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 MSPs 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-09562

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 what action it is taking to improve public perception of the affordable housing supply programme, in light of Shelter Scotland's recent survey findings, conducted by YouGov, which reportedly found that 60% of adults in Scotland think that it is unlikely that the Scottish Government will deliver on its target of providing 110,000 affordable homes by 2032.

Scotland has led the way in the delivery of affordable housing across the UK with 111,750 affordable homes now delivered since 2007, over 78,000 of which were for social rent, including 19,339 council homes.

Despite the well documented global issues, not only have we met our previous 50,000 affordable homes target, we have now started to deliver against our commitment to deliver 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, 70% of which will be for social rent and 10% in remote, rural and island areas. More than £3.6 billion funding is being made available in this Parliamentary term, continuing to ensure the right homes in the right places.

Many thousands of people across Scotland have already benefitted from safe, warm, accessible homes that meet their needs, in a place where they can be part of a thriving community, and others will continue to benefit well into the future.

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-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-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.

Question reference: S6W-09128

Asked by: Mark Griffin, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 June 2022
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 29 June 2022

To ask the Scottish Government when it will next publish the tenant grant fund monitoring information; how regularly it will continue to publish the information, and what the latest (a) expenditure, (b) grant and (b) refusal figures are that it has received, broken down by (i) local authority and (ii) period covered.

The next set of data will cover the three month period up to 31 March 2022 and will be published once all 32 local authorities have provided the relevant information. This was requested from local authorities in April and reminders were sent in May and June. We will continue to publish this information on a quarterly basis.

To date, data until 31 March 2022 detailing expenditure, grant and refusal figures have been obtained for 23 local authorities. This shows £4,463,069.51 expenditure, 4,003 grants and 1,298 refusals.

The latest set of full available data, broken down by local authority, is the Tenant Grant Fund monitoring report: January 2022 , which was published in March 2022.

As local authorities can continue to use any remaining allocation in 2022-23 until fully spent, a final review will be carried out once all LAs have closed their funds.