Chamber and committees

At 1 October, all six local authorities in the pathfinder programme have mainstreamed their support provision and remain committed to delivering a Housing First programme. I can confirm that the Housing First pathfinder programme formally ends on 31 March 2022. The Scottish Government has provided local authorities with 50% of funding for the final year to support the mainstreaming of Housing First. This funding ended on 30 September 2021.

To support the scaling up and mainstreaming of Housing First, the Scottish Government has been working in partnership with Homeless Network Scotland on a suite of tools to support local authorities and their partners:

• Publication of a National Framework which provides a comprehensive overview to all organisations involved in developing and implementing Housing First e.g. local authorities, health and social care partnerships.
• Development of a ”check-up” process has been undertaken to support the scale-up of Housing First and enable measurement against the Housing First principles. The check-up process involves self-reflection, peer input and includes a sounding board of experts to help local authorities improve their programme.
• A dedicated monitoring framework to capture Housing First progress across Scotland’s local authorities. The monitoring framework collects in-depth detail on all Housing First tenancies from 1 April 2021 on a quarterly basis. The second quarterly progress report was published on the Scottish Government website on 30 November 2021.

Scottish Government’s funding of Rapid Rehousing Transition Plans support the development of Housing First across Scotland. Officials are supporting local authorities through regular meetings and on an individual basis. These foster a supportive environment to ensure effective implementation of Housing First programmes across Scotland. Homeless Network Scotland’s annual Housing First Conference on 31 March 2022 will coincide with, and celebrate the end of, the pathfinder programme.

The information requested is not held by the Scottish Government.

The information requested is not held by the Scottish Government.

The latest annual data available, published in March 2020, estimates that 24% of children lived in relative poverty, after housing costs, in Scotland in the period 2017-20.

These statistics predate the impact of Covid-19 on the financial security of families and the removal of the £20 per week uplift to Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits. Data covering the first year of the Covid pandemic (2018-21) will be published by the end of March 2021.

We recognise the challenge faced in reaching the interim child poverty targets for 2023-24, that is why we have declared a national mission to tackle child poverty and have committed concrete action including the doubling of the Scottish Child Payment from April 2022.

The Scottish Government will publish the second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan by the end of March 2022, setting out a range of actions which will put us on a critical path to the targets set.

Our draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan, to be published next year, will provide a roadmap for the future of Scotland’s energy system. We will co-design this Plan with the workers, businesses and communities most impacted by the net zero transition, including those within or associated with the nuclear energy industry. Workers, unions and the communities they are part of have always been at the heart of a just transition and will continue to be so. Together, we must provide certainty for those affected as we set out how the economic and social impacts of Scotland’s changing energy system will be managed.

We will outline the sequencing for specific Just Transition Plans in the new year, and as part of that, will explore if there are any sub-sectors of the energy system that would benefit from a standalone Plan.

There is now a suite of 15 ecosystem health indicators relating to condition, function and resilience of ecosystems, available on Scotland’s Environment Web at: https://www.environment.gov.scot/our-environment/state-of-the-environment/ecosystem-health-indicators/ . NatureScot is currently working on updates to the indicators to take advantage of new data that have become available.

At the time of the 2018 discussion paper, NatureScot and the James Hutton Institute were working to develop two new indicators, for nitrogen pollution and summer temperatures. Both indicators use bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) which are very sensitive to environmental change. This work has been completed and the additional indicators are available on Scotland’s Environment Web, at: https://www.environment.gov.scot/our-environment/state-of-the-environment/ecosystem-health-indicators/resilience-indicators/ .

ScotRail’s (a) newest rolling stock are the seventy class 385 trains which were introduced in 2018-19 and (b) oldest rolling stock are the twenty-five Inter-city High Speed Trains which were introduced from the late 1970s and extensively re-engineered and refurbished in 2017-2020.

The Scottish Government recognises the sustainability advantages of re-engineering older rail vehicle structures, when appropriate, thus avoiding the energy expended in the production of new rail vehicles.

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) figures from 2020-21 calculates that the average age of the 350 trains in the ScotRail fleet is 21.69 years.

Transport Scotland has no plans for voluntary redundancies or voluntary retirement schemes to be offered to ScotRail employees at the present time.

A statutory review as required by section 11F of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 is currently underway which will be complete early in 2022.

We are also currently developing the scope for a wider review of aspects of snaring including the question of a ban. Details of this review will be announced in due course.

The Scottish Government is committed to upholding the highest standards of animal welfare and we shall, of course, engage widely with stakeholders as part of this work.

Abellio ScotRail staff will transfer to the new operator, ScotRail Trains Limited on 1 April 2022. In accordance with the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (TUPE) regulations, all employees will transfer on their current contractual terms and conditions, which in some cases may include car allowances and healthcare provisions. Non-contractual bonus schemes are not covered by TUPE. As new staff are recruited, previous terms and conditions covered by TUPE need not apply to new contracts.