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The Scottish Government is committed to addressing homelessness amongst ex-prisoners and their families. All those assessed as unintentionally homeless by local authorities, including prisoners who face homelessness upon liberation, are entitled to settled accommodation.

The Scottish Government recognises the particular challenges that may be faced by ex-prisoners and their families and the support that may be required to help sustain tenancies. Local authorities work with ex-prisoners through the housing options approach, which looks at an individual’s full circumstances. Housing options may consider issues of particular importance in preventing homelessness amongst ex-prisoners and their families, such as employability, the need for mediation or the development of life skills.

The housing options hubs and individual local authorities, have developed a range of links to prisons and practice across Scotland to help prevent homelessness on liberation.

The Scottish Government recognises that young people can be at particular risk of homelessness and that preventing and tackling the reasons for this are a priority.

Recorded homelessness amongst young people aged 16 to 24 has been falling in Scotland since 2009-10. In 2015-16, approximately 7700 young people (28% of all applicants) made a homelessness application to local authorities, a reduction of 9% on the previous year. This compares to over 15,000 applications (35% of all applicants) back in 2005-06.

The Scottish Government supports the five regional local authority led housing options hubs to progress the prevention of homelessness across Scotland. This is supported by recent guidance, which addresses the issue of youth homelessness, and will be strengthened by the forthcoming Housing Options Training Toolkit.

The Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group has the issue of youth homelessness as a standing item on its agenda to ensure homelessness policy maintains links to developments in other policy areas working to address the needs of young people, such as those leaving care.

The Scottish Government also funds a number of third sector organisations addressing youth homelessness.

The Scottish Government does not collect statistics on the impact of fuel poverty on children’s academic attainment.

This Government remains committed to tackling both fuel poverty and child poverty and ensuring that children from low income households live in high quality sustainable housing.

Our national fuel poverty scheme Warmer Homes Scotland recognises that children are amongst the most vulnerable in our society. Applicants can benefit from energy efficiency measures available under the scheme that will make the property warmer and more sustainable where a member of the household is pregnant, or has a child under the age of 16 years of age. This is subject to all other scheme qualify criteria being met.

We have also committed to extend the eligibility for the Winter Fuel Payment to families with children in receipt of the highest care component of Disability Living Allowance.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-01389 on 27 July 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.

At my instruction, Transport Scotland are undertaking an intensive review of the Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Programme. This work is expected to conclude in September 2016. In my statement of 5 July 2016, I made clear my intention to bring the review findings and senior Network Rail officials before the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee to answer any questions and to set out clearly when they will deliver the promised improvements and how much they will cost.

Network Rail advise us that the work in Queen Street Tunnel is making good progress. The tunnel remains on schedule to re-open as planned on 8 August 2016.

Financial considerations are not the reason for the delays to the electrification of the Edinburgh Glasgow line now being reported by Network Rail. The reasons will be set out in full following the conclusion of the Transport Scotland led review.

The Scottish Government does not collect data on the sub-reasons for children becoming looked after, so it is not possible to provide specific data on the numbers of children being placed in kinship and foster care due to parental imprisonment.The annual totals of children becoming looked after in foster care and kinship care (some of whom may have entered the care system due to parental imprisonment) are presented here:

The most relevant figures to homelessness available are in the following table, which details the number of children in households applying as homeless, where the main applicant had previously been in prison:

It should be noted that the applicant’s earlier imprisonment may only be one of a number of factors leading to a homelessness application.

Information on the cost of the HoHP for each year are included in its annual report which is laid before the Scottish Parliament. The reports are published at https://hohp.scotland.gov.uk/who-we-are-hohp/annual-reports.

The Homeowner Housing Panel (HoHP) is an independent tribunal established under the Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011 (the Act) to deal with disputes between homeowners and property factors. It is for the HoHP to decide whether to issue a legally-binding property factor enforcement order (PFEO) and determine whether a property factor has complied with the PFEO.

The HoHP must notify Scottish Ministers under section 23(2) of the Act where a property factor has failed to comply with any PFEO. Scottish Ministers have the power to remove a property factor from the register where it has failed to demonstrate compliance with the property factor code of conduct and any property factor enforcement order made by the HoHP. Since 1 October 2012, when the Act came into force, they have removed two factors from the register because of their non-compliance.