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In August 2018, the Scottish Government and local authorities agreed a national minimum school clothing grant of £100 per eligible child. The Scottish Government has provided £6 million to local authorities in each financial year since the national minimum school clothing grant was introduced.

Information on the number of School Clothing Grants issued prior to the introduction of the national minimum School Clothing Grant is not available. However Dundee City Council issued a total of 6,512 School Clothing Grants in the 2018-19 school year, the first year of the national minimum grant's operation.

The Scottish Government has provided Dundee City Council with funding of £255,000 each year towards the cost of providing school clothing grants to all eligible families within their area.

The Schools Healthy Living Survey Statistics Report for 2020 showed that there were 4,172 children in primaries 1 to 3 present at school on the day the census was taken and 3,008 of those children took a free school meal. This represents an uptake rate of 72.1%.

The proposal to expand provision of universal free school meals in primaries 4 to 7 is intended for all pupils who attend primary school. The latest published data, obtained from the Pupil Census 2020 Supplementary Statistics, shows that there were 6,150 children in primaries 4 to 7 at primary schools across the Dundee City Council area.

At present we have not published information on how many people in local authority areas receive Scottish Child Payment. More detailed information on application outcomes and payments, including at a local authority level, will be included in the next release of Official Statistics which will cover the period to the end of March and is due to be published on 11 May 2021.

Using the latest available forecasts published by the Scottish Fiscal Commission in January 2021, Scottish Government analysis estimates there could be around 4,300 families receiving the payment in Dundee in 2021-22, which equates to around 5,400 eligible children.

Subject to receiving data from the Department for Work and Pensions, it is our intention to extend the payment to under 16s by end 2022. Therefore using the above forecasts our analysis estimates that 15,500 children in Dundee could be eligible in 2022-23. In 2023-24, the first full financial year of the under 16s payment we estimate 15,000 children could be eligible.

The total value of Scottish Child Payment in Dundee could be £2.3 million in 2021-22, £3.5 million in 2022-23 and £6.1 million in 2023-24. The increase in spending in 2023-24 reflects that under 16s will only be paid for part of the previous year 2022-23.

£51,473,436 of Attainment Scotland funding has been made available to Dundee City Council since 2015. £20,060,277 of this has been made available in Pupil Equity Funding.

Through the Scottish Government’s previous school building programme, Scotland’s Schools for the Future, Dundee City Council received funding of £49 million towards the construction of three projects:

£19.5 million towards Baldragon Academy which was completed in June 2018,

£20.4 million towards Harris Academy which was completed in May 2016,

£9.1 million towards North East Campus which was completed in August 2018.

Phase 2 of the £2 billion Learning Estate Investment Programme was announced on 18th December 2020, and through this programme Dundee City Council will receive funding towards a new campus to replace Craigie and Braeview High Schools.

These projects were submitted by Dundee City Council as their priority projects for investment.

To date, Dundee City Council have been allocated an additional £41.8 million in direct support, as set out in the following table, to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic through the Local Government Finance Settlement, over and above their regular general revenue grant payments. The Scottish Government also agreed a package of financial flexibilities for Scotland's councils that could be worth up to £600 million over the next 2 years to provide further assistance in responding to the pandemic.

The Scottish Government has provided £1.856 million in direct funding to 42 Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which includes funding to all 24 local authority areas that have BIDs. This funding helped to address immediate concerns and is enabling BIDs to provide continued resilience and focussed support to local businesses and communities.

A breakdown of funding to local authorities is set out in the following table.

In March 2020, I announced a funding package of £350m emergency communities fund, comprising 8 funding pots to ensure local authorities, community groups, the third sector and social enterprise sector were able to support people and communities affected by COVID-19.

• This included the £50m Wellbeing, £25m Third Sector Resilience Fund and the £40m Supporting Communities Fund.
• The £25 million Third Sector Resilience Fund awarded grants totalling over 1349 awards totalling £22m.
• The Supporting Communities Fund awarded a total of over £17m to 373 community anchor organisations.
• The Wellbeing Fund 33,449 awards totalling £37m.
• In response to a demand for a move away from resilience to recovery, a £25 million Community and Third Sector Recovery Programme (CTSRP) was announced in the Programme for Government 2020-21, as part of Scottish Government’s £350m emergency response to coronavirus.
• The £100m Winter Package includes a top of £15m to the CTSRP programme (£40m overall).

The CTSRP includes business support and investment to help organisations adapt their operations and income generation to increase sustainability. This funding will support our third sector to continue to support people and communities in responding to the ongoing impact of the pandemic.

Since the start of the pandemic, our support for business and the economy totals more than £3 billion, more than a third of total COVID-19 funding. 383,000 business support awards have been allocated between March and October 2020, totalling £2.3 billion. In addition to the support offered through the Strategic Framework Business Fund, in December 2020 we announced a range of sector specific funding to help impacted businesses through winter.

This fund is open not only to limited companies, partnerships and sole traders, but also to trusts, Scottish charitable incorporated organisations, social enterprises and community interest companies provided they meet the eligibility criteria. Local authorities are delivering these grants on behalf of Scottish Government, and more information can be found on the Scottish Government website. Coronavirus (COVID-19): Strategic Framework Business Fund - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

We have increased the Local Authority Discretionary Fund from £30 million to £120 million. This is designed to empower local authorities to direct additional financial support to specific groups or sectors within the business community where they consider this to be necessary or justified, based on the distinct characteristics of their local economies.

The Scottish Government will continue to engage with, and work with the third sector, and social enterprise sector, as we begin to emerge from lockdown, to the best, and most appropriate way, to continue to support these sectors.

Whilst a breakdown of organisations who have received support by size is not held centrally, we have published analysis on organisations receiving support via the Wellbeing Fund and Third Sector Resilience Fund, this can be found at the following links:-

• Wellbeing Fund: analysis of awards - gov.scot ( www.gov.scot )
• Third Sector Resilience Fund (TSRF): analysis of applications and wards - gov.scot ( www.gov.scot )

Further analysis of the funding schemes is currently being undertaken and we would hope to publish this analysis within the next few months.