Chamber and committees

Section 14 of the Housing Defects Act 1984 contained such a requirement. The Act was subsequently repealed and this provision was consolidated into Part XIV of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987, which remains in force.

The requirement is that a public sector authority as defined in the act (which includes councils and registered social landlords), before selling a dwelling designated as defective under the act, must notify the purchaser in writing of the defect giving rise to the designation and that the purchaser is not eligible for any assistance under that part of the act. Notification has to be given before the sale is concluded.

In addition, section 27 and schedule 4 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 require the landlord in a Scottish Secure Tenancy (SST) to notify the tenant before the start of the tenancy of any work required to make the house wind and watertight and in all other respects reasonably fit for human habitation. SSTs were introduced on 30 September 2002.

There is no other statutory obligation on local authorities or registered social landlords to inform their tenants of the existence of any structural defects in their property.

The Scottish Government provides resources through a variety of mechanisms to local authorities and to a number of agencies responsible for supporting community development in rural areas within and outside the Highlands and Islands.

The Scottish Government itself will be injecting some £1.6 billion into rural areas through the Scottish Rural Development Programme 2007-2013. Funding will be delivered through a variety of mechanisms including Rural Development Contracts and LEADER. In addition, £195,000 will be made available to the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations to support non-crofting county rural communities to produce investment plans to access funding. This extends similar assistance which is available for the crofting counties from the Crofters Commission to the rest of Scotland.

I can confirm that I have had no discussions with the Home Secretary on the introduction of ID cards.

It is government policy that all procurement of goods and services should be based on value for money, having due regard to propriety and regularity. Value for money is defined as the optimum combination of whole-life cost and quality (or fitness for purpose) to meet the user''s requirement.

In addition to this, local authorities are subject to a duty of best value under the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003. An organisation which adopts best value will be able to demonstrate that they have a strategy for procurement and the management of contracts and contractors to ensure that it treats procurement as a key component in achieving its objectives, including those relating to sustainable development, equalities, and health and safety, as well as a means of finding the most cost effective method for securing the quality of assets and services it needs. It will ensure that the framing of specifications and the vetting of suppliers is consistent with these objectives. Also, that when competitive tendering, procurement procedures place the minimum possible burden on suppliers consistent with the achievement of best value through effective competition.

We do not hold records on attendance by officials in the Scottish Government Financial Partnerships Unit to corporate functions organised by or on behalf of PPP/PFI consortia. Any attendance by officials at these events would have been in the interests of furthering infrastructure investment and PPP policy, and would have been undertaken in the normal course of business. Any costs incurred in attending such events would not have been met by the Scottish Government other than, if relevant, those costs which would come under the government''s travel and subsistence rates.

No officials in the Scottish Government Financial Partnerships Unit have attended the PPP: PFI Challenge sailing regatta organised by Britannia Events, and no officials will attend in 2008.

Current legislation provides a framework for local authorities to put in place their own schemes for the establishment of community councils, to take account of local needs and geographical circumstances. The Scottish Government plays no direct role in the day-to-day operation of community councils and does not provide any direct funding to them.

The government is committed to encouraging rural and urban community councils throughout Scotland to work to their full potential. We will shortly be consulting on a model Community Council Scheme, and a Code of Conduct for Community Councillors. These documents have been developed in partnership with the Community Council Working Group, which includes representation from the Highlands, Islands and Scottish Borders, and we are confident that they will provide the tools required for all community councils to represent their communities in the most effective way.

It is the responsibility of every public sector procuring body, when entering into a contract, to ensure all payments committed through that contract are affordable. This applies to all contracts and not just PPP contracts. In a PPP contract, the total costs, including the whole life costs, under the contract are agreed locally and parcelled up into manageable, affordable, annual payments all agreed in advance. This applies whether the procuring body is the Scottish Government, local authorities or NHS boards.

The total costs in a PPP contract are usually modelled by financial advisers to the project in a financial model. This involves such calculations as sensitivity analyses on key variables within the model.

Table 1 provides median annual earnings and average house price from 1979-2006 which is the most recent whole year that data is available for. 2007 data is due to be available in April.

The preferred source for earnings estimates is the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), which is carried out by the Office for National Statistics. ASHE was developed to replace the New Earnings Survey (NES) from 2004, which included improvements to the coverage of employees. NES data for 2003 back to 1998 has been reworked using the ASHE methodology in order to provide a consistent time series from 1998 onwards. However, the data does not take account of the improved coverage. Data prior to 1998 is from NES and is not directly comparable with ASHE data. Data relates to full-time employees only.

Average dwelling price has been drawn from the Regulated Mortgage Survey. Data up to and including 1992 was based on returns from building societies only. Data from 1993 onwards are based on returns from all mortgage lenders. From September 2005, data are collected via the Regulated Mortgage Survey (RMS) of the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML)/BankSearch.

Table 1

Year	Median Annual Earnings	Average  House Price
1979	£4,550	£19,371
1980	£5,585	£21,754
1981	£6,344	£23,014
1982	£6,942	£22,522
1983	£7,504	£23,818
1984	£8,096	£25,865
1985	£8,622	£26,941
1986	£9,183	£28,242
1987	£9,771	£29,591
1988	£10,634	£31,479
1989	£11,513	£35,394
1990	£12,688	£41,744
1991	£13,796	£48,772
1992	£14,908	£50,010
1993	£15,434	£49,568
1994	£15,642	£50,651
1995	£16,297	£53,143
1996	£16,895	£56,674
1997	£17,514	£57,883
1998	£16,318	£63,585
1999	£17,108	£69,312
2000	£17,597	£69,961
2001	£18,465	£73,570
2002	£19,328	£77,655
2003	£19,828	£103,641
2004	£20,301	£118,932
2005	£21,247	£129,631
2006	£22,261	£137,192

 

No, there are no such circumstances.