Chamber and committees

Funding is already available through the Affordable Housing Supply Programme to support local authorities, housing co-operatives and housing associations to buy existing housing stock where this meets a clear strategic purpose and can be clearly seen to support the achievement of the priorities and objectives set out in the relevant local authority’s Local Housing Strategy. This can include the purchase of housing stock that was previously owned by private landlords.

The Scottish Government has clear standards for the quality of care across our health and social care services and the safety, protection and wellbeing of residents and staff in our care home sector is a priority. We have for each of the last three years provided NHS Highland with funding of £864,800 per year to support their enhanced oversight and support of local care homes to encourage quality improvement and sustainability, and we recently confirmed further funding for 2023-24.

Ultimately the commissioning and provisioning of care home services for local communities to meet needs rests with NHS Highland and the Highland Council. The Scottish Government is in regular contact with NHS Highland, the Highland Council, and providers of social care to understand the challenges they are facing which include the impact of care home closures across the system.

The average response time (in days) for the Office of the Public Guardian to process (a) Electronic Power of Attorney Registration (EPOAR) submissions and (b) postal power of attorney requests in 2022-23 now that the financial year is complete is as follows (the table also indicates average figures for previous years):

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-17602 on 12 May 2023. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at the questions and answers page on the Scottish Parliament website .

Several of the projects funded by the Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund have been awarded funding involving the replacement of a traditional gas boiler. The Scottish Government can provide an estimate, based on the applications received since 2020, that the amount of properties that have been awarded funding involving the replacement of a gas boiler with a zero emissions heating system is an estimated 826 properties.

It should be noted that several of the projects awarded funding from the Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund involve intervention that is dependent on the specific needs of individual properties. This can include properties that do not have a gas boiler, and in rural areas that are off gas. In these cases, the interventions required may involve the replacement of another heating source for example wet electric central heating systems, storage heaters, oil and solid fuel, with an appropriate zero or low emissions heating system.

Alongside this, several projects funded through the Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund involve “Fabric First” Energy Efficiency Only Projects. In order to be eligible for “Fabric First” funding, social housing projects must commit to installing zero emission heating. Registered Social Landlords receiving “Fabric First” only funding will be able to apply for subsequent funding to install zero emission heating systems.

In summer 2022, Scottish Government commissioned a social research company, The Lines Between, to recruit and engage a diverse cross-section of people with chronic pain across Scotland. The Lines Between were selected by means of a competitive Invitation to Tender (ITT) process, which is a formal, open and recognised SG process, for which their submission was the highest scoring entry. Recruitment of the panel was undertaken by The Lines Between and their recruitment partner Taylor McKenzie.

The total cost of the contract was £40,000 exclusive of VAT. The Scottish Government made no direct payments to Taylor McKenzie or the members of the Panel for this work.

The cost of formatting the report for publication on the Scottish Government website was £516.58.

The Pain Panel has carried out a second exercise on the chronic pain information held on the NHS Inform website. This report will be published shortly on the Scottish Government webpage

As introduced, Section 3 of the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill requires Ministers to put and keep in place arrangements for the purpose of monitoring and improving the quality of the services that the NCS provides. Ministers intend to put in place arrangements for reporting on social care data nationally and locally.

In addition, Section 36 of the Bill as introduced, enables Scottish Ministers to set up a statutory scheme through regulations to permit data sharing for the efficient and effective provision of services by, or on behalf of, the NCS and the NHS. Section 37 of the Bill as introduced enables Scottish Ministers to produce information standards setting out how information is to be processed.

The safety of residents and homeowners in Scotland is our priority as we work to tackle cladding safety issues. We are undertaking a programme of work to identify, assess and remediate building with potentially unsafe cladding. The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) are members of the Cladding Remediation Stakeholders Group which meets regularly, the last meeting being on 29 March 2023. Work has been undertaken between the UK Government and UK Finance to develop a solution which reflects the situation in England and we are in urgent discussion with UK Finance about adapting that solution for Scotland as quickly as possible.

We note the recent publication by the British Property Federation, assessing the impact of the emergency Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022.

We recognise the importance of the private rented sector in the provision of rented housing, including homes provided through the Build-to-Rent sector, and we believe that a well-regulated private rental sector is good for both tenants and landlords.

The temporary, emergency Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022 is providing additional protections for tenants during these challenging and uncertain economic times. It is important to note that there are no restrictions on a landlord setting rents at the start of a tenancy and the legislation could only ever be in place for a total of 18 months, if the circumstances demand it and with Parliamentary approval, and therefore the temporary protections should not be a deterrent to new housing development.

Scottish Ministers have a statutory duty to ensure that the emergency powers taken are proportionate in order to respond to the costs crisis and will only last as long as required. In addition, the Scottish Parliament has continued oversight of the necessity of those powers through our regular reporting on the necessity and proportionality of the measures.

In the longer term, we have committed to introducing a national system of rent control, informed by views from tenants, landlords and investors through an advisory group. We intend to introduce a rent control system which is compatible with encouraging investment and we will continue to engage with stakeholders from across the sector on our long-term commitment to develop an effective system of rent controls for Scotland.

The best way to deliver a strong rented sector is to build more affordable homes and Scotland leads the way in this area, having delivered more than 118,000 affordable homes since 2007, with 83,291 of these for social rent. We’re now working towards our target of delivering 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, of which 70% will be for social rent.

The Scottish Government does not hold records for all mobile phones purchased in the last 5 years as they are purchased by individual business areas and agencies to meet their requirements. However, through our mobile voice & data contracts we have purchased various models of mobile phone including those from Apple, Motorola and Samsung.

For the past 5 years the Scottish Government has had a mobile voice and data contracts with Vodafone UK.

A contract was in place from 20 January 2016 to 20 September 2020. This was replaced with a new contract via https://www.gov.scot/publications/mobile-voice-and-data-services-framework-2020/ from 21 September 2020 to 20 September 2023.

A small number of connections have also been with EE over the last 5 years.