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-06956

Asked by: Pauline McNeill, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Ash Regan on 15 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government when the last condition survey was carried out on all fire stations in Scotland.

Question reference: S6W-06895

Asked by: Paul McLennan, MSP for East Lothian, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 15 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether the provisions in the UK Building Safety Bill that apply to Scotland will be enacted through a statutory instrument in the Scottish Parliament, and, if so, what it anticipates the potential impact will be on the built environment in Scotland.

The UK Building Safety Bill introduces fundamental changes to the Building and Fire Safety regime for high rise buildings in England. Part five of the Bill includes provision for a New Homes Ombudsman scheme, the aim of which is to drive up standards in housebuilding and to independently resolve disputes between developers and purchasers where there is an issue concerning the quality of a new-build home.

The provisions would confer a regulation making power on Scottish Ministers to be able to add an additional descriptor of developers who would be required to join the scheme. Other aspects of the scheme are to be established by the Secretary of State either administratively or by regulations. The provisions require that Scottish Ministers are consulted on the main aspects of the scheme before they are taken forward, in order to ensure it is tailored to suit Scottish needs, culture and practice.

Whilst housing is a devolved matter, reservations apply to consumer protection and there may be matters which cannot be entirely addressed in a Scottish system. The Scottish Government wants to ensure that protections offered to buyers of new-build homes in Scotland can also take account of relevant consumer protection requirements.

The extension of the New Homes Ombudsman scheme to Scotland is subject to the approval of the Scottish Parliament.

Question reference: S6W-06957

Asked by: Pauline McNeill, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Ash Regan on 15 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will publish the results of any assessment it has carried out on the physical condition of the country’s fire stations.

Question reference: S6W-06959

Asked by: Pauline McNeill, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Ash Regan on 15 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government whether additional funding will be made available to help the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service in its response to the climate emergency, and, if so, how much funding will be made available.

The Scottish Government has increased the funding for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) by £9.5 million for 2022-23. The Grant In Aid provided to SFRS is not allocated for specific purposes, it is an operational matter for SFRS to decide how the resources should best be used to keep communities safe.

Over the last two years SFRS has received £3.4 million in Grants from Transport Scotland and the Energy Savings Trust, to invest in electric vehicles and charging infrastructure to assist in the transfer to a low carbon light fleet. SFRS also received additional Capital Budget of £0.5 million from Transport Scotland in 2021-22, to invest in a low carbon fire appliance proto-type.

Question reference: S6W-06949

Asked by: Pauline McNeill, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Ash Regan on 15 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what action it has taken following the rejection of the pay proposal for firefighters in 2019-20, whether an increase in pay for Scottish Fire and Rescue Service staff will be considered, and if so, when this will be implemented.

Question reference: S6W-06958

Asked by: Pauline McNeill, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Ash Regan on 15 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how much it estimates that it will cost to ensure that all fire station buildings are in a good standard of repair.

Question reference: S6W-06950

Asked by: Pauline McNeill, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Ash Regan on 15 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what additional budget has been allocated to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service for the coming years.

Question reference: S6W-06954

Asked by: Pauline McNeill, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 March 2022
Current Status: Answered by Ash Regan on 15 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to increase the recruitment of (a) permanent full-time uniformed and (b) retained staff in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

Question reference: S6W-06840

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 25 February 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 15 March 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many people have been housed in hotel and bed and breakfast accommodation in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority.

The Scottish Government collects snapshot information through the HL2 aggregate data collection on the number of households in temporary accommodation placements at the end of each quarter, by accommodation type. This information is available for all Local Authorities from 2002. This information is published as part of the Homelessness in Scotland Statistics publications. Table 29 of the ‘Main tables’ associated with the 2020/21 publication – the latest full year available – provides the number of households in bed and breakfast accommodation placements as at 31 March 2021, by local authority.

Supporting documents - Homelessness in Scotland: 2020 to 2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

By its nature, snapshot data cannot provide a true reflection of the entirety of temporary accommodation usage across a period of time.

The Scottish Government also collects record level data relating to individual temporary accommodation placements through the HL3 data collection. The HL1 data collection gathers information on the number of homelessness applications and number of people associated with households making homelessness applications. Information relating to the number of people within temporary accommodation placements is not collected via the HL3 collection. Therefore, to provide an estimate of the number of people in temporary accommodation placements, this must be derived by linking household records between the HL1 and HL3 data collections.

However, it is important to note that it is not necessarily the case that all household members associated with a homelessness application will enter the associated temporary accommodation placement(s). For example, a household may make alternative arrangements for children so the children are never present in the temporary accommodation.

Comprehensive HL3 data is only available for all local authorities from 2017-18, which can include temporary accommodation placements which commenced prior to 2017-18. While some local authorities have provided HL3 data prior to 2017-18, coverage is variable across local authorities with some not providing any data prior to 2017-18 and some providing a much smaller number of placements compared to subsequent years, suggesting this data is incomplete. Therefore, only B&B placements that were live from 2017-18 onwards have been provided to give robust comprehensive statistics across Scotland and a consistent time series over the past 4 years.

Data is provided up to 2020-21 as this is the most recent full-year data available.

Temporary accommodation placements in hotels are captured within a broader ‘other’ category (via the HL2 or HL3 collections) and so this data cannot be provided separately.

The following table shows the estimated number of people in Bed and Breakfast (B&B) temporary accommodation placements by year and local authority. Where the same household has had multiple B&B placements within the same year, the people within that household have only been included once. Where the same household has had multiple B&B placements in different years, the people within the households have been included in each of the years they were in a B&B placement. his includes instances where B&B placements have spanned multiple years, with the people being included in the figures for all years in which the B&B placement was live.

Values of 1, 2, 3 or 4 are denoted by ‘<5’ for disclosure control purposes.

Estimated number of people in B&B temporary accommodation placements, by local authority: 2017-18-2020-21

	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21
Scotland	10,202	10,974	9,954	10,072
Aberdeen City	191	157	114	183
Aberdeenshire	338	353	191	27
Angus	47	21	6	53
Argyll & Bute	0	0	5	98
Clackmannanshire	<5	0	0	47
Dumfries & Galloway	0	0	<5	20
Dundee City	5	0	34	332
East Dunbartonshire	271	153	59	<5
East Lothian	531	463	510	445
East Renfrewshire	33	47	84	82
Edinburgh	3,761	3,496	1,851	1,287
Eilean Siar	29	35	13	26
Falkirk	0	0	7	6
Fife	189	168	333	467
Glasgow City	2,416	3,164	4,395	4,371
Highland	365	623	401	152
Inverclyde	<5	9	68	113
Midlothian	153	47	41	26
Moray	51	<5	0	16
Orkney	18	14	27	8
Perth & Kinross	20	<5	5	<5
Renfrewshire	44	60	28	322
Scottish Borders	<5	5	8	0
Shetland	13	8	8	<5
South Ayrshire	0	0	0	28
South Lanarkshire	101	154	119	385
Stirling	469	464	385	423
West Dunbartonshire	0	13	49	23
West Lothian	1,150	1,514	1,212	1,123

Source: HL1 and HL3 data collections up to January 2022

Question reference: S6F-00918

Asked by: Pam Duncan-Glancy, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 14 March 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 17 March 2022

To ask the First Minister whether the Scottish Government anticipates meeting the interim targets set out in the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017.