Scottish Government has confirmed funding for the Workforce Specialist Service (WSS) for 2024-25 and the current contract will be extended for a further 12 months. WSS provides confidential mental health assessment and treatment for regulated health, social care and social work professionals in Scotland.

The primary funders of locally based advice services are local authorities and it is for them to decide how best to target resources to meet local needs. Scottish Government do not, therefore hold information on the number of money advisers employed within the most deprived communities. The Improvement Service publishes a report annually on local authority spend on money advice services. The latest report can be accessed using the following link: https://www.improvementservice.org.uk/products-and-services/performance-management-and-benchmarking/common-advice-performance-management-framework/2022-23-report

In 2023-24, the Scottish Government invested more than £12.5 million in free welfare, debt and income maximisation services. Our funding approach is intended to maximise household incomes, tackle problem debt and to reduce poverty. Whilst the majority of our funding is allocated to organisations with a national reach, our investment also supports a range of other initiatives such as the Welfare Advice and Health Partnerships, which has enabled welfare rights advisors to be integrated in up to 180 GP practices across Scotland, with 150 of these targeted in the most deprived communities and 30 in remote, rural and island settings, and the Advice in Accessible Settings programme that supports 24 local partnerships to deliver advice in community, education and health settings.

Restraint and seclusion should only ever be used as a last resort to prevent the risk of injury. Under existing guidance , all local authorities are asked to have policies in place governing the use of these practices and are asked to monitor their use.

As part of their scrutiny and improvement roles in schools, Education Scotland inspectors consider the impact of practice in relation to the use of physical intervention for children and young people.

To further improve practice in this area, the Scottish Government is developing new human-rights based guidance on the use of physical intervention in schools. We are due to publish the consultation analysis report on our draft physical intervention in schools guidance very shortly. We will then reconvene the physical intervention working group to make final revisions to the guidance.

Progress with this work can be followed via the working group’s webpage .

We are working collaboratively with Homes for Scotland and developers. Nine of the largest UK and Scottish developers have committed in principle to identify, assess and remediate buildings that they have played a role in developing. We have agreed the principle of developer led Single Building Assessments (SBAs) and will continue working collaboratively with developers to take forward assessment and remediation in line with the SBA specification that will be finalised at the end of May.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-safer-buildings-accord-developer-commitment-letter/pages/list-of-developers/

The Community Bus Fund is intended to support local transport authorities to improve local public transport in their areas. This can include exploring the full range of options set out in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019, including Bus Services Improvement Partnerships.

In 2023-24, the Community Bus Fund provided £750,000 in resource funding for transport authorities to complete initial feasibility and preparatory work required for the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019. A further £5 million of capital funding was allocated to local authorities, with greater levels of support for rural areas facing different challenges to those in cities.

The Scottish Government has invested over £65 million to support the installation of over 2,800 public EV charge points across Scotland as part of the ChargePlace Scotland(CPS) EV charging network. As a direct result, Scotland has over 4,880 public EV charge points and the best provision of public charge points per head of population of anywhere in the UK, outside of London, and the most rapid charge points per head of population of any region in the UK.

Transport Scotland has also provided £5.7 million to support the installation of 18,861 domestic charge points and £10.8 million to support 1,432 higher powered workplace charge points, complementing the public network.

In addition, the Scottish Government published the Vision for Scotland’s Public Electric Vehicle Charging Network last year, highlighting the need for a transition towards a public charging network that is largely financed and delivered by the private sector. This work is being supported through the £60m EV Infrastructure Fund(EVIF), where we are supporting local authorities across Scotland to work with the private sector to lever in the private investment needed to develop the EV charging network in Scotland at the pace and scale required to meet future demands.

As set out within Housing to 2040, we recognise the importance that good quality, accessible and adaptable housing has in allowing people to live independently with no barriers to participation in daily life, work and their community.

To make sure that we build in accessibility and adaptability to new homes and future proof them, we are carefully considering the public response to our recent consultation on proposals for enhancing the accessibility, adaptability and usability of Scotland’s homes.

It is right that developers make a contribution to remediating buildings that they developed, where they are able to do so, and we recognise that this contribution should be proportionate to profit. In England and Wales developers over £10m profit threshold have committed to meet all of the costs of remediating their buildings. In Wales developers under the £10m profit threshold will make a level of contribution to remediating their buildings reflecting their ability to pay. We are currently working with the sector in Scotland to explore the level of contribution that would be appropriate for developers.

We are working through our financial support options at pace to define how we can support those developers who cannot afford to pay in full for their remediation liability. We are committed to ensuring that our approach is proportionate to a developer’s ability to pay and are working with developers now to define the level of contribution that would be appropriate.

Scottish Government collects information on whether any member of a household making a homelessness application to a local authority slept rough:

a) during the 3 months preceding and b) the night before the application.

This data is collected from all local authorities as part of the Homelessness in Scotland statistical data collection. Annual totals of rough sleeping reported by applicant households, broken by local authority, are published in the main tables supporting the main annual publication, available here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/homelessness-in-scotland-2022-23/documents/

A document has been placed with the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, bib number 64985, containing data related to the reporting of rough sleeping a) during the 3 months preceding and b) the night before the application, broken down by month of application and local authority, from April 2002 to September 2023.

Data is not available prior to April 2002 as this is when data collection began. The most recent data available goes up to September 2023.

The data collection defines rough sleeping as any member of the applicant household who has slept outside, in the open air (such as on the streets, or in doorways, parks or bus shelters) or slept in a building or other place not designed for habitation (such as barns, sheds, car parks, cars, derelict boats, stations etc.).

Data is not gathered for any household rough sleeping who does not make a homelessness application to a local authority in Scotland.