Chamber and committees

The launch of the Canada office was marked by a Ministerial visit, but there are no relevant records of costs for a specific event.

The Scottish Government Office in Canada has operated with either 3 or 4 members of staff since its establishment in 2018. Provided below are details of salary scale and job titles:

The Scottish Government Office in Berlin has operated with 3 members of staff since its establishment in 2018. Provided below are details of staffing numbers, job titles and salary scale:

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-24280 on 31 January 2024. 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 .

It is not possible to provide an accurate cost for the Berlin office launch event, as the majority of costs were met by FCDO and recharged to the Scottish Government; these costs cannot now be disaggregated from other sums recharged at the time associated with establishing the office.

It is not possible to provide an accurate cost for the USA office launch event, as we no longer hold relevant records dating back to 2001 when the office was established.

We are aiming to publish the International Culture Strategy in March 2024.

We do not allocate our budget at parliamentary region level. We issue resource planning assumptions at a local authority level and the levels for 2023-24 can be found on our webpage Affordable housing: resource planning assumptions to councils 2021-2022 to 2025-2026 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

Figures for 2024-25 will be reviewed once the 2024-25 budget has been formally approved by parliament.

Local authorities publish their Strategic Housing Investment Plans on an annual basis which outline their housing priorities over a five year period. We do not have estimates for the number of new affordable homes that will be built in the Highlands and Islands Region in each of the next ten years.

The Scottish Government currently does not hold information on Homelessness for the full year 2023. Homelessness data up to 31 March 2024, including data for the whole of 2023, which includes information about temporary accommodation placements, will be published in August 2024.

The Homeless in Scotland 2022-23 publications provides the most recent information available and is published here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/homelessness-in-scotland-2022-23/

Table T39 in the main tables, in the supporting documents, provides information on the (mean) average total time (days) spent in temporary accommodation for cases that closed, by household type and local authority. Additionally, table T40 shows the distribution of the time households spent in temporary accommodation for cases that closed, by local authority for a) all households, b) households with children and c) households without children.