Chamber and committees

The Financial Year 2023-24 budget increases the resource allocation for the college sector by £26 million. This funding is intended to support strategic change that will enable the sector to better respond to future demands.

A final response to S6W-15379 was issued on Monday 13 March 2023.

Scotland's first Data Strategy for Health & Social Care brings together a range of existing activity, along with its associated funding. The Strategy provides a framework for how improvements to data will be driven forward to the benefit of the people of Scotland.

A newly formed Data Board for Health and Social Care will oversee the delivery of the Strategy and any investment cases required to progress specific actions. The Board will also consider what further work is required for the next iterations of the Data Strategy.

Delivering the principles and priorities set out in the Strategy should be seen as a long term commitment of the Scottish Government and COSLA. Implementation of each iteration of the Strategy will be accompanied by a delivery plan.

We have proposed to bring forward amendments to the Deposit Return Scheme regulations so that only the largest grocery retailers will initially be obliged to provide an online takeback service and all other businesses will be exempt.- Further work will be undertaken to identify how older and disabled people will be protected during this phasing-in of online takeback to ensure the scheme is accessible to everyone.

I met with Councillor Maureen Chalmers, the COSLA Spokesperson for Community Wellbeing on 22 March. We had a productive meeting and discussed how good practice in providing rapid help for people living with MND can be shared across local authorities. I will also follow up directly with MND Scotland with a meeting currently being arranged. Additionally, I can confirm that MND Scotland is a member of our recently formed Accessible Housing and Independent Living Stakeholder group. The group had their first meeting at the end of 2022, giving constructive feedback to our Housing for Varying Needs review. My officials are arranging further meetings of this group to seek views and opinions on housing and independent living issues including the adaptations review and the new Scottish Accessible Homes Standard.

The Warm Home Discount is a rebate upon energy bills that large energy suppliers are obliged to provide, not a social security payment administered by the Scottish Government. Whilst some powers are provided to Scottish Ministers to design a separate Warm Home Discount scheme in Scotland, these require the consent of the UK Government.

All households in receipt of Pension Credit Guarantee Credit are automatically eligible for a WHD rebate in Scotland, England and Wales (Core Group 1). Households in England and Wales in receipt of low income benefits or tax credits (Core Group 2) are not automatically eligible for a WHD rebate. The UK Government further restricts eligibility for this group in England and Wales based upon data matching.

These low income households only receive a rebate if they also live in a property that is assumed to have low energy efficiency. The UK Government uses Council Tax data held by the Valuation Office Agency to estimate energy costs and uses this as a proxy for low energy efficiency. This approach reflects the definition of fuel poverty adopted by the UK Government in England (low income, low energy efficiency).

Scottish Ministers do not agree that energy efficiency is the main driver of fuel poverty. The Scottish Parliament has unanimously agreed a definition of fuel poverty that is not dependent upon the energy efficiency of people’s homes. The valuation roll data held by the Scottish Assessors Association is not relevant in establishing fuel poverty on this basis.

In 2021, Scottish Ministers formally proposed a more flexible, fairer and simpler fuel poverty scheme to replace the WHD scheme in Scotland. This would have provided an automatic rebate to vulnerable households across Scotland. We have also repeatedly pressed UK Ministers to increase funding for the WHD rebate to reflect the higher level of need in Scotland. UK Ministers did not agree to do so and continue to decide the total value and number of rebates provided. Nevertheless we remain willing to work with the UK Government to improve the help available to vulnerable families across Scotland.

Scottish Ministers have limited powers to design and implement a separate scheme in Scotland. These require the consent of the UK Government. Previous proposals by Scottish Ministers to increase the value and number of rebates provided to vulnerable households were not agreed by UK Ministers. The UK Government continue to reserve to themselves the powers to set the value of the rebate and the total value of the obligation in Scotland. However we remain willing to work with the UK Government to improve the help available to vulnerable families across Scotland.

Information on the initial destinations of school leavers three months after the end of the school year (i.e. in October) is published in the Summary Statistics for Attainment and Initial Leaver Destinations publication released in February each year. Information on the destinations of the same cohort of school leavers nine months after the end of the school year (i.e. the following April) is then published in Summary Statistics for Follow-up Leaver Destination each June.

Chart 4 of the follow-up leaver destination publication provides information on the percentage of school leavers whose follow-up destination was the same as their initial destination whilst table L1.8 of the associated supplementary tables provide more details of the percentages of school leavers who had sustained their initial destination or moved into another destination by the time of the follow-up data cut - i.e. 9 months after leaving school.

The information used to produce these destination statistics is sourced from the 'Opportunities for All' shared dataset. This dataset contains information on the activities undertaken by young people in Scotland and is managed and hosted by Skills Development Scotland (SDS). SDS supply the Scottish Government with two snapshots from this dataset throughout the year - in April and October.

The eDevelopment service currently has 52,000 registered users.

In the last 5 years the eDevelopment homepage has been accessed 3,294,533 times. The figures in the following table set out the number of times that users have accessed the homepage. The information is broken down into each of the 5 years.

As of January 2023, over 1.41m planning and building standards applications have been submitted online via eDevelopment since the service went live in 2016.

The service regularly receives over 5,500 submissions each week.

We estimate that in 2021-2022, up to 95% of all planning submissions and 90% of building warrant applications are submitted online through the service.

The Scottish Government allocates budgets to the college and university sectors at aggregate level. SFC holds the responsibility to distribute funding to individual colleges and universities. Prior to publishing funding allocations, the SFC works with the college sector to identify the best split of the available resources provided in the Budget, taking into account Government priorities and the college sector’s needs. Scottish Government priorities are outlined in the annual letter of strategic guidance, which is normally issued in March/April each year. SFC announces indicative allocations in March and final allocations to the sectors in May each year.