Chamber and committees

The Cladding Stakeholder Group is operationally focused and so no expectation of ministerial attendance, however, I did attend the August meeting of the group to thank them for their on-going contributions to the evolving Cladding Programme.

The Super Sponsor scheme was set up to provide a quick and safe route for displaced people from Ukraine. It is a national response that has rapidly established a round-the-clock operation, supported by multi-agency teams, local authorities, CoSLA and the third sector to support displaced Ukrainians and mare sure they are treated with compassion and care and their complex needs met.

We are working closely and collaboratively with our partners to ensure we rapidly respond to opportunities and resolve challenges and issues as they emerge, and ensuring that stakeholders and the direct experiences of those arriving in Scotland feeds directly into continuing to improve our programme.

We welcome Community Land Scotland’s supportive commentary on the strategic Community Wealth Building (CWB) approach to economic development into all aspects of ownership and governance of land in Scotland.

CWB has a role to play in ensuring our journey towards net-zero is fair for all and that we achieve a just transition to an economy focused equally on prosperity and wellbeing. This includes the use of Land and Property, one of five key pillars of the CWB model.

To advance Community Wealth Building in Scotland, we have committed to introducing legislation during this Parliamentary session. This will involve consideration of a wide range of views and proposals.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service statistics are publicly available on the services website: https://www.firescotland.gov.uk/about-us/who-we-are/statistics/ , where context on the figures is provided.

Recruitment and staffing numbers are an operational matter for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

The Building Safety Act 2002 is bringing forward a new regime for high rise buildings in England following Dame Judith Hackitt’s review of the building regulation system there, which concluded that the system was broken.

The reviews of compliance and enforcement and fire safety standards in Scotland following the Edinburgh schools report and the Grenfell Tower fire did not reach the same conclusion, but did recommend that strengthening of the system should be undertaken. The Building Standards Futures Board is leading change to improve our system through work streams on Digital Transformation, Workforce Strategy, Certification Strategy, Compliance Plan, Verification Delivery Model, Technical Strategy and Verification Standard.On 22 April new regulations were laid in Parliament to improve the safety of cladding on new buildings in Scotland and to ensure that replacement cladding, beyond minor repair, meets the current standards.

Scottish Government is committed to using all tools at its disposal to encourage and enforce measures by developers and other key actors to ensure buildings are remediated, cost-effectively and at pace. This could include raising additional revenue where there is an anticipated shortfall – to ensure equity between homeowners in unsafely cladded buildings with linked developers, and those without. We will explore the necessity of additional revenue raising as part of the development of the Scottish Safer Buildings Accord – announced to the Scottish Parliament on 12 May 2022 - Update on cladding remediation programme: Cabinet Secretary's statement - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The framework for assessing applications for Green Freeport status is described in the joint bidding prospectus published on 25 March, which can be accessed at Green Freeports in Scotland: bidding prospectus - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) . Applicants’ commitments in relation to fair work practices will be considered under the lead objective: promote regeneration and high quality job creation. Only applications which achieve a high score on this objective will be shortlisted for ministerial consideration.

The terms and conditions of all GB - Railcards are set out by “National Rail” (part of the Rail Delivery Group). Neither Transport Scotland nor ScotRail regulate the rules for the use of national railcards.

I would encourage the member to contact The Rail Delivery Group to raise this matter.

The terms of reference for the Cladding Stakeholder Group state the members agreed to maintain confidentiality of discussions. Discussions at the group cover information associated with high priority buildings and this cannot be disclosed due to the privacy notice agreed with homeowners.

All SBAs so far have used physical intrusive inspections and desktop reviews to determine outcomes.