Chamber and committees

In January 2025, the Scottish Government provided updated guidance to support preparation of Housing Land Audits (HLAs). HLAs, prepared by planning authorities, monitor information on past housing completions and future programming of new homes.

The HLA guidance includes a template spreadsheet to support consistent implementation. The template includes:

• The planning status: no consent, pre- application, pending decision, refused, under appeal, consented.
• The type of approval issued (to mitigate the risk of double counting): planning permission (PP), planning permission in principle (PPiP), and approval of matters specified in conditions (AMSC).
• Construction status and when commenced.
• Site capacity: total capacity in the local development plan updated to total capacity of the planning permission when available, and then the remaining capacity of sites when under construction.

The HLA should include both completions and programming information for small sites. For consistency, the guidance considers developments of 1-3 homes to be small sites. Given the nature of housing delivery in island and some rural areas, where there is likely to be a significant number of small sites, flexibility in the approach to small sites for the HLA may be appropriate, as determined by the planning authority.

The guidance outlines flexibility for the planning authority to undertake additional data checking, to remove the double counting of replacement houses, to improve robustness of information and corroborate completion calculations.

The Scottish Government does not collect any data on the number of homes granted planning permission outside of any statistics that are published, reflecting an open and transparent approach.

Planning authorities monitor information on past housing completions and future programming of new homes through the Housing Land Audit (HLA) process. The Scottish Government uses this existing, publicly available information for the number of homes granted planning permission.

The Scottish Government does hold a licence for the use of Glenigan’s data platform, which is used as supplementary information alongside authority Housing Land Audits and the Scottish Government PAS (Planning Application Statistics).

To the best of our knowledge the Scottish Government does not hold a licence for the use of the BoCreate data collection system.

Statistics relating to the waits patients experience for inpatient or day case treatment at specialty level are published up to 31 March 2025 and can be found using the following link: https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/32913/ipdc_may25.xlsx.

The latest statistics for ongoing gynaecology waits for inpatient or day case treatment within each NHS board is presented in sheet 2.2 Table. The next release of this publication, covering statistics up to 30 June 2025 will be on 26 August 2025.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) does not hold the required information relating to waiting times for gynaecological biopsies. This is due to two reasons:

• PHS understands that most gynaecological biopsies are carried out in an outpatient setting. Whilst biopsies that are carried out in a consultant-led new outpatient clinic are subject to the 12-week national standard and will be included in the data supplied by NHS boards, detail on new outpatient procedures are not routinely captured. Therefore, the corresponding waits cannot be identified nationally.
• Some gynaecological biopsies will be carried out in a day case setting. However, diagnostics tests and investigations are not reportable under the 12-week Treatment Time Guarantee. Therefore, the corresponding waiting times data is not held centrally.

More detailed information on the gynaecological biopsies that are planned or undertaken for a patient will be held locally by NHS boards.

The Housing Infrastructure Fund forms part of the overall Affordable Housing Supply Programme budget which prioritises the delivery of affordable homes. The Scottish Government is implementing the recommendations of the Housing Investment Taskforce which noted the concern, including from SMEs, about infrastructure costs where the scale or availability of finance is preventing build-out; this will include undertaking market testing to assess the demand for refreshed loan options to support infrastructure costs, including what risk/reward sharing models would be workable.

Two housing developers have received debt finance from the Scottish National Investment Bank since inception as follows:

DITT construction: £730,000 investment to support the construction of six high-quality, one-bedroom homes in Lerwick. These homes are designed for key workers who struggle to find affordable accommodation.

Strathcarron Homes: £3.9 million loan facility will support the construction of 25 high quality family homes built to be sold to local social housing tenants and first-time buyers. The builders are about to start construction at Nitshill Road in Glasgow.

The Bank has also made equity investments in to the following funds:

Thriving Investments: (Bank is a Limited Partner) £60 million committed to their mid-market rental housing fund which has delivered 742 new homes to date.

Social & Sustainable Capital (SASC): (Bank is a Limited Partner) £10 million committed to their SASH II fund. This will allow charities and community interest companies to buy properties which they would otherwise not be able to attain, building their financial strength, capacity and resilience to enable them to provide high quality services to their tenants.

The Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011 provides the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland to issue property factor enforcement orders and to determine whether or not that Enforcement Order has been met.

A person who, without reasonable excuse, fails to comply with a property factor enforcement order commits an offence. Any further action in relation to non-compliance with a property factor enforcement order (PFEO) is an operational matter that fall within the responsibilities of the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS). These matters have been passed to the Chief Executive of the SCTS who will reply in writing within 20 days.

The Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011 also provides that the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland serves Notices to Scottish Ministers of a failure to comply with a PFEO. To date 79 Notice to Ministers have been received. This figure may not be fully comprehensive as information may not be available due to the Scottish Government’s data retention policy.

On receipt of a Notice, the first aim is to encourage compliance and address the issue. If this cannot be achieved, Scottish Ministers will remove registration as this will prevent the entity from legally operating as a property factor in Scotland. To date, the Scottish Ministers have removed registration from 3 property factors for failing to meet the requirements of the fit and proper person test, part of which included failing to comply with a PFEO. These property factors were removed in January 2015, January 2016, and April 2019 respectively.

Scottish Ministers have sought additional powers in the Housing (Scotland) Bill to obtain further information and to carry out inspections with a view to supporting compliance and providing information to fully re-assess the fit and proper person test, if required.

No powers are available to the Tribunal or any relevant body to secure compliance with a property factor enforcement order that a property factor has already failed to comply with.

However, Section 23 of the Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011 (“the 2011 Act”) requires the First-tier Tribunal to serve notice on the Scottish Ministers where they have determined that a property factor has failed to comply with a property factor enforcement order.

Failure to comply with a property factor enforcement order, without a reasonable excuse, is a criminal offence under section 24 of the 2011 Act which can be reported to Police Scotland. A person found guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.

In respect of the actions that the Scottish Ministers will take when receiving a notice from the First-tier Tribunal, I would refer to the answer to question S6W-39119 on 29 July 2025.

The other matters of this question relate to operational matters that are the responsibility of the Scottish Court and Tribunals Service (SCTS) corporate body. These matters have been passed to the Chief Executive of the SCTS who will reply in writing within 20 days.

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.

The Bank publishes an annual Impact Report which illustrates the Bank's progress against its impact objectives. The most recent can be accessed at: Impact Report 2025 | Scottish National Investment Bank

As per the Bank's 2025 Impact Report statistics, since launch, the Bank's investment has supported the building of 742 Scottish homes.