Chamber and committees

We are continuing to work on the review of the Housing for Varying Needs design guide, including engagement with stakeholders, with a view to publishing a consultation on proposed updates to the guide before the end of the year.

The Scottish Government has committed to invest at least £1.8 billion in heat and energy efficiency over the course of this parliament. This funding is delivered via a range of support options, which are available to households and businesses across Scotland, including those in rural areas.

Business Energy Scotland (BES) provides support to Scottish SMEs for implementing energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation measures. The service is delivered by Energy Saving Trust (EST) on behalf of the Scottish Government and has at least one dedicated Business advisor in each of its regional call centres. BES provides a gateway for SMEs to access funding for energy efficiency and zero emissions heating through the SME loan scheme and access to the Green Network for Business.

For household support, we continue to invest in our Home Energy Scotland Loans with Cashback scheme, Warmer Homes Scotland and Area-Based Schemes and we recognise the need to tailor support to specific challenges in remote rural areas, where we know installation and labour costs are higher. Our flagship domestic energy advice service, Home Energy Scotland (HES), administered by EST on behalf of the Scottish Government, provides a single point of access for free, bespoke, impartial advice on energy efficiency, renewable heating, funding for energy efficiency and zero emissions heating systems and fuel poverty support in Scotland. HES advisors in five regional advice centres provide tailored energy advice that is location specific and takes account of the different energy use requirements of properties in different parts of Scotland, taking rurality into account.

It is vital that the supply chain is equipped with the necessary skills and qualifications to provide a high quality service to consumers and we are supporting workforce growth through a combination of reskilling, upskilling and youth employment. Skills support and training provision must be aligned at a local level with business needs and future local demands. This year, we will publish a new Heat in Buildings Supply Chain Delivery Plan, which will outline specific actions and support focussed on strengthening the broad supply chains needed to deliver at the pace and scale of our transition.

The Scottish Government has no plans at this time to amend the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 to limit peat extraction for those with valid planning permission, and no assessment of costs has been undertaken.

Our draft National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) made clear the critical role that peat and carbon rich soils have to play in helping to achieve net zero target by 2045, through sequestering and storing carbon and proposed new national planning policies such that development proposals for new commercial peat extraction, including extensions to existing sites, should not be supported except in very limited circumstances. We are pleased with the wide interest in NPF4 from across society and are carefully considering the broad range of views shared with us before finalising NPF4 for Scottish Parliament approval.

At the same time, we are taking forward work to develop and consult on a ban on the sale of peat-related garden products, as part of our commitment to phase out the use of peat in horticulture.

We continue to work with local authorities on plans to ensure every school-aged child has access to a device and connectivity by the end of this parliamentary term. This will include consideration of processes and costs to update devices when necessary.

We will continue to work with the Regional Land Use Partnership (RLUP) pilots as they progress towards the delivery of Regional Land Use Frameworks by the end of 2023. Success will be measured in terms of how the pilots meet expectations as set out in the Bute House Agreement. Specifically, the pilots should demonstrate that they have taken a democratic, local and inclusive approach to governance and decision making, maximised engagement with stakeholders and helped to meet national outcomes on the environment and climate change. Although it is too early to gauge success against these criteria, we will use findings from the pilots going forwards to inform decision-making.

A year one evaluation of the pilots was completed for 2021-22. The aim was to provide insights and lessons learned as RLUPs worked towards establishment of their governance structures. The report will be published in due course.

The Scottish Government has committed to introducing a Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodiversity Bill to ensure that the rights of autistic people, people with learning disabilities, and neurodivergent people are respected and protected.

Across our work, we involve organisations led by disabled people and charities representing the views of a wide range of people who come under the learning disabilities, autism and neurodiversity umbrella.

Our intention is that the Bill will be fully co-designed with people with lived experience, and we ran 30 events with 18 different organisations during the scoping work which took place between May and July 2022.

We are also establishing a lived experience advisory panel to support the development of the Bill. Details about the recruitment process for the panel will be available shortly.

In terms of recorded offences, the data received from Police Scotland for producing the National Statistics on Recorded Crime, is a simple count of the number of crimes and offences, for each local authority, which the police have recorded and cleared up.

The nature of this data is such that while some crime codes refer to a single act or section of legislation, others include a wider range of legislation. As such we are unable to separately identify crimes and offences recorded under either Section 2 or Section 36 of the Road Traffic Act 1988. We are able to separately identify crimes recorded under Section 3, which relates to careless and inconsiderate driving. This document has been placed with the Scottish Parliament, bib number 63591. 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 .

The document provides figures for 2018-19 to 2021-22, along with data for the years of 2013-14 to 2017-18. Those earlier years were requested through a previous PQ S5W-22619 on 2 May 2019 and in preparing updated information for this PQ, statisticians identified a small coding error in the calculations made in 2019.

The error meant a small number of cases included in the earlier answer were for another part of the Road Traffic Act, beyond Section 3. This had a negligible impact on the implied magnitude of offences recorded under Section 3 (accounting for less than 0.5% difference for each year at the Scotland level). However we would like to use this PQ answer to highlight the amendment and issue the revised figures for 2013-14 to 2017-18.

In terms of (i) prosecutions and (ii) convictions: These are also included in the aforementioned document (placed with the Scottish Parliament, bib number 63591) – split into each of Sections 2, 3 and 36 of the Road Traffic Act 1988.

Care should be taken when comparing different data sources relating to the criminal justice system. For example recorded crime statistics count crimes and offences at the time that they came to the attention of Police Scotland, while criminal proceedings statistics report on cases which have concluded in court. This means that a crime may be recorded by the police in one year, with charges brought and court proceedings concluded in subsequent years. In addition, a person may be proceeded against for more than one crime, or a set of crimes with more than one victim, in a proceeding, but only the main charge is counted in these court proceedings statistics. There is also the possibility that the crime recorded by the police may be altered in the course of judicial proceedings.

Funding the Scottish Government has allocated to improve energy efficiency of buildings 2020 to 2022

Information is available from the Criminal Proceedings in Scotland 2020-21 statistical publication.

Table 4(b) in the main tables provides information on the number of convictions for 'Driving under influence'; and the additional dataset titled 'Drink and Careless driving' provides further information on the number of convictions for causing death by careless driving when under influence of drink/drugs.

These can be found under the 'Supporting documents' at this link - Criminal Proceedings in Scotland, 2019-20 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The cost of the analysis was £18,240.