Chamber and committees

Creative Scotland, as the national development body for the arts, currently employ 143 staff across Scotland. This figure includes four Creative Scotland staff members located in the Highlands and Islands region.

As per Creative Scotland’s (CS) Regular Funding Organisation (RFO) handbook, CS works with organisations to ensure that expectations such as contribution to the development of the sector, best practice governance, management and leadership, and resilient financial health are met.

RFOs provide data and reports to CS on an annual basis and further detail on the monitoring data and information that CS gather can be found here: Project Monitoring | Creative Scotland

CS’ other funding activity to organisations is based on their Strategic Priorities and Funding Criteria, which is available on the following link: Strategic Framework and Funding Criteria | Creative Scotland

Since 2021-22, Creative Scotland distributed £251k to organisations registered in the EU (plus Norway). Full breakdown as follows:

Since April 2021, Scottish Opera has undertaken the following number of productions in Scotland and in the Highlands and Islands region:

Since April 2021, the National Theatre of Scotland has undertaken the following number of productions in Scotland and in the Highlands and Islands region:

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.

The Scottish Government’s Investing in Communities Fund (ICF) is a revenue fund which aims to empower communities by supporting them to deliver activity that helps tackle poverty, inequality and rural disadvantage on their own terms.

The ICF is not intended to deliver capital projects, such as housing.

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 funding from the SCP has therefore been spent on building new houses since 2021, however SCP provides organisations with capacity building funding which can include support for delivering new housing developments.