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 Scotland House London launch event cost £9,456, which includes hire of venue and equipment.

The Scottish Government Brussels office was established in 1999 under a Labour government. Information on any launch events held at that time are therefore not held.

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.

The Copenhagen office launch reception cost £10,339, which includes venue hire, catering, and entertainment.

The UK Government notified its intention to ratify the UNESCO convention for safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage on 23 December 2023. The Scottish Government will work with the other UK nations alongside key Scottish stakeholders to consider the most appropriate methods of implementing the convention once ratified.

The Scottish Government is unaware of any cases of cultural, arts or heritage organisations which have agreed Intangible Cultural Heritage principles and then not abided by them.

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.

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.

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