Chamber and committees

Scotland has a long history of welcoming people of all nationalities, including those from Hong Kong. We recognise the positive contribution that they make to society. They are assets to our communities: sharing their culture, building businesses, working in our public services, volunteering their skills and making friendships. We are committed to supporting their integration into our communities and are confident that Scotland will benefit from their presence.

The Chinese Government’s decision to implement the National Security Law in Hong Kong is of deep concern to the Scottish Government. This action seriously undermines the principle of ‘One Country, Two Systems’, which guarantees Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy, and will irreversibly diminish the rights and freedoms of its people.

We support the UK Government’s commitment to providing a bespoke pathway to citizenship for British National (Overseas) citizens from Hong Kong and their dependants and we welcome those who have chosen to move to Scotland.

On 11 November 2020, the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning announced in Parliament the continuation of the Rural and Islands Housing Funds beyond March 2021 with up to £30 million available to support this demand led scheme as part of the five year Affordable Housing Supply Programme in the current parliamentary term.

The Creative Digital Initiative (CDI) launched on 23 March 2021, with businesses being able to register their interest to be informed when grant funding would be made available.

Businesses who had registered their interest were offered the opportunity in Mid-June 2021 to submit summaries for innovative digital projects. These summaries were appraised by an team consisting of representatives of Scottish Enterprise and South of Scotland Enterprise, and decisions will be finalised shortly. Successful projects will receive funding of between £20,000 and £50,000, as well as advice, information and development support or a mixture of these in order to fully deliver the project objectives within this calendar year.

South of Scotland Enterprise have also run a number of courses through the CDI that aim to increase confidence in digital understanding while breaking down technical jargon – these courses have been attended by 56 practitioners/organisations. As part of the CDI, Creative Scotland are currently delivering a programme that will support up to 50 individuals and cultural organisations to leverage digital tools and skills in their creative practice, audience engagement and organisational strategy.

In addition, following the success of the DigitalBoost Grant, where the Scottish Government invested £20 million in over 2200 SMEs to help improve their digital capacity and capability, the Scottish Government is investing a further £25 million to re-open the programmes, as part of our 100 days commitment. This forms part of a broader commitment to invest £100 million over the life of parliament to support our SMEs to take advantage of digital technologies to drive forward our economic recovery.

All businesses who have registered on the CDI website (XpoNorth | Register Your Interest) will receive a notification once the DigitalBoost Grant scheme is live.

Scottish Government officials continue to hold frequent meetings with SEPA to support them and to better understand risks, consequences and responses as they recover. SEPA’s progress is reported through their weekly service status update which is published on its website. They have also recently published their Annual Operating Plan which outlines their priorities to March 2022.

The Scottish Government authorised an overspend of up to £2.5m against the approved 2020-21 resource budget allocation to cover unforeseen costs including accessing cyber recovery expertise in the immediate aftermath of the attack and fund recovery work. In 2021-2022 SEPA have been given the flexibility to use all available funding to best effect to ensure a successful recovery.

SEPA continue to manage within their overall allocated annual budget for 2021-2022. This is reviewed on a monthly basis with Scottish Government Officials.

We are committed to taking action to ensure the housing market operates more fairly across Scotland, providing affordable housing options and choices in all communities. Housing to 2040 , Scotland’s vision for housing to 2040, includes a commitment that before the end of this year, we will have undertaken an analysis of what is required to gather more comprehensive data on the Scottish private rented sector (PRS), setting out our intentions for mechanisms by the end of 2021.

An analysis of what is required in order to collect more comprehensive data on the PRS will underpin our approach. We are considering all options, including current or potential PRS data systems.

As set out in Housing to 2040, it is our intention to explore all possible solutions afresh, including the development of any new systems, with a view to seeking stakeholder views as part of a consultation on our wider Rented Sector Strategy in 2022.

The review of the operation of the Rural and Islands Housing Fund has been completed and in response to the questions asked (a) The Scottish Government engaged with Local Authorities, Registered Social Landlords, funding scheme participants, a rural housing sounding board who had helped inform the original guidance of the Rural and Islands Housing Fund and other stakeholders with an interest in rural and island housing. There was overwhelming support that the fund should continue, (b) we are currently preparing a report summarising the findings of the engagement with stakeholders and (c) the report will be published shortly.

The answers to each part of this question are as follows:

• In respect of (a)(i) (housing developments currently connected to residential district heating networks): this information is not held centrally.
• In respect of (b)(ii) – (homes currently connected residential district heating networks): the most recent data held is from 31 December 2018, when there were 29,647 known domestic connections to Scottish heating networks (including communal heating).
• In respect of (a)(i) (housing developments that will (in the future) be connected to residential district heating networks): this information is not held centrally.
• In respect of (b)(ii) (homes that will (in the future) be connected to residential district heating networks): this information is not held centrally.

The data currently held on heat networks comes from data collected by the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) under the Heat Metering and Billing Regulations. Heat network operators are required to notify every 4 years. The latest data held is for 2018. Figures for 2019 and 2020 are not yet available.

Regarding future developments, planning applications for individual homes and housing developments are taken by planning authorities in the first instance. Where planning permission is granted there is no requirement to notify the Scottish Government or the Scottish Ministers of the decision. While the Scottish Government does collect some information on the performance of planning authorities this does not break down into details of individual applications.

The Heat Networks (Scotland) Act sets statutory heat network deployment targets, requiring 2.6 terawatt hours of output by 2027 and 6 terawatt hours by 2030. The targets are broadly equivalent to 120,000 and 400,000 average gas using homes being connected to heat networks for 2027 and 2030 respectively.? As heat networks are generally anchored around large non-domestic buildings, which account for significant portion of heat supplies, these figures should only be considered illustrative.

The Scottish Government has not received specific reports of scammers exploiting the new fire alarm standard. We are, however, recognise that the risk of people falling victim to a scam remains a possibility The Scottish Government launched a comprehensive awareness raising campaign about the new standard on 19 August 2021. This campaign includes messaging on the importance of using reputable tradespeople, looking out for trademarks that products that comply with the new standard as well as signposting to local government Trading Standards teams for further advice and to report suspicious activities.

We are committed to ending the practice of landfilling biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) in line with recommendations from the Climate Change Committee.

While we have not made an assessment of the isolated employment impact of the ban on sending BMW to landfill, landfill will continue to be an important treatment method for some waste types. Moreover, there is no restriction preventing landfills currently accepting BMW from continuing to accept other waste types, for which landfill presents the best environmental outcome, following implementation of the ban on landfilling BMW.

We have an opportunity for renewed impetus in building a fully circular economy in Scotland which will drive materials up the waste hierarchy and keep them in high value use for as long as possible. Many businesses are already promoting the adoption of circular economy practices, for example to actively increase waste prevention and reuse by rethinking operations, diversifying businesses and supporting innovation. Research suggests that the same amount of waste can create far more jobs through recycling, re-use or repair than landfill. The report is available here: Final-briefing-on-reuse-jobs-website-2.pdf (rreuse.org) . In addition, ZWS have also carried out research to identify how many current jobs are associated with the circular economy as well as the future roles and skills required: New research from Zero Waste Scotland and Circle Economy reveals scale of sustainable jobs | Zero Waste Scotland .

SEPA has the ability to carry out enforcement and investigatory activity in relation to compliance with the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) Regulations of businesses based outside Scotland, although their powers will not be as extensive as they would be in relation to those with a presence in Scotland.

SEPA has the power to cancel the registration of a producer that has failed to comply with its obligations under the DRS Regulations. That would make it an offence for anyone to sell their scheme articles to a consumer in Scotland.

SEPA works to an enforcement policy that sets out a wide range of tools at its disposal. SEPA is currently drafting a compliance strategy to support Scotland's DRS. SEPA will use all the tools available to it to ensure compliance with the DRS Regulations and a level playing field are achieved for businesses.