Chamber and committees

Community ownership is an important aim of the Scottish Government and there are numerous examples of communities thriving after being given the opportunity to own and manage their own assets. This leads to better local outcomes, which focus on local needs. It is important that we align our policy in respect of increased community ownership to help deliver the vision and outcomes set out in our new Scottish Biodiversity Strategy. If we are to meet our ambitious target of halting the decline in Scotland’s biodiversity by 2030 and reverse it by 2045 all land owners and managers across community, private, voluntary and public sectors will have a part to play.

The questions asked and the answers provided, during each of the Building Scotland (Amendment) Regulations 2022 - Online Q&A Sessions, were recorded and have now been collated and organised according to topic within a summary document.

This document is currently being finalised and will be published at: www.gov.scot/publications/building-standards-technical-handbooks-2022/ before the end of September.

The Scottish Government are currently co-designing the Disability Equality strategy with Disabled People’s Organisations. The co-design meetings will continue until February 2023. The strategy will be published in Spring 2023 once fully accessible versions are created.

The Scottish Government does not hold figures on the total number of pupils that have been able to watch to a theatrical performance. However, the five National Performing companies have provided the following data of pupil attendance in-person at performances in schools and as part of school field trips:

The evidence review of muirburn being carried out by SAC is currently going through NatureScot’s Quality Assurance Process and they will publish the final review shortly once this process has been completed.

Both the work on developing the Islands Bond, and undertaking the Islands Bond consultation process were led by the Scottish Government’s Islands Team as part of their overall work to support our islands.

Additional input was sought from other policy areas as needed.

The full information requested is not held centrally.

However, some information is available at a Scotland level from published results from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS), which includes information on the proportions of time households have been on a housing list, by length of time category, including a split by current housing tenure of the household where sample sizes allow. This will include housing association lists as well as council lists, and include households who are already living in the social rented sector who are looking to transfer to another social rented home, as well as households looking to move into social rented properties from other housing tenures.

The 2020 household survey results are here (Tab 1_66 for length of time on a housing list), with results for earlier years 2016 to 2019 available on the Scottish Household Survey Data Explorer (Table 3.16d). The results on the proportions of time are based on households who have reported being on a housing list (which will include housing association lists as well as council lists), and exclude any households who have reported using choice based lettings where not already on a housing list.

The published Scottish Household Survey results also include information for each year on the total number and percentage of households and adults in Scotland who have reported to be on a housing list. Available figures on the estimated absolute number of households and adults are available for the years 2013 to 2019 on the Annual Report 2019 Excel tables (Tab: Chapter 3 – Housing, tables 3.17 and 3.18), and estimated absolute number of households only for the year 2020 on the Scottish Household Survey 2020 Results Housing Tables (Tab 1.60).

It should be noted that results of the SHS 2020 telephone survey are not directly comparable to SHS results for previous years as COVID restrictions prevented face-to-face interviews, which previous surveys used, and the change of mode could have affected the answers given. More information on this, and other methodological guidance, is available here . In addition, the figures for 2020 as well as earlier years will be subject to survey sampling variation.

The Scottish Government is committed to the recruitment of a minimum of 1,500 additional staff to support the operation of Scotland’s National Treatment Centres (NTCs) and is supporting a range of activity to achieve this.

The recruitment data we collate is management information and not suitable for publication. NTC Recruitment is the responsibility of each NHS Board. It is therefore for NHS Golden Jubilee to provide detail regarding their recruitment.

The Scottish Government is committed to continue working closely with local authorities in tackling the global climate emergency. Local authorities are independent corporate bodies with their own powers and responsibilities and are entirely separate from the Scottish Government. As long as they act lawfully, it is up to each local authority how it manages its day-to-day business and decision making processes. This includes decision making around which carbon accounting tools to use.

The award of public contracts is regulated by law. Any future awarding of Scottish Government contracts for carbon accounting tools would be subject to open and genuine competition, including adequate publication of the contract opportunity, in line with the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015.

It is not possible to provide this information due to the complexity of monitoring the number of individual incidents of people accessing drug and alcohol services and relevant spend per individual, across the time period requested.

Data on numbers accessing drug treatment are published in the Scottish Drugs Misuse Database (SDMD) and dates back to 2006-07.

In April 2021 a new Drug and Alcohol Information System (DAISy) went live. This database will provide more detailed information on the numbers accessing treatment. The first report from DAISy will be published in January 2023. This will provide latest data on numbers receiving treatment through drug and alcohol services.

Details on specific funding on treatment is also not available at the national level. Funding provided for Alcohol and Drug Partnerships supports a wide range of activity alongside treatment services including prevention, outreach and harm reduction services. We intend to provide detail of the funding provided to ADPs in the first National Mission annual report which is due later this year.