Chamber and committees

Since 2019-20, local authorities have been allocated an annual share of £8 million from the Ending Homelessness Together Budget to support the implementation of their rapid rehousing transition plans. This is in addition to £2 million allocated in 2018-19 from the same budget for each local authority to develop a rapid rehousing transition plan, and £5 million in 2020-21 from the Winter Plan for Social Protection to help mitigate the negative impacts of the pandemic.

The additional £2 million allocated in 2023-24 for rapid rehousing transition plans is new money. No additional rapid rehousing transition plan funding was made available in 2022-23.

We are spending every penny of consequential funding we receive on this programme of work, with spend to date of over £3.6m and the anticipated whole-life cost approximately £400m.

Spending information and quarterly updates were published in July 2023 and is publicly available at Single Building Assessment programme: spending information - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . Work is underway on a stock census to evaluate buildings and explore ways to minimise cost and maximise revenue to ensure the programme can deliver its objectives in full, efficiently and in a reasonable timeframe.

The Scottish Government recognises the pressure on household budgets which is why both last year and this, we have allocated almost £3 billion, to support policies which tackle poverty and to protect people as far as possible during the ongoing cost of living crisis.

We are continuing to support free welfare, debt and income maximisation advice services with funding of over £12.3 million allocated this year.

In particular, the Scottish Government is investing over £6.67 million of funding to support free debt advice services in Scotland, part of our wider package of funding for income maximisation, welfare and debt advice services.

A further £2.3 million is being made available, through the Scottish Legal Aid Board under the Early Resolution and Advice Programme (ERAP), to offer direct assistance and legal representation for people at risk of or facing court action connected to debt related eviction or repossession. This includes in-court advisors based in Sherriff courts across Scotland.

Additionally, the Home Owners Support Fund, currently the only such scheme in the UK, offers support to those on low incomes who are at risk of falling behind on their mortgages and facing repossession or eviction. The Fund sits alongside advice services and legal aid support for homeowners.

This investment provides households across Scotland with a holistic, multi-channel offering, ensuring they are able to access advice and support in a manner which suits their needs.

The death of any child or young person is a tragic event and our sympathies are with all parents and families affected. We are awaiting the results of the preliminary investigations into the April 2023 data from Public Health Scotland before we can confirm our next steps. We will continue to work closely with Public Health Scotland, NHS Boards and Healthcare Improvement Scotland on our maternity safety programme of work.

In order to reduce the number of preventable deaths and harm to children and young people, the Scottish Government is funding a National Hub to review all child and neonatal deaths. The National Hub will draw on the evidence from pre-existing reviews and data, including PHS data, Serious and Adverse Event Reviews and Fatal Accident Inquiries, to identify and share learning through the provision of national guidance and annual reporting. The Hub is jointly operated by Healthcare Improvement Scotland and the Care Inspectorate and will issue its first annual report this Autumn. In June 2023 the National Hub published a new national information booklet about the child death review process designed for practitioners to share with bereaved parents, carers or other family members.

The main changes between MHDGN 2022/02 and MHDGN 2023/01 are listed in the ‘Introduction’ section of MHDGN 2023/01. Both guidance notes continue to be available on the Scottish Government website for reference purposes.

The Scottish Government is providing £4.3m of funding in 2023-2024 to expand the network of Climate Action Hubs across the country. The Hubs empower communities to engage in collective climate action, supporting peer-to-peer learning and helping groups to take advantage of funding opportunities. The network has now been expanded with Climate Action Hubs in Highland, Orkney and Shetland (Highlands & Islands Climate Hub), Fife, Moray and the Outer Hebrides in addition to Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire (NESCAN). In most other areas of Scotland, hubs are expected to launch by the end of the financial year, ensuring wide coverage of the country.

The Scottish Government is also committed to supporting the growth of community energy through CARES, which aims to help communities engage in and benefit from the energy transition to net zero. The scheme has advised over 900 organisations and offered £60 million in funding to over 680 projects. It has supported the installation of 57.9MW of renewable energy, and has supported a wide range of projects from community owned wind and hydro to decarbonising community buildings and installing solar PV on faith buildings.

The Scottish Government also supports communities through other initiatives, for example the Investing in Communities Fund (ICF), a multiyear communities fund that is delivered as part of the Empowering Communities Programme. The fund targets the most disadvantaged communities to deliver projects, services and activities that address poverty and disadvantage on their own terms.

Homelessness in Scotland is a statistical bulletin published by the Scottish Government twice a year. This data provides quantitative evidence across a number of issues for homeless households, including applications, assessments, temporary accommodation and outcomes. We will use the annual and interim Homelessness in Scotland statistics as the key measure of the success of initiatives to reduce the number of households and length of time spent in temporary accommodation.

We will also work with the sector on the potential to develop an additional monitoring framework to provide more up to date data in between these statistical publications, balancing the need for information with the pressures on landlords.

I have overall responsibility within my portfolio for support for business, industry and manufacturing.

The Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity, under circular economy, is the lead on the Circular Textiles Fund.

I refer the member to the answer to S6W-20272 on 17 August 2023. In addition, the EIR response referenced alludes to comments made by the Scottish Government regarding the logistics and infrastructure sections within the application documentation.

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

In 2023-24, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s baseline budget was over £2.6 billion, in addition to that, they also receive a capital allocation of £39 million, therefore it would be for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to fund any costs associated with cleaning air conditioning systems.