Chamber and committees

The foremost reason for us enhancing ventilation during the COVID-19 pandemic is to ensure schools are as safe as possible for children, young people and staff.

However, we are aware that good air quality should also contribute to enhancing children’s cognitive function of learning in education environments.

Tourism, planning and housing officials have worked closely together on the development of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Order 2022 and Town Country Planning (Short-term Let Control Areas) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2022. The policy area taking the lead will depend on the specifics of each case.

However, generally the short-term lets policy team within the Directorate for Housing and Social Justice are responsible for matters relating to the short-term lets licensing scheme and control area regulations, which fall within my portfolio remit.

The overall responsibility for tourism businesses and tourism strategy remains with the tourism policy team within the Directorate for Economic Development, which fall within the remit of the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy.

The Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group is jointly chaired by COSLA’s Community Wellbeing Spokesperson, Councillor Kelly Parry and I. We share responsibility for chairing meetings and they and HPSG members have collective responsibility for agreeing the work programme and achieving the goals in the Ending Homelessness Together action plan.

Since May 2021, the Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group (HPSG) has met on one occasion, 5 November 2021. Meetings take place once every quarter, subject to parliamentary and local government business, with the next meeting scheduled for March.

A meeting scheduled for June 2021 was cancelled following the Scottish Parliament election to allow time to determine portfolio responsibilities. The meeting scheduled for September 2021 was postponed until November 2021 to accommodate parliamentary business and ensure the co-chair from COSLA was available. The next meeting, which was scheduled to take place in February 2022, has been postponed until March 2022 to accommodate parliamentary business and ensure the co-chair from COSLA was available.

The delivery of the Ending Homelessness Together action plan is on track as demonstrated in our annual progress report, which was laid in Parliament in October 2021. The plan has been welcomed by stakeholders, including HPSG members, who are responsible for overseeing the development and delivery of the plan.

Through the work of the Construction Leadership Forum (CLF) which I chair the Scottish Government is keen to see renewed focus on construction quality, including regulatory compliance, which will improve life-cycle value to clients and productivity of the industry.

The CLF meets bi-monthly with trade union, construction industry and government representatives collaborating on driving progress on the Construction Recovery Plan, which contains a range of practical actions to support the sector. As part of the transformation sub group of the CLF, work is ongoing on an action to gather and disseminate lessons from construction quality improvement initiatives and issue guidance on maintaining focus on construction quality and regulatory compliance during economic downturn. Another action is to establish the infrastructure to take forward and accelerate the work of the Construction Quality Improvement Collaborative.

We are working with the UK Government to explore how the proposed New Homes Ombudsman scheme provided for in the UK Building Safety Bill could operate in Scotland. We will continue this engagement to try to achieve a scheme that works for Scotland and respects the devolution settlement to ensure that buyers can purchase new-build homes with confidence and be assured that any problems relating to quality will be resolved effectively and efficiently.

In relation to the Building Standards system and to improve compliance with the building regulations, a consultation on proposals on the introduction of a new Compliance Plan Manager role, the definition of high risk buildings and penalties and enforcement was issued on 11 November 2021 and closed on 9 February 2022. Raised standards in this respect would be to ensure buildings meet the minimum building regulatory standard.

Further advice can be obtained from consumeradvice.scot which is a free consumer helpline funded by the Scottish Government.

There is no such proposal.

As was made clear in the letter to the Committee, an undercut of a door was only one element of the example set of remedial measures used to illustrate the appropriate level of overall additional funding that might be needed to tackle problematic spaces. The other elements that formed part of the example were temporary use of an air cleaning device and installation of small mechanical ventilation units.

Local authorities are fully aware that they should undertake any remedial work in line with Scottish Government guidance on ventilation and expert input.

It is the statutory responsibility of local authorities to manage their school estate. The precise details regarding the number of spaces where this approach has been used to manage specific ventilation issues is not held by the Scottish Government.

Yes, every learning, teaching and play space in Scotland was assessed by local authorities last term.

However, we and our local authority partners recognise the importance of continuing this work and guidance has been updated to advise that every learning, teaching and play space should be monitored at least one full day every week.

Discussions are ongoing regarding the proposed distribution of the Financial Transactions available for 2022-23. We plan to continue to support the Open Market Shared Equity scheme, but allocations have not yet been agreed for the full use of these funds.

A discount rate of 3.5% over a 25-year period was used to calculate the Net Present Value for Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme.