Chamber and committees

Looking ahead, when do you expect to meet your KPI of 80 per cent?

Yes, it does. Just so that I understand this properly—and for people watching the meeting—is there a reason for the backlog? Are the cases that have been put aside more complex, or is it just stuff that has built up historically due to lack of capacity?

I guess that some of the land that does not transact is larger estates that are perhaps held in trust and never transfer, but a lot of it must be public sector land held by the state—perhaps the Forestry and Land Scotland, a local authority or a health board. Do we know what percentage of land that does not transact is public sector land, and is the public sector being proactive about moving towards registration?

Is it your general approach simply to balance your accounts year to year, so that you are not having to look at adjusting the level of fees to take account of fluctuations in market activity?

Good morning. I should declare an interest. I am a member of the Law Society of Scotland, although not currently practising, and in my previous life spent many hours dealing with Registers of Scotland, in a very satisfactory manner, I should say. There are no complaints there.

My question is a follow-up to the question about finances. Before 2020, I think, ROS had built up a very substantial reserve, which, if I remember correctly, was well into the tens of millions. You will remember the exact figure. The Scottish Government came in and helped itself to that and took that money to be part of the consolidated accounts to spend on revenue. ROS has moved to a different model now and is no longer a trading fund. If we were suddenly to get a dramatic slump in the property market, you would not have those reserves to rely upon. The question that follows from that is, does that mean that you would have to go back to the Scottish Government to ask for resource to fill a potential black hole in your trading account?

Thank you.

That is helpful in contextualising it. I have one or two follow-up questions on specifics. On your KPIs, your target in March 2024 for first registrations was 80 per cent. However, your performance for July to September was just 66.6 per cent. Is there a reason why you are quite far off reaching the target?

I want to move on to ask questions about your success in dealing with applications turnaround time. I was looking at the data that we have been provided with about your key performance indicators and how well you are meeting those. To contextualise this, it might be quite helpful if you gave us a flavour of how you are dealing with new applications in the context of the backlog that we have heard about. We have been told that the oldest case in the backlog goes back to February 2018. How do cases end up in the backlog? What are you doing to address that, and how does that interrelate with dealing quickly with new applications?

We could debate that issue all morning. As an addition to those figures, it would be interesting to see a breakdown of the demography of the people who are leaving Scotland and those who are coming in. If it is the case that people in their 20s and 30s are leaving and that those who are coming in are in their 40s and 50s, that would also tell us something interesting. [Interruption.]

Good morning, Deputy First Minister and colleagues. I will ask a couple of budget-related questions. I enjoyed your exchange with Lorna Slater on economic growth. It is fair to say that, since you came back into Government, there has been something of a shift in the language in Government, and more of a focus on growth than was previously the case.

However, in recent years, we have seen negative impacts on the Scottish Government’s enterprise budgets—I remember asking your predecessor Neil Gray about that issue last year. The budgets of the enterprise agencies, of VisitScotland and of employability programmes suffered quite severe cuts in this year’s budget but also in those of previous years. I do not expect you to tell us what will be in the budget, but would you accept that, if there is a new focus on economic growth, further cuts in the very areas of the budget that would help to drive that growth will not be helpful?