Chamber and committees

The introduction of condensinggas boilers into Scottish building regulations is under consideration at presentas part of a major review of energy standards. Proposals as a result of this reviewwere issued for public consultation on 1 March 2006,with a view to amending regulations coming into force in spring 2007. The consultationcan be accessed on www.sbsa.gov.uk.

The introduction of condensinggas boilers into Scottish building regulations is under consideration at presentas part of a major review of energy standards. Proposals as a result of this reviewwere issued for public consultation on 1 March 2006,with a view to amending regulations coming into force in spring 2007. The consultationcan be accessed on www.sbsa.gov.uk.

Note: The general allocation includes provision for Hospital and community health services and the cost of drugs prescribed by general practitioners.

Allocations to Special Health Boards for 2006-07 are as follows:

A general uprating factor of 2.5%, in line with inflation, will be applied to the existing schemes of support in 2006-07, thus maintaining their value in real terms. I am also announcing details of the new support package which will be available to new Scottish domiciled students entering higher education in England, Wales or Northern Ireland from 2006. As well as the details of the loans for fees and living cost support available to these students, it also gives details of the new Students Outside Scotland Bursary. This will replace the Young Students Outside Scotland Bursary with eligibility being extended to over 25s. The Students Outside Scotland Bursary will replace up to £2,000 of the student loan for living cost support available to those students from low income backgrounds.

The Scottish Funding Council has also agreed to maintain the alignment between the further and higher education sectors by, where appropriate, uprating the support available to further education students by 2.5%.

A copy of these rates is also being placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 38766).

We need to ensure that decisions about where we invest take account of both national and local perspectives. The new arrangements will strengthen the role of councils and ensure that their Local Housing Strategies are the primary basis for housing investment decisions at the local level.

We also need to ensure that budgets are managed in the most efficient way. Having considered carefully the views of local authorities, housing associations and others, I have concluded that this can best be achieved by retaining the current arrangements with no further transfers of budget responsibility. Communities Scotland will therefore keep the direct responsibility for managing the budget for housing association developments in all areas except Glasgow and Edinburgh where the budgets are large enough to justify separate administration by the councils.

Due to its method of construction, TIFF figures cannot be broken down into different types of farming. The second data series known as Net Farm Income is designed to enable comparisons to be made across different farm types. Net Farm Income captures movements in prices and costs that are different to those in TIFF because of the differing time periods accounted for by the two measures. For these reasons the two series should not be directly compared with each other.

Average net farm income (NFI) for all farm types fell by 34% between 2003-04 and 2004-05, from £19,800 to £13,100. There was a fall for most farm types, with cereal and general cropping farms showing significant decreases. Only dairy farms saw a small increase in net farm income, due mainly to the receipt of dairy premium. Summary estimates of the outputs, inputs and income for 2005 at both aggregate level and by farm type will be published this morning. A copy of which will be placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 38751). More detailed analyses will be published on 30 March 2006.

Scotland shall apply a methodology of calculating the energy performance of buildings on the basis of the general framework set out in the Annex to the directive. The mandatory standard for a methodology will be expressed in functional terms, to ensure that there is no possible conflict with the Construction Products Directive. This approach will make it possible for consideration to be given to the use of any Directive compliant methodology, both for setting the energy performance standards and the production of energy performance certificates.

The SBSA has uploaded A circular on how Scotland will implement the EU Directive on the energy performance of buildings onto its website. This circular welcomes comments and has effectively acted as a scoping exercise. Several parts of the directive are already met by Scottish building regulations. Where additional secondary legislation is necessary, a formal public consultation will be carried out. This consultation will commence in March 2006.

The SBSA is currently in the process of developing its directive implementation strategy, which includes working with other policy areas of the Scottish Executive.

As the directive is not yet implemented there is at present no quantifiable and measurable outputs available. However, it is anticipated that this directive, when implemented, will have a positive impact on climate change and may augment other areas of energy policy in Scotland in respect of dwellings.