Chamber and committees

The reasons for the Commissioners’ resignations are a matter of public record as set out in letters to the Social Justice and Social Security Committee.

I am grateful to the Chair and Commissioners for their contributions to the Commission and thank them for their service.

As the Commission is an independent public body any issues relating to internal relationships are for the Commission to manage .

Part of the Temporary Accommodation Task and Finish Group’s remit was to consider ways to reduce the high number of children in temporary accommodation, some of whom are in temporary accommodation for long periods. In our response to the Temporary Accommodation Task and Finish Group recommendations, we said that we will support local authorities’ efforts to ensure households with children who have been living in temporary accommodation for a number of years are supported into suitable permanent housing.

Our national acquisition plan is one way to help boost the supply of available affordable housing, including settled family homes. We will invest at least £60m from the Affordable Housing Supply Programme in 2023-24 to enable local authorities and registered social landlords to acquire properties of the right types and in the right places for use as high quality, affordable, permanent homes.

The Scottish Government is making £3.5 billion available in this parliamentary term towards the delivery of more affordable and social homes. Scotland has led the UK in providing affordable housing, delivering 122,201 affordable homes between April 2007 to the end of March 2023. Since 2007, Scotland has seen over 40% more affordable homes delivered per head of population than in England, and over 70% more than in Wales.

In addition to increasing housing supply, we will maximise the use of existing homes. This includes providing funding for councils and social landlords to bring empty homes back into use, asking social landlords to increase allocations to homeless households, and supporting councils to develop targeted plans to reduce temporary accommodation pressures. Meetings with the local authorities with the greatest temporary accommodation pressures are taking place to better understand the specific issues they are facing and what work could be undertaken in partnership to reduce the number of households, including those with children, in temporary accommodation.

As the legal duty to accommodate homeless households lies with local authorities, the responsibility for ensuring that the temporary accommodation provided meets the temporary accommodation standards framework rests with local authorities. These standards relate to all types of temporary accommodation to ensure that the quality of all temporary accommodation is of good standard and meets all of the needs of the household. The standards framework covers four main areas: physical, location, service and management.

Social housing landlords must ensure that they meet all of their legal duties and responsibilities and that they adhere to the relevant guidance and requirements of other regulators. Social landlords, including local authorities, must submit a mandatory Annual Assurance Statement to the Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) to provide assurance that their organisation complies with the relevant requirements of chapter 3 of the Regulatory Framework .

The SHR monitors, assesses and reports on all landlords’ compliance with regulatory requirements and performance of housing activities. All 32 local authorities are included in their annual risk assessment. An indicator used by the SHR to assess risk in relation to performance in delivering services is the percentage of tenants satisfied with the quality of their home.

Where the SHR requires further information and assurance from a local authority, an engagement plan will be published setting out what the social landlord needs to do and what the SHR will do.

We welcome the report by Shelter Scotland. The Scottish Government is committed to including ongoing consideration of what more can be done to improve outcomes for BAME people within social housing.

Our Housing to 2040 strategy continues to provide the frame for our work to advance equality of outcomes in housing, with our vision for what we want homes and communities to look and feel like for the people of Scotland. In this we have recognised and committed to address the housing challenges faced by minority ethnic communities and highlighted that we must act on what we already know, as well as taking steps to improve our evidence base.

Our Programme for Government confirmed the intention to introduce a Housing Bill to deliver a New Deal for Tenants, including the introduction of long-term rent controls which will apply to homes rented privately.

Guidance relating to digital communications infrastructure is currently being developed to replace Planning Advice Note 62. We intend to publish this updated guidance before the end of 2023.

Social Security Scotland do not make decisions on whether an application is fraudulent. Where fraud is suspected, appropriate investigations would be undertaken and when complete, a report would be made to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal for their consideration. If after due process a conviction is achieved, fraud is then confirmed by the Scottish Judicial System.

Prevention of fraud is a priority, with measures and controls embedded in Social Security Scotland’s processes and systems to minimise the opportunities for fraud.

With regards to combined levels of both fraud and error these are included in the Social Security Scotland Annual Report and Accounts.

Social Security Scotland carefully considers the information on counter fraud activity that can be placed into the public domain to ensure that any information released does not undermine the ability of Social Security Scotland to prevent and detect crime.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. The funding and commissioning of palliative and end of life care services, including hospices, is a matter for Integration Authorities using the integrated budgets under their control.

Scottish Government Ministers and officials regularly meet with local politicians, council Chief Executives and Directors of Finance to discuss national priorities and local issues. In those meetings, in parallel with ongoing engagement with COSLA Leaders and Spokespeople, Councils routinely identify policy challenges and financial pressures locally.

Despite a decade of UK Government austerity measures, the Accounts Commission, who are responsible for holding councils and other local government bodies in Scotland to account, have confirmed that local government revenue funding is 2.6% higher in real terms than it was in 2013-14.

Scottish councils have therefore been treated fairly throughout UK imposed austerity but we recognise the challenging environment they face, alongside the rest of the public sector, and that is why we are committed to a Fiscal Framework as part of our New Deal with Local Government in order to ensure the sustainability of local services.

The Scottish Government’s 2019 5G Strategy included an action to develop a series of 5G use cases across several industrial sectors, including health and social care. The Scotland 5G Centre has led this work through their network of 5G Innovation Hubs and developed the following use cases:

• “Gro Health” app Dumfries is a personalised treatment platform proven to support sustainable weight loss, blood glucose control, and improvements in mental health and wellbeing.
• “Care Reality VR Training Environment” is Scotland’s first Virtual Reality immersive learning platform using 5G that creates a tailored training environment for health and social care staff.
• “Care Reality Virtual Choirs” is an Extended Reality therapeutic singing intervention with a mental health focus that uses 5G to enable participants to be part of a choir in real time regardless of their physical location.
• “Safehouse Monitoring & Anomaly Detection device” is a 5G-based solution focusing on at-home social care that alerts carers to fall incidents.
• “Smart Walls” project at The Ladyfield at the Crichton is a 5G-based solution which offers potential to improving health and well-being for residents as well as cost savings to the NHS.

The Scotland 5G Centre will also launch a Digital Healthcare Innovation challenge in partnership with the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre later in 2023.