Chamber and committees

Section 75 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 (as amended) is a mechanism to allow local authorities to restrict or regulate development or the use of land. Section 75 agreements, otherwise known as planning obligations can be entered into by planning authorities and persons with an interest in the land.

Planning obligations have a limited but useful role to play in the planning process where they can be used to overcome obstacles to the grant of planning permission, (which could include lack of school capacity), where the tests set out in Circular 3/2012: Planning Obligations and Good Neighbour Agreements are satisfied.

Under the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, responsibility for the provision, management and maintenance of the school estate rests with the education authorities. The Scottish Futures Trust is not responsible for the provision of or delivery of schools. The responsibility for the management of independent schools including any capital projects is a matter for individual proprietors.

(a) None.

(b) I refer the member to the answer to his previous question S5W-01600 on 16 August 2016. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

We have no plans to require public bodies, or local authorities, to produce registers of brownfield land. A register of each urban vacant and derelict site surveyed by local authorities in the 2015 Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey is available on the Scottish Government website at

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Planning/SVDLSSiteRegister.

The Land Registration etc. (Scotland) Act 2012 prescribes the information that the Keeper is required and empowered to include in the map-based Land Register of Scotland. We have no plans to prescribe the inclusion of information about brownfield land.

We continue to support development on brownfield sites though our £7.835m Vacant and Derelict Land Fund provided to local authorities through the Local Government settlement.

The Scottish Government has committed to consider measures to tackle poverty across all ethnicities, reflecting our approach to social justice and our response to the report from the Independent Adviser on Poverty and Inequality. In the Race Equality Framework, we committed to filling evidence gaps on how and to what extent people from minority ethnic groups are accessing the benefits they are entitled to and to ensuring that all relevant policy and programme areas – such as benefits take-up policy and access to advice services (including financial advice) - are fully impact-assessed for equality, as is our legal duty.Our starting point is that services must be accessible and work for all. However, in some instances, there may be a need for targeted action that focuses specifically on minority ethnic communities. For example, we are aware that people from minority ethnic groups may be under-represented as applicants of the Scottish Welfare Fund: we are therefore looking to work with relevant organisations and to target publicity for these communities, so as to improve their access to the fund across Scotland. We will continue to look for opportunities to support people from minority ethnic groups, particularly those on low incomes, in all our work going forward.

The Scottish Government offers “unconscious bias” training for all its staff. This is part of comprehensive range of measures implemented to help us provide a fair and inclusive workplace and complement our fair and open approach to resourcing.

We have listened to what registered social landlords need to increase the pace and momentum of housing delivery and are continuing to work closely with them and with all of our partners from across the housing sector to ensure the stable supply of more affordable homes.

We are committed to investing over £3 billion over the next five years to deliver at least 50,000 affordable homes and in January grant subsidies for housing associations were increased by up to £14,000 for each home.

The Joint Housing Policy and Delivery Group (JHPDG) brings together stakeholders from across housing, including the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations (GWSF), the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations SFHA) and the Council of Mortgage lenders. This group is working together to ensure that we make the best use of all our resources and expertise to deliver more homes and to collectively agree what delivery actions are vital at this time.

The planning review covered a wide range of complex issues. Over the coming months, we will investigate the detail and implications of the review recommendations and will identify which improvements require legislative change. We will publish a White Paper in Winter 2016.

On 11 July 2016, the Scottish Ministers issued our response to the independent review of planning. The response states that we agree with many of the panel’s recommendations and outlines both the immediate and longer term actions we will take to bring about planning improvement and reform.

We are committed to working in collaboration with key stakeholders and will be setting up themed working groups to consider the options in more detail. This work will inform a White Paper, which we intend to fully consult on in Winter 2016.

Scottish Planning Policy (2014) sets out the Scottish Government's policy on enabling the delivery of new homes. It sets out that local authorities, through their development plans, should address the supply of land for all housing, maintaining at least a five-year supply of effective housing land at all times. Planning authorities should prepare an annual housing land audit as a tool to review and monitor the availability of effective housing land, the progress of sites through the planning process, and housing completions. This information is not collated centrally.