Chamber and committees

This information is not currently held centrally. Students applying to the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) for the Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) for the first time are referred for an assessment of their needs before a decision can be made. SAAS does not set the timing of this process, as it is undertaken by an external party. A new DSA Online system is currently in development.

Five local authorities have supplied NatureScot with cull return information in the past five years.

A single building assessment is a holistic whole building assessment that assesses and identifies life critical fire safety risks alongside any mitigation or remediation that is required in respect of any potentially combustible façade material. The assessment is undertaken by a competent person and considers each building in its own context. As such, it is for the person who is undertaking the building assessment to provide recommendation as to the extent to which cladding materials needs to be removed and replaced, taking into account the other recommendations that they might make in relation to improving the general fire safety of the building. The objective of the assessment it to bring the building to a tolerable level of risk.

The single building assessment technical specification was published on the 21st of June 2024 and provides detailed guidance to competent persons on how they should conduct a single building assessment (SBA) in Scotland. The SBA makes clear that the relevant benchmark guidance includes the PAS 9980, PAS 79-2 and the Benchmark criteria from the Scottish Domestic Technical Handbook. The competent person should have due regard to all of this guidance in undertaking the SBA report. The SBA sets out the need to conduct a Fire Risk Assessment (FRA) and Fire Risk Appraisal of external walls (FRAEW). It also sets out templates and an approach that is relevant in Scotland. We engaged extensively with stakeholders across Scotland through the Task and Finish Group to develop the SBA technical specification and adopted the PAS 9980 standard as there is evidence that it is known and understood widely across the industry in Scotland. The objective of the assessment it to bring the building to a tolerable level of risk.

External wall assessors are expected to weigh all the appropriate evidence and apply their professional judgement in determining the extent to which external cladding requires to be removed from a particular building, with a view to achieving the overriding objective of bringing the building to a tolerable level of risk.

The Scottish Government is providing record funding of over £14 billion to local authorities in the 2024-25 financial year, including £600.6 million of additional revenue funding for day to day services.

It should be noted that the vast majority of funding available to councils is provided by means of a block grant from the Scottish Government. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocated the total financial resources available to them on the bases of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

As set out in our Housing to 2040 strategy, we are committed to streamlining and accelerating the housing adaptations system and to take action to reduce the time it takes for disabled people to apply for and receive support and maximise the available resources. My officials are taking forward a review of the current housing adaptations system which will make recommendations on how best to improve and streamline the system.

We published updated practical guidance on the delivery of adaptations and equipment services in January 2023. This guidance will contribute to the housing adaptations review.

We are considering the potential implications for the delivery of adaptations and other delegated housing services arising from the establishment of a new National Care Service.

We have also developed regulations under section 37 of the Equality Act 2010 that give disabled people the right to make necessary, reasonable adaptations to common areas of their property.

At local level, responsibility for the planning, ensuring delivery of adaptations and most funding currently rests with Health and Social Care Partnerships.

In addition, funding of over £8 million is also available for 2024-2025 for adaptations for Registered Social Landlord tenants. In the period between 2007-2008 and 2022-2023, over £200 million has been provided directly to housing associations to help them provide housing adaptations.

The single building assessment technical specification sets out the specific and limited criteria in which BS 8414 test data can be used by a competent person as a benchmark for determining whether a wall cladding system is tolerable. This is set out in 3.1.4 of the SBA specification. It should be recalled however, that the single building assessment is a holistic assessment of the building that does not simply consider cladding combustibility, but also other relevant fire safety risks and provides an overall assessment of the measures required to bring a building to a tolerable level of risk.

We recognise the concerns around teacher workload, which is why we remain committed to reducing class contact time by 90 minutes giving teachers more time out of the classroom.

To help inform this discussion the WPI report which was commissioned by the Scottish Government and published on 7 May contains a number of high-level future scenarios and assesses their broad compatibility with any changes to teachers’ contracted class-contact time.

These scenarios will help to facilitate our discussions with SNCT partners on how we can best deliver this commitment and ensure effective and evidence-informed workforce planning we have commissioned an external modelling and research exercise.

We continue to explore with the SNCT how we can best make progress. Any changes to teachers’ terms and conditions require tripartite agreement through the SNCT.

Development of a national pilot scheme to provide travel support for people seeking asylum and not currently eligible for the existing National Concessionary Travel Schemes continues with the Working Group. Further information will be published on the Scottish Government website and provided to third sector organisations as preparations for the pilot to open are made.

The scheme will build on learning from the small local and regional pilots that have been delivered by third sector organisations over recent years. Expected learning from the scheme includes impact of providing free bus travel, demand for this concession, the cost of providing this concession, and the practicalities of delivery of such a scheme at the national level.