Chamber and committees

Due to the local elections period, it is expected that the national rail conversation will get underway after 5 May local elections. Decisions on a more definitive timescale will be arrived at when agreement has been reached with Trade Union partners and other interested stakeholders.

It is envisaged that the national conversation will engage a wide ranging group of stakeholders including passengers, regional transport partnerships, rail unions, disability groups, businesses and educational interests.

Transport Scotland officials are currently considering the details on the most effective and productive engagement programme to deliver the national rail conversation.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all people living in Scotland who want to work, including those receiving adult social care support, are able to access appropriate and flexible employability support.

We will continue to work towards our ambition to reduce the disability employment gap by at least half by 2038 as set out in the Fairer Scotland for Disabled People: Employment Action Plan. We will do this by supporting disabled people into employment , and ensuring that employers have the skills they need to recruit and retain this vastly underutilised pool of talent. We have reviewed current approaches to supporting disabled people with additional support needs into employment and will publish the findings by Summer 2022.

Through this plan we will work to ensure that our social care system delivers the right type and mix of support to help remove the barriers to work for disabled people.

Current models of care should afford flexibility to the individual to take up employment where possible subject to individual care needs being met. We are currently reviewing the guidance on Self Directed Support (SDS) to strengthen consistency and choice in the way social care is provided.

Going forward, we are committed to building on this as we work towards establishing a National Care Service to provide high quality, consistent and fair social care support across Scotland that enables people to achieve the outcomes they want to lead a full life.

The Energy Saving Trust maintains the Renewable Heat Database for the Scottish Government. The following table extracts domestic renewable heat installations over the period 2016-2020. Data for 2021 are not yet available. These data are derived from registrations under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme, and as such likely underestimate the total number of installations due to lower coverage of new build homes.

The £150 cost of living payments are administered by local authorities. Councils have indicated that they are using the discretion we allowed to make payments as a credit to council tax accounts in the majority of circumstances to ensure delivery before the end of April 2022.

Where the support is delivered as a direct payment, local authorities have flexibility over how this is done. Our guidance does require councils to take reasonable steps to ensure recipients are not disadvantaged by the mechanism selected, including ensuring the recipient does not have to pay an administration fee to a third party in order to receive the payment.

The function of Scottish Water is to treat and supply high quality drinking water as well as to collect, treat and safely dispose of wastewater for those customers who are connected to the public water and/or wastewater network. To this end, Scottish Water has delivered significant levels of investment since its creation in 2002 and local authorities would not be funding and undertaking work which falls under the specific functions of Scottish Water. Local authorities have separate responsibilities in relation to private water supplies, any private water and waste water pipes which fall under their responsibility, some roads drainage and also for flood risk management. In areas where there are inter-linking responsibilities, some partnerships have been established between Scottish Water and local authorities, such as the Metropolitan Glasgow Strategic Drainage Partnership and the Edinburgh and Lothians Drainage Partnership. In addition to this, Scottish Water has partnerships with local authorities, where appropriate, where there is an opportunity to develop and deliver innovative solutions, such as the Stirling district heating scheme and work being delivered through Clyde Gateway, among others.

Scottish Water would be happy to further discuss its partnership work with Local Authorities if the member would find that helpful.

The Scottish Government does not collect or hold this information. You may wish to contact the Scottish Housing Regulator who collect a range of information from all social landlords as part of their Annual Return on the Scottish Social Housing Charter or individual Local Authorities.

During Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2022, we welcomed the training offer that Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, has developed to ensure that our future workforce feels confident to support anyone who comes forward with concerns about disordered eating. We are pleased to see that all our medical schools in Scotland are in discussions with Beat to deliver eating disorder training, or are already delivering it.

We were also pleased to announce additional funding for Beat which includes Beyond the Symptoms Training for GPs and healthcare professionals, which will support them to identify when a patient has an eating disorder, and confidently intervene early. This training will be available from April.

Our guidance to local authorities is clear that the £150 cost of living payment should not be applied to historic council tax debt or arrears. Households who have difficulty in meeting their council tax liability should contact their council to establish if they are eligible for a council tax reduction. This scheme currently reduces the council tax liabilities of over 470,000 households according to their circumstances and ability to pay and applications can be backdated by up to six months.

The Scottish Government publishes figures relating to Local Authority New Build Completions in the ‘Local Authority Starts and Completions’ table found on our website here; https://www.gov.scot/publications/housing-statistics-for-scotland-new-house-building/

Some of these homes will have been supported by Scottish Government funding and some will have been financed through other routes.

The Scottish Government has not made any legislation that would require the adoption of a heat pump in any building.

Rather, as part of our Heat in Buildings Strategy, we have proposed that all homes will be regulated to use zero emissions heating systems by 2045. Such systems include, but are not limited to, heat pumps.

As set out in the Heat in Buildings Strategy Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA), the average cost of installing a heat pump is currently around £10,000 with, approximately, an additional £2,000 for energy efficiency measures to support the efficient performance of the heat pump. However, the cost of conversion to zero emissions heating systems is likely to vary across properties according to property type, size and condition.

The BRIA also explains that the impact on operating costs is also likely to vary across properties, with some seeing a slight increase in energy bills while others experience a reduction. The impact that installing a heat pump will have on energy bills is dependent on the relative price of electricity and the fuel being displaced, the relative efficiency of the heat pump and the heating system being replaced, and a number of other factors, including the design and quality of system itself, user operation, and the energy efficiency of the property in which it is installed. Wider system costs, for example upgrading energy networks, may have an impact on consumer bills.

We recognise that in decarbonising our homes we must not make fuel poverty worse, and the Heat in Buildings principles set out in the Fuel Poverty Strategy commit to delivering measures to help those in fuel poverty to manage their running costs.

Further analysis of the estimated capital and running costs of zero emissions heating systems has been undertaken as part of the Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment for the Heat in Buildings Strategy, which can be accessed at: Heat in buildings strategy: business and regulatory impact assessment - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The member may also be interested in an independent report, commissioned by the Scottish Government, that assessed the suitability of low carbon heating technologies in residential buildings in Scotland. The report can be accessed at: Executive Summary - Low carbon heating in domestic buildings - technical feasibility: report - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The Scottish Government will produce a range of further impact assessments when we introduce legislation requiring zero emissions heating systems.