Chamber and committees

The Green Jobs Workforce Academy is administered by Skills Development Scotland (SDS) and is designed to help workers identify and access skills support and training they need to secure green job opportunities as they emerge.

While the Academy does not directly employ teachers or lecturers, individuals can access training courses across a number of sectors including construction, energy, and land use and agriculture, via the greenjobs.scot website, and can arrange to speak with SDS career advisors.

The £150 cost of living support payments are administered by local authorities who are responsible for ensuring this support, and indeed all the other services they deliver, are visible and accessible for people in minority ethnic communities. Local Authorities have indicated they are using the discretion we allowed to make payments as a credit to council tax accounts in the majority of circumstances. Where payments are made in this way, the credit should be automatically included in council tax bills for 2022-23.

The cost of living package also included extra funding for the Fuel Insecurity Fund which is distributed through third sector organisations who are partnered with referral organisations. Advice Direct Scotland (ADS) recently reported that they now have over 500 trusted referral partner organisations (advice /support services) signed up who can refer people they believe are in need of assistance.

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.

Whilst the volume of peat used within the whisky industry is understood to represent around 1% of all peat extracted in Scotland, the Scottish Government does not hold figures for the amount of peat burned annually by the whisky industry to flavour malting barley.

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.

Priority groups for the Open Market Shared Equity and New Supply Shared Equity schemes were established following discussions with a range of stakeholders. In 2017 people aged 60 and over were included further to a Programme for Government commitment to assist older people to move into accommodation more suited to their needs.

Applications to the schemes are demand led and assessed against the scheme criteria including income. Applicants can often fall into more than one category for example first time buyer and disabled person. Eligibility is not known until assessments have been carried out and this includes whether or not the person is applying as a priority access group.

Under the Valuation for Rating (Plant and Machinery) (Scotland) Regulations 2000, solar panels, wind turbines and storage batteries are already exempt from rating where they are used for the generation, storage, transformation or transmission of power, where the power is mainly or exclusively ‘for distribution for sale to consumers’.

The Scottish Government delivers the most generous non-domestic rates relief for renewable generators that offer community benefit, as well as to all small scale hydro generators. Responding to the climate crisis, we are also expanding eligibility for the Business Growth Accelerator to include the installation of solar panels as a qualifying property improvement. The Business Growth Accelerator provides relief for 12 months on the rateable value increase associated with a qualifying improvement that has been made to a property.

We await the outcome of the UK Government’s Business Rates Review: Technical Consultation with interest.

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.

It is not the case that one category of project, under INTOG, may create additional cumulative impact while another may not. All offshore wind projects have the potential to contribute to cumulative impact on our natural environment and other sea users. The INTOG planning process has outlined spatial limitations for the entire INTOG planning process. This includes limitations on where Targeted Oil and Gas projects can be located, and where Innovation projects will be considered. It also includes areas of exclusion to help manage, at the plan level, the potential for negative impact.

The Scottish Government plans to consult in the coming year on our proposals for regulating minimum energy efficiency standards (equivalent to EPC C) in owner occupied and private-rented homes.