- Asked by: Oliver Mundell, MSP for Dumfriesshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 04 April 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 4 May 2022
To ask the Scottish Government for what reason premises in Class 7 under the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) (Scotland) Order 1997 are no longer exempt from the short-term let licensing legislation.
Answer
Some premises listed in Use Class 7 (of the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) (Scotland) Order 1997) are exempt from short-term let licensing legislation. Schedule 1 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Order 2022 (the “Licensing Order”) sets out excluded accommodation. Class 7 premises that are exempt are:
- a hotel, which has planning permission granted for use as a hotel
- a hostel
In addition, the following exemption will also be relevant to some Use Class 7 premises (including hotels and guest houses):
- premises in respect of which a premises licence within the meaning of section 17 of the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 has effect and where the provision of accommodation is an activity listed in the operating plan as defined in section 20(4) of the 2005 Act
Guest houses were originally listed as excluded accommodation in a previous version of the Licensing Order laid in December 2020. However, in response to feedback from our stakeholder working group we subsequently removed guest houses from the list of excluded accommodation and undertook further public consultation on this in June 2021. As guest houses can be variants of home sharing, they should not be automatically excluded. Further information is set out in the 2021 consultation paper (item 1 in table 2 at page 12): Short term lets - draft licensing order and business and regulatory impact assessment (BRIA): consultation - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .
Unless otherwise excluded by any of the criteria set out in Schedule 1 of the Licensing Order, use class 7 premises are therefore within scope of the definition of a short-term let in the Order laid in November 2021 and approved by the Scottish Parliament in January 2022.
- Asked by: Emma Roddick, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish National Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 May 2022
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Current Status:
Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2022
To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the potential impact on households and businesses in Scotland of the National Grid’s locational pricing system, in light of Scottish Renewables' reported assessment that Transmission Network Use of System charges make projects in Scotland almost 20% more expensive than equivalent projects in the south of England.
Answer
Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2022
- Asked by: Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 May 2022
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Current Status:
Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2022
To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the ruling of the Scottish Information Commissioner that it should release legal advice that it received regarding a second independence referendum.
Answer
Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2022
- Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 03 May 2022
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Current Status:
Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2022
To ask the Scottish Government what measures it is putting in place to ensure that Ukrainian families understand the conditions of its Super Sponsor Scheme.
Answer
Taken in the Chamber on 3 May 2022
- Asked by: Neil Bibby, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 April 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 3 May 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-06190 by Jenny Gilruth on 4 March 2022, whether it will provide updated figures on how many young people have now received a free bus pass through the Young Persons’ (Under 22s) Free Bus Travel scheme, broken down by local authority, based on the latest information available.
Answer
The following table shows the number of cards produced for the Young Persons Scheme (YPS) by close of business 25 April 2022, broken down to local authority level. This information was supplied by the National Entitlement Card Programme Office (NECPO). NECPO support the 32 local authorities by assisting with the integration of various national and local public services on the National Entitlement Card (NEC) and are the joint controller with local authorities of this data. Please note this data might include a small number of cards produced without the travel product.
Aberdeen City | 15,249 |
Aberdeenshire | 14,750 |
Angus Council | 3,878 |
Argyll and Bute | 3,046 |
City of Edinburgh | 42,142 |
Clackmannanshire | 1,683 |
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar | 677 |
Dumfries and Galloway | 4,763 |
Dundee City | 14,151 |
East Ayrshire | 9,574 |
East Dunbartonshire | 4,146 |
East Lothian | 7,761 |
East Renfrewshire | 5,013 |
Falkirk | 5,240 |
Fife | 23,938 |
Glasgow City | 25,066 |
Highland | 8,178 |
Inverclyde | 10,966 |
Midlothian | 5,321 |
Moray | 4,126 |
North Ayrshire | 4,091 |
North Lanarkshire | 13,060 |
Orkney Islands | 596 |
Perth and Kinross | 6,775 |
Renfrewshire | 10,270 |
Scottish Borders | 5,628 |
Shetland Islands | 1,509 |
South Ayrshire | 3,451 |
South Lanarkshire | 7,881 |
Stirling | 3,833 |
West Dunbartonshire | 8,166 |
West Lothian | 9,400 |
- Asked by: Rachael Hamilton, MSP for Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 04 April 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Tom Arthur on 3 May 2022
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the delivery of community access to allotments through the Community Wealth Building strategy.
Answer
The Scottish Government has embraced the Community Wealth Building (CWB) approach to economic development as it is geared to helping local businesses and communities own a greater stake in how their local economy functions. The CWB model involves local authorities and their community planning partners ensuring that collective investment decisions focus on how local economies can be helped to grow and flourish. Practical benefits can include more local, good quality jobs; improved access to public contracts for local businesses; more land being placed in community ownership or developed for the benefit of the community; and support being offered to new businesses exploring employee ownership or other innovative models.
We are working with local authorities to help them frame strategic CWB action plans and have committed to introducing CWB legislation during this session of the Scottish Parliament. Our objective is to embed the CWB approach as a strategic economic development policy. Many actions taken across the policy spectrum will contribute to CWB and creation of a national economy striving for prosperity and societal wellbeing in equal measure. Community access to allotments can play a part in this collective effort.
Allotments and their provision are the responsibility of local authorities. That is set out in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. However, since 2012, the Scottish Government has allocated more than £1.4 million to directly support and increase the land that is available for community growing.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 April 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Maree Todd on 3 May 2022
To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made, regarding the testing available in Scotland, of the decision by NICE to approve placental growth factor (PlGF) testing for expectant mothers in England.
Answer
The Scottish Government expects women to receive high quality, safe care including in the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of pre-eclampsia.
We are working with the Scottish Perinatal Network to examine the adoption of PlGF testing for pre-eclampsia in Scotland. This will include consideration of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidance on PlGF (DG23) that is currently out for consultation and expected to be published in July 2022.
- Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 04 April 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 3 May 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-07145 by Lorna Slater on 23 March 2022, whether it will now provide the information requested on whether Circularity Scotland has entered into signed contracts with partners to deliver the Deposit Return Scheme's logistics, operations and IT systems, in line with the timescale that it set out in December 2021.
Answer
Circularity Scotland has identified preferred bidders to deliver IT, operations and logistics work and is in intensive discussions with them to finalise the contracts. We expect this to conclude shortly.
- Asked by: Foysol Choudhury, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 April 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 3 May 2022
To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with the UK Government to ensure that Ukrainian refugees seeking to come to Scotland and who apply for a visa through the Ukraine Family Scheme can access up-to-date information about the status of their visa application.
Answer
We have repeatedly called for the UK Government to waive all visa requirements but, in the absence of this, what we now need is for the Home Office to give people visas quickly and efficiently.
I have held several meetings with Lord Harrington, Minister for Refugees, on the UK response and how our governments work collaboratively. I recently met with Kevin Foster, Minister for Safe and Legal Migration, and raised my many concerns about the significant administrative issues, complex application processes, and unacceptable delays for individuals who have been forced to flee their homeland.
To alleviate confusion with the process, the UK Government should immediately implement automatic status updating for applications (on all routes) that have been outstanding for more than 5 days and an escalation process for applications that have been outstanding for more than one week.
- Asked by: Monica Lennon, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 April 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Maree Todd on 3 May 2022
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will introduce treatment time targets for return chronic pain patients.
Answer
Chronic Pain services in Scotland are currently unable to gather electronic data on return appointments in a consistent manner and one that could support routine national data collection by Public Health Scotland (PHS).
We have published a draft Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery for public consultation in December 2021 which invited ideas and views on a proposed commitment to continue work with Public Health Scotland to increase national reporting and analysis of data to improve services for people with chronic pain.
Responses to the consultation are currently being analysed and we will publish our response to the findings, including how these views have been used to shape the final Framework and actions to improve pain management data collection and reporting, later this year.
