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Transport Scotland meet ScotRail every four weeks to review, monitor and challenge the franchise obligations related to cycling, and this includes the proposals contained in the Cycle Innovation Plan.

No additional shower facilities have been installed since Abellio won the ScotRail franchise in 2015. However, the major stations Aberdeen, Edinburgh Waverley, Fort William, Glasgow Central (High Level) and Inverness all have shower facilities.

The Cycle Innovation Plan is updated annually. The document is currently with the members who attend the ScotRail Cycle Forum for comment before being published in June.

ScotRail’s Cycle Forum meets three times a year with the frequency approved by the members.

Information on the number of tenement buildings that have been demolished as a result of falling in to disrepair is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

Estimates of the total number of demolitions in Scotland are published each year by the Scottish Government in Housing Statistics for Scotland web tables, available at: .

Responsibility for maintaining tenements is principally the responsibility of the owners. The management and maintenance of tenements is usually governed by rules and conditions set out in the title deeds for the flats within the block. The Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004 provides a structure, known as the Tenement Management Scheme (“the TMS”), for the maintenance and management of tenements. The TMS only applies if the title deeds do not make other arrangements or if they are defective. The TMS contains provision for majority decision making on a range of issues, including repairs.

The Housing (Scotland) Act 2006 gave local authorities discretionary powers to require owners to carry out work on substandard houses and to provide assistance with repairs and improvements to private property. The Housing (Scotland) Act 2014 amended these powers to make them more effective in response to consultation with local authorities and other stakeholders, including new provisions to allow local authorities to pay missing shares for work agreed by a majority of owners in a tenement. In January 2017, the Scottish Government launched an area-based pilot of an equity loan scheme to assist owners to carry out essential repairs and energy efficiency improvements, which could facilitate common repairs in tenements.

The following table shows the average (mean) time in weeks from date of application to date of duty discharge/case closure, for homeless applications assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness and closed in 2015-16, by local authority.

Source: HL1 dataset as at 25-05-16

The Scottish Government does not keep this level of information. It is for the local authority-led Housing Options hubs to plan and facilitate their own meetings and develop and implement their own workplans. Scottish Government officials attend where required.

The Scottish Government organises regular National seminars for Housing Options hubs and other local authority representatives, with the involvement of third sector organisations.

The Scottish Government do not collect data on the geographical location of where homeless people have been housed by a local authority.

The responsibility for the allocation of housing in the social rented sector lies with the local authority or housing association concerned. In law social housing landlords are required to give reasonable preference, or priority, to people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness. Social landlords must allocate housing based on an assessment of an applicant’s housing needs against its allocation policy and within the legal framework.

While it is for the landlords to decide who is allocated any particular house, an overall increase in a landlord’s social housing stock will enable the landlord to house more applicants in need of social housing. We as a Government are working hard to do just that. We have committed to delivery of 35,000 social rented homes over this Parliamentary term, a 75% increase on our previous social housing target which we not only achieved but exceeded. These sit within our wider 50,000 affordable homes target, to which we have pledged over £3 billion of funding.

The number of social rented homes within each local authority area over the current target period will depend on the priorities of local authorities as identified in their Housing Need and Demand Assessments (HNDA), Local Housing Strategies (LHS) and Strategic Housing Investment Plans (SHIPs).

Local authorities are required by law to prepare an LHS, supported by an assessment of housing need and demand. The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 places a statutory duty on each local authority to carry out an assessment of homelessness in its area and to prepare and submit to Ministers, a strategy (as part of the LHS) for the prevention and alleviation of homelessness.