Questions and answers

Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for ��˿�� to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6W-09542

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 01 July 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 13 July 2022

To ask the Scottish Government (a) how many and (b) what total value of (i) open market and (ii) new supply shared equity property purchases it has supported in each (A) local authority and (B) year since 2016.

Question reference: S6W-09499

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 30 June 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 13 July 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-08560 by Shona Robison on 25 May 2022, how many landlords (a) have informed Rent Service Scotland that they have exited the market when the service has requested data from the sector and (b) it has requested data from, in each year since 2016.

Question reference: S6W-09500

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 30 June 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 13 July 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-08560 by Shona Robison on 25 May 2022, for what reason it did not list Rent Service Scotland as a data source for monitoring exit.

Question reference: S6W-09458

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 29 June 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 13 July 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many (a) open market and (b) new supply shared equity applicants have been (i) first-time buyers, (ii) people aged 60 and over, (iii) social renters, (iv) disabled people, (v) members of the armed forces, (vi) veterans who have left the armed forces within the last two years and (vii) widows, widowers and other partners of service personnel for up to two years after their partner has lost their life while serving, in each of the last five years.

The following table shows the number of properties purchased in the last 5 years in each category under the Open Market Shared Equity scheme. This information is voluntarily provided by the purchaser and in some cases, purchasers may fall into more than one category.

	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22
First time buyer	1347	1547	1032	611	823
Aged 60 and over	1	8	4	8	14
Social Renters	146	180	101	77	90
Disabled	8	11	16	9	6
Serving Armed Forces	3	7	3	2	1
Veterans	0	1	0	1	2
Widows of Armed Forces	0	1	1	1	1

The New Supply Shared Equity scheme, is delivered via registered social landlords on behalf of the Scottish Government as part of the Affordable Housing Supply Programme. Applicants status would be declared at the point of application assessment and is not centrally held within the Scottish Government.

Question reference: S6W-09501

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 30 June 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 13 July 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-08560 by Shona Robison on 25 May 2022, whether Rent Service Scotland (a) requests and (b) records information from landlords detailing whether they have exited the market, as part of its data collection processes.

Question reference: S6W-09457

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 29 June 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 13 July 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many (a) open market and (b) new supply shared equity properties it has supported the purchase of, broken down by equity in increments of 5%.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-09064 on 21 June 2022 which includes a link to the Affordable Housing Supply Housing Programme annual out-turn reports.

Incremental equity changes are not recorded and Scottish Government systems show properties where Ministers have an equity stake at what that equity stake is at the current time.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Question reference: S6W-09495

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 30 June 2022
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 12 July 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-06962 by Tom Arthur on 8 March 2022, what the reasons are for any delays in ministers meeting the responsibilities under paragraphs 2.28, 2.29 and 2.30 of Planning Circular 01/2021; whether it can confirm whether or not it has approved the control area under paragraph 2.28, and when it will publish its decision.

Question reference: S6W-09270

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 June 2022
Current Status: Answered by Patrick Harvie on 12 July 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what consideration it has given to the NESTA report, Estimating the willingness to pay for a heat pump, in determining the level of financial support that it will provide to householders, and the contribution of heat pumps, to meet its target for the rate of zero carbon heating system installations in new and existing homes and buildings to double every year from the current baseline to at least 64,000 installations in 2025.

Over the course of this parliament, we have committed to investing £1.8 billion into zero emissions heating and energy efficiency across Scotland. This includes the Scottish Government’s Home Energy Scotland Loan and Cashback scheme which currently provides households with up to £17,500 of combined loan and cashback funding for the installation of zero emissions heating systems.

The current Home Energy Scotland loan scheme has been operational and supporting households for some time, with the cashback element introduced in 2020. Through the Heat in Buildings Strategy we have also committed to replacing the cashback element of the scheme with a standalone grant during the course of 2022-23.

In developing the new grant scheme and setting grant levels, we are examining a range of evidence. This consideration will include the recent reports published by Nesta. This report and follow up report ‘how to increase the demand for heat pumps’ published in June 2022 by Nesta raises many informative findings, amongst them that a combination of incentives was found to be the most effective in increasing heat pump uptake, in particular a grant combined with lower running costs of the system.

The Scottish Government aims to make the installation of zero emissions heating systems both desirable and achievable for households across Scotland, and the future development of the Home Energy Scotland Loan and Grant scheme will play a large part in this.

Question reference: S6W-09261

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 June 2022
Current Status: Answered by Patrick Harvie on 12 July 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many non-zero-emissions heating systems have been installed under the second Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing; how many such installations it has supported with funding, and how much funding it has provided for these non-zero-emissions heating system installations.

The second Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH2) does not prescribe what measures a landlord should install.

The Scottish Housing Regulator does not currently publish data on the value of investment on complying with EESSH2 nor on the individual measures installed in order to comply with EESSH2 milestones.

Between 2018 and 2021, £7 million was made available by the Scottish Government to Local Authority and Housing Association landlords through the Energy Efficient Scotland Transition Programme’s Decarbonisation Fund to assist in compliance with EESSH and EESSH2. The funding was for energy efficiency measures, such as insulation and internal works, within projects that included decarbonisation activity (e.g. ground source heat pumps, air source heat pumps, biomass, solar PV and storage) and the conversion of off-gas grid properties to these technologies. The Scottish Government did not provide direct funding for heating in these properties.

Since 2020, the Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund has committed £14.33 million of grant funding to 20 social housing decarbonisation retrofit projects across Scotland. This includes the installation of zero emissions heating systems and “fabric first” energy efficiency upgrades. Non-zero-emissions solutions are not eligible for support under this fund. The Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme (LCITP) has provided a further £6.1 million of grant funding to two projects involving the installation of zero emissions heating.

Question reference: S6W-09269

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 23 June 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 June 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what the updated affordable housing resource planning assumptions for local authorities are, in light of the Capital Spending Review.

The Scottish Government has no plans to update the published Resource Planning Assumptions at this time.

The spending review sets out the financial framework to support delivery of our commitments. It sets out high-level multi-year spending plans for the Scottish Government and does not replace the annual budget process.

Annual budgets will continue to be set through the annual parliamentary budget Bill process and the annual budget will be based on the latest fiscal information.