Chamber and committees

We know that childcare providers are concerned about the impact of the new Omicron variant on their businesses. The Scottish Government is working as a matter of urgency to assess the implications of the most recent public health interventions on the sector.

The Scottish Government is limited as to what additional financial support can be provided as our budget is fully committed at this late stage of the financial year. That is why we have urged the UK Government to make further funding available to support our public health interventions and the impacts of restrictions.

Since the start of the pandemic the Scottish Government has made more than £22 million of dedicated support available to day care of children services through the Temporary Restrictions Fund and the Transitional Support Fund. Round 3 of the Temporary Restrictions Fund was targeted at school age childcare services recognising the specific impacts for those services. We have also provided up to £3.2 million to childminding services, in particular through the Childminding Business Sustainability Fund.

Our Financial Sustainability Health Check, published on 31 August, sets out the further actions that we will take to build on the substantial targeted financial support made available to the sector since March 2020.

This includes commitments to review the administrative requirements on providers, to develop a five-year workforce strategy for the childcare sector, and to deliver a programme of targeted business, financial management, marketing, and human resources support. We will also work with COSLA and local authority childcare teams in order to map the various existing approaches to the contract management of let agreements, understanding how important that is to financial sustainability.

The Scottish Government has committed to build a system of school age childcare by the end of this Parliament, free to those families on the lowest incomes. We will continue to work closely with school age childcare services to do all that we can to offer support, within the budgetary constraints that we face.

While the Scottish Government and our agencies sometimes make use of aerial imagery services, excluding this, spend on “Photography Service Providers” – the relevant category in our accounting system - per year since 2016 is shown in the following table:

The existing Scottish Household Recycling Charter has been designed to cover and encourage reuse. As set out in the Programme for Government, we are committed to evaluate the Household Recycling Charter with COSLA, and review its Code of Practice to ensure it reflects current best practice and makes it easier for households to recycle and reuse

Work to develop a waste route map to 2025 and beyond is also considering how to further support reuse given its importance within the waste hierarchy.

The Gateway Review into Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) took place on 14-16 June 2021 and the follow-up Assurance of Action Plan took place on 21-23 September 2021. Subsequently, I carried out extensive engagement with industry and other stakeholders, in particular Circularity Scotland Ltd, to agree a final timescale and clear milestones for delivery. These were announced to the Scottish Parliament on 14 December 2021.

The Scottish Government has not received any applications for rent pressure zone designation.

Our aim is to ensure quality, affordability and fairness for everyone who rents a home and our new draft Rented Sector Strategy consultation, ‘A New Deal for Tenants’ opened on 20 December 2021, closing on 15 April 2022.

Topics include improving affordability by introducing an effective national system of rent controls in the private rented sector. For rent controls to work effectively, we need good rental data and we will undertake an analysis of what is required on data collection and will set out our intentions. We will also build on learning from the rent pressure zones. The consultation includes the question: “Are there elements of the existing Rent Pressure Zone system that could be built upon when designing a new system of rent controls?”.

Upon consideration of the consultation responses, a final Rented Sector Strategy will be published later in 2022 and deliver a key commitment, set out in Housing to 2040 , Scotland’s long term vision for housing.

VoiceAbility will begin providing advocacy services for those who require support to access Social Security Scotland assistance from 31 January 2022. VoiceAbility will continue to build capacity in the service after that date to ensure the service scales up proportionally as more benefits become available.

The Scottish Government currently offers a number of funding schemes, through Transport Scotland, to support businesses (including taxi owners) make the shift to low and zero-emission vehicles. Applications for these funds can be made through the Energy Saving Trust who administer the schemes on our behalf.

Available support includes:

• the Switched-on Taxi Loan scheme which offers an interest free loan up to £120,000 to enable taxi owners and operators to replace their current vehicle with an eligible ultra-low emission vehicle.
• the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) Retrofit Fund for taxi owners operating within LEZs. This provides up to 80% grant funding to replace existing diesel engines to meet the Euro 6 standard for driving within a LEZ. The grant provides up to £10,000 per wheelchair accessible taxi installing re-powering technology, or £5,000 per taxi installing exhaust after-treatment systems.
• the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) Support Fund, which is available to eligible microbusinesses and sole traders (including taxi operators), operating within a 20km radius of Scotland’s LEZs. The fund provides a £2,500 grant towards the safe disposal of non-compliant vehicles as an incentive to take older, more polluting vehicles off the road.

We acknowledge that working together is crucial, because we know that Scotland’s world-leading and legally binding net-zero target cannot be met by Government alone and a partnership approach between businesses, local authorities and communities will continue to be required to respond to the climate emergency and improve the air quality within our cities.

We have no current plans to extend free bus travel beyond the existing older and disabled persons scheme and the new young persons scheme for people under the age of 22.

Our Fair Fares Review, which is currently in its planning stages, will consider the range of discounts and concessionary schemes which are available on all modes including bus, rail and ferry, as well as the cost and availability of services.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on temporary closures of community pharmacies or the possible cost incurred by the NHS.

The provision of community pharmacy pharmaceutical care services are the responsibility of territorial Health Boards as set out in the National Health Service (Pharmaceutical Services) (Scotland) Regulations 2009. Any challenges faced by community pharmacies in ensuring the safe and effective dispensing of treatments should be discussed with the local Health Board.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-05153 on 5 January 2022. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers