Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government are fully aware that rising energy costs are a significant issue for leisure centres and swimming pools. We recognise the positive financial and environmental benefits to increasing the energy efficiency of leisure centres and swimming pools throughout Scotland.

Following the announcement by the UK Government of the financial package to support swimming pools in England, we are considering what support, including ensuring the longer term sustainability and energy efficiency of these facilities, can be provided to the sport and leisure sector in Scotland.

On 9 December 2022 the Scottish Government jointly published our Anti-Racist Employment Strategy and refreshed Fair Work Action Plan. The Anti-Racist Employment Strategy offers clear and practical guidance for employers from all sectors to improve the recruitment and representation of racialised minority staff and build fair, diverse and inclusive workplaces. The Strategy was developed in collaboration with stakeholders from a wide-range of backgrounds. This included representatives of the private sector. The Strategy is underpinned by a series of actions working in continued partnership with these stakeholders to address issues affecting racialised minorities.

The Fair Work Action Plan explains how the Scottish Government will work collaboratively to support private and public sector employers to utilise the resources and support available to embed Fair Work in their organisations and build capability among employers, employability providers and partners. By the end of 2023 we will have worked with partners to further join up provision of advice and support for employers in all sectors by establishing a central Fair Work resource. We will also develop a communications strategy to highlight and promote to all employers the benefits of Fair Work and diverse workplaces including recruiting, employing and supporting workers from racialised minorities. By the end of 2023 we will have also further updated the Fair Work First criteria that must be taken into consideration by employers seeking public sector support to better reflect priority action required to address labour market inequalities faced by people from racialised minorities and other groups to help ensure more people can enter, remain and progress in work.

The Scottish Government does not hold or collect information about the format of meetings local authorities have with people who make homeless applications.

The Digital Planning Transformation programme is a £35 million programme to transform the planning service and realise £200 million economic benefits to the sector. Work is progressing to deliver outputs from five missions as set out in the

Digital Strategy for Planning that underpins the programme.

I refer the member to the question S6W-15815 on 23 March 2023. 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 .

This information is not held centrally. It is the responsibility of Integration Joint Boards (IJBs) to plan and commission adult palliative and end of life care services for their areas using the integrated budgets under their control.

The eDevelopment service currently has 52,000 registered users.

In the last 5 years the eDevelopment homepage has been accessed 3,294,533 times. The figures in the following table set out the number of times that users have accessed the homepage. The information is broken down into each of the 5 years.

As of January 2023, over 1.41m planning and building standards applications have been submitted online via eDevelopment since the service went live in 2016.

The service regularly receives over 5,500 submissions each week.

We estimate that in 2021-2022, up to 95% of all planning submissions and 90% of building warrant applications are submitted online through the service.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of children placed in unregulated accommodation.

Table 1.21 of Scottish Transport Statistics provides information on the number of Blue Badges on issue by each local authority from 2014 to 2021 and is available via the following web link https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/scottish-transport-statistics-2021/chapter-01-road-transport-vehicles/ .

The information for 2022 will be published by Transport Scotland on 14 March 2023.

From our latest review of the trunk road network there are 35 bridges which have been identified as requiring upgrades. These are located within the following Local Authority areas: