To date the Scottish Government has spent £65.5m across financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24.This figure does not include funding in addition to the local authority allocations for 2023-24 which have yet to be finalised. The following table provides a breakdown of the distribution of funding per Local Authority.

The City Centre Recovery Task Force published a report of their findings ( At the Heart of Economic Transformation: Report of the City Centre Recovery Task Force, 2021-22 (wpengine.com) ) in March 2022 which identified a number of priority outcomes to work towards over a five year period. The Scottish Government is currently working with Scottish cities, via the Scottish Cities Alliance ( Scottish Cities Alliance ) to progress work in two of these key areas:

• Priority area 1: Increased residential capacity and occupancy and
• Priority area 3: Reducing the amount of vacant and derelict land and property.

Scottish Government’s low carbon Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme is investing nearly £10m in 2023-24 and over £8m in 2024-25 supporting projects that will bring vacant and derelict land back into positive use to benefit communities and help tackle climate change. This is in addition to the Vacant and Derelict Land Fund which will see the five eligible local authorities receive a share of £5m investment in 2024-25.

The Scottish Cities Alliance have recently launched a Peer-to-Peer network built around the strategic objectives in the City Centre Recovery Taskforce Report, with the aim of:

• Sharing knowledge and best practice from Scottish and international cities drawing on expertise from academia and the private and third sectors; and
• Identifying and agreeing opportunities for future collaborative action.

The programme of knowledge exchange activity has been co-developed by the Alliance partners with Innovate UK, the Built Environment-Smarter Transformation Innovation Centre and the Connected Places Catapult to leverage in experience from wider UK and Irish Cities as well as research and knowledge exchange networks.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-24444 on 22 January 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

The Gender Equality Taskforce in Education & Learning developed a set of ambitions in order to help inform its work, including the development of leadership programmes with a focus on gender inequality in education and learning. Development of this particular ambition was undertaken in consultation with Education Scotland, COSLA, the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, the Scottish Council of Deans of Education and gender equality organisations including Close the Gap, Zero Tolerance and Rape Crisis Scotland. Since then, discussion and work has been ongoing to refine the overall workplan, including this particular ambition, to ensure that it is able to foster the type of long term, complex, systemic change that is needed. I am committed to continuing and accelerating such work to ensure that girls and young women have a gender equal experience of education and learning. The next meeting of the Taskforce will take place on 18 April.