Chamber and committees

The Programme for Government , published and debated in the Scottish Parliament on 7 September, set out that “The Scottish Government will work to ensure that a legitimate and constitutional referendum can be held within this Parliament, and if the Covid crisis is over, within the first half of this Parliament.”

All employees of Scotland’s National Performing Companies, which the Scottish Government funds directly and includes (a) the National Theatre of Scotland, (b) the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, (c) Scottish Ballet, (d) the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, (e) Scottish Opera and (f) Creative Scotland are paid at least or more than the National Living Wage.

The National Partnership for Culture established a Measuring Change Group in August 2020. The Group has met on several occasions since then, most recently in August 2021.

The Arts Alive programme delivered a digital programme from the period of April-June 2021 which consisted of 3 residencies. The remaining residencies and school sessions, delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will be delivered in September-December 2021, as requested by schools.

The programme was delivered over 3 schools (see the following table)

The National Partnership for Culture met on:

24 June 2020

23 July 2020

4 September 2020

4 November 2020

12 March 2021

29 April 2021

1 July 2021

10 September 2021.

The date of the next meeting has not yet been identified.

Creative Scotland has commissioned a review of fair work, leadership, workforce and skills development across the arts, screen and creative industries in Scotland. The review will take place between August 2021 and February 2022.

The Scottish Government continues to engage with the culture and heritage sectors to build fairer and more inclusive workplaces. Culture and Fair Work is an initial priority theme for the National Partnership for Culture (NPC), with the partnership currently reflecting on the material gathered at the Culture and Fair Work workshop, held on the 29th April. The NPC will use the outputs from the workshop to form recommendations to Ministers, by the end of 2021, on what priority actions should be taken to tackle the key issues faced by the culture sector in Scotland.

Through its flagship Fair Work First policy, the Scottish Government is extending Fair Work criteria to public sector grants, other funding streams and contracts wherever relevant and appropriate to do so. Creative Scotland are also drafting a statement of their commitment to Fair Work principles as an employer and a funder – this will be agreed by unions and published on their website.

Officials meet with the STUC and affiliate unions representatives of the cultural sector regularly to discuss key issues impacting workers in the culture sector, including issues around Fair Work.

The Scottish Government has also delivered on 100-day manifesto commitments to establish a Living Hours accreditation scheme and to expand Fair Work First criteria to support flexible working and oppose fire and rehire practice which will also benefit those working in the culture and heritage sector.

Our draft Heat in Buildings Strategy notes that communities, large and small, will play an important role in driving forward the transformation of the nation's building stock. An Islands Communities Impact Assessment is being finalised alongside the Strategy and will help inform the final Strategy. We are currently analysing responses from our consultation on the draft strategy and will publish a final version in due course.

In addition, as set out in our Strategy, our new CARES programme will focus further on supporting communities to work together to address and champion heat decarbonisation on a local level. Through CARES we will work to understand further the models and solutions most appropriate for communities in Scotland.

Building on these approaches, we will work with stakeholders to ensure there is an evidence based, tailored service for islands and remote locations, and will set out more detail in our forthcoming Islands Energy Strategy.

All our current advice and support services are already open to those in rural /island locations. Home Energy Scotland (HES) provides free, impartial advice including specialist bespoke advice on home renewables. HES is also the gateway to loans and grants programmes from Scottish Government for energy efficiency improvements and zero emissions heating in homes in Scotland, for example the HES loan which covers up to 100% of the cost of measures and offers cashback of up to 45% on energy efficiency measures and 75% for renewables measures.

The Scottish Government is carrying out an extensive mapping of good practices relating to climate change and islands both from within the UK and overseas.

A total of 761 applications were received for ICF Round 1 in June 2019. Of those, 276 were approved and 485 were unsuccessful

The following table shows the number of ICF applications approved and rejected broken down by local authority area