Chamber and committees

Under the terms of their contracts, our Operating Companies have indemnified Scottish Ministers against claims of damage. As such they are liable for all claims and associated costs made in relation to road defects, and are required to deal directly with claimants with respect to all claims in relation to the operation of the trunk road network.

The Scottish Government hold central records for its own and Transport Scotland’s fleet. A breakdown is provided in the following table.

Eight buildings have received grant payments and all other buildings are being supported through the Single Building Assessment process.

The Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning chaired all meetings of the working group, it met five times between 28 April 2020 and 15 March 2021.

Edinburgh Tram tickets can be purchased in three ways: centrally via the Travel Management Team; via electronic procurement card (ePC); or the cost claimed back via a Travel and Subsistence (T&S) expenses claim. The total costs for Lothian Bus/Tram tickets are shown in the following table.

In all cases the tickets can be used on either Lothian Buses or Edinburgh Trams and it is not possible to disaggregate the cost for Trams only.

The cost of all tickets bought centrally in 2014 and 2015, and ePC transactions prior to 2019, are not held.

The Super Sponsor scheme was set up to provide a quick and safe route for displaced people from Ukraine. It is a national response that has rapidly established a round-the-clock operation, supported by multi-agency teams, local authorities, CoSLA and the third sector to support displaced Ukrainians and mare sure they are treated with compassion and care and their complex needs met.

We are working closely and collaboratively with our partners to ensure we rapidly respond to opportunities and resolve challenges and issues as they emerge, and ensuring that stakeholders and the direct experiences of those arriving in Scotland feeds directly into continuing to improve our programme.

The Building Safety Act 2002 is bringing forward a new regime for high rise buildings in England following Dame Judith Hackitt’s review of the building regulation system there, which concluded that the system was broken.

The reviews of compliance and enforcement and fire safety standards in Scotland following the Edinburgh schools report and the Grenfell Tower fire did not reach the same conclusion, but did recommend that strengthening of the system should be undertaken. The Building Standards Futures Board is leading change to improve our system through work streams on Digital Transformation, Workforce Strategy, Certification Strategy, Compliance Plan, Verification Delivery Model, Technical Strategy and Verification Standard.On 22 April new regulations were laid in Parliament to improve the safety of cladding on new buildings in Scotland and to ensure that replacement cladding, beyond minor repair, meets the current standards.

Scottish Government is committed to using all tools at its disposal to encourage and enforce measures by developers and other key actors to ensure buildings are remediated, cost-effectively and at pace. This could include raising additional revenue where there is an anticipated shortfall – to ensure equity between homeowners in unsafely cladded buildings with linked developers, and those without. We will explore the necessity of additional revenue raising as part of the development of the Scottish Safer Buildings Accord – announced to the Scottish Parliament on 12 May 2022 - Update on cladding remediation programme: Cabinet Secretary's statement - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The terms and conditions of all GB - Railcards are set out by “National Rail” (part of the Rail Delivery Group). Neither Transport Scotland nor ScotRail regulate the rules for the use of national railcards.

I would encourage the member to contact The Rail Delivery Group to raise this matter.

All SBAs so far have used physical intrusive inspections and desktop reviews to determine outcomes.

The terms of reference for the Cladding Stakeholder Group state the members agreed to maintain confidentiality of discussions. Discussions at the group cover information associated with high priority buildings and this cannot be disclosed due to the privacy notice agreed with homeowners.