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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-15817

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how much funding has been provided to date to each hospice by Integration Joint Boards under the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014 to plan and commission services for their area using the integrated budget under their control, including palliative and end-of-life care services.

Question reference: S6W-15815

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on how many local authorities are currently not providing face-to-face meetings to assist people with homelessness applications.

Question reference: S6W-15819

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many looked after young people have been placed in unregulated accommodation in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority area.

Question reference: S6W-15821

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many people have accessed its Digital Planning tools in each of the last five years.

The eDevelopment service currently has 52,000 registered users.

In the last 5 years the eDevelopment homepage has been accessed 3,294,533 times. The figures in the following table set out the number of times that users have accessed the homepage. The information is broken down into each of the 5 years.

As of January 2023, over 1.41m planning and building standards applications have been submitted online via eDevelopment since the service went live in 2016.

The service regularly receives over 5,500 submissions each week.

We estimate that in 2021-2022, up to 95% of all planning submissions and 90% of building warrant applications are submitted online through the service.

No.	Year	User Sessions
1	2018	603,021
2	2019	634,241
3	2020	655,648
4	2021	722,284
5	2022	679,339

Question reference: S6W-15820

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Tom Arthur on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how much it has spent on Digital Planning in each of the last five years.

The Digital Planning Transformation programme is a £35 million programme to transform the planning service and realise £200 million economic benefits to the sector. Work is progressing to deliver outputs from five missions as set out in the

Digital Strategy for Planning that underpins the programme.

Year	Amount
2018-2019	£1,926,423.08
2019-2020	£2,817,556.51
2020-2021	£2,614,403.39
2021-2022	£2,739,118.22
2022-2023	£3,518,010.54

Question reference: S6W-15556

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 22 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what information it holds on how many Blue Badges have been issued in each of the last five years, also broken down by local authority area.

Question reference: S6W-15567

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 03 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 21 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of any bridge upgrades that may be needed in the future, broken down by local authority area.

From our latest review of the trunk road network there are 35 bridges which have been identified as requiring upgrades. These are located within the following Local Authority areas:

Local Authority Area	Number of Bridges
Highland	19
Argyle & Bute	1
Falkirk	1
Stirling	6
Inverness	1
Moray	2
Borders	1
West Dunbartonshire	2
Dumfries and Galloway	2
Total	35

Transport Scotland does not hold the above information for structures maintained by Local Authorities.

Question reference: S6W-15548

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Richard Lochhead on 20 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what information it holds on how many people in Scotland had never worked in each year since 1999, and what assessment it has made of the implications of any such data.

Over half (55.8%) of the people in Scotland who have never worked aged 16 to 64 were in full-time education. Just because someone does not have a job does not mean they are not making a valuable contribution to our economy and society.

In October 2021-September 2022, the latest data, it was estimated that 257,500 people aged 16 to 64 years in Scotland had never worked, 7.5 per cent of the population. The lowest level and rate since October 2010-September 2011.

The proportion of the population aged 16 to 64 who had never worked had been increasing over time, reaching a peak of 8.8 per cent in October 2015-September 2016. Since then, the proportion has typically been decreasing.

The estimated number and proportion of people aged 16 to 64 in Scotland who have never worked is provided in Table 1. Estimates of the number of people who have never worked are available from 2004 onwards.

Table 1: Estimated number and proportion of the people aged 16-64 who have never worked, Oct 2004-Sep 2005 to Oct 2021-Sep 2022, Scotland

	Level	Proportion of 16-64 year old population
Oct 2004 - Sep 2005	191,000	5.8%
Oct 2005 - Sep 2006	199,000	6.0%
Oct 2006 - Sep 2007	205,200	6.1%
Oct 2007 - Sep 2008	202,100	6.0%
Oct 2008 - Sep 2009	220,800	6.5%
Oct 2009 - Sep 2010	246,500	7.2%
Oct 2010 - Sep 2011	244,800	7.1%
Oct 2011 - Sep 2012	264,400	7.7%
Oct 2012 - Sep 2013	268,800	7.9%
Oct 2013 - Sep 2014	269,500	7.9%
Oct 2014 - Sep 2015	268,200	7.8%
Oct 2015 - Sep 2016	300,400	8.8%
Oct 2016 - Sep 2017	279,200	8.1%
Oct 2017 - Sep 2018	288,300	8.4%
Oct 2018 - Sep 2019	264,700	7.7%
Oct 2019 - Sep 2020	285,500	8.3%
Oct 2020 - Sep 2021	273,100	8.0%
Oct 2021 - Sep 2022	257,500	7.5%

Source: Annual Population Survey, October to September datasets, ONS

Notes:

1. Those who have never worked is estimated based on those respondents to the survey aged 16 to 64 who did no paid or unpaid work in the survey reference week and were not away from any job or business in which they were employed or owned.

2. Data is subject to sampling variation.

3. Estimates are for those aged 16 to 64.

4. Proportions are rounded to one decimal place and are based on unrounded estimates.

From analysing the current economic status of those who have never worked, we know many reported they were; students, long-term sick (many of whom would be disabled); or looking after family and some are actively seeking employment.

The Scottish Government’s devolved employment support delivered through Fair Start Scotland and the No One left Behind approach help people with disabilities, long term health conditions and other labour market barriers to progress towards and into sustainable employment.

Through our Fair Work policy we are supporting the development of a labour market that is open, inclusive and offers good quality and rewarding jobs for everyone.

We are committed to developing life-long skills training opportunities, which support people to enter the workforce and enjoy valuable and rewarding careers.

Question reference: S6W-15352

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 28 February 2023
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 20 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what information it holds on how many people have accessed the Home2Fit online accessible housing database in each year since it was established.

Question reference: S6W-15551

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 06 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 20 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many households are currently living in fuel poverty, broken down by local authority area, and, of those, what information it holds on how many households previously received the DWP-administered Cold Weather Payment.

The number of households in each local authority that are experiencing fuel poverty is published annually (based on a three-year average) from the Scottish House Condition Survey (SHCS).

The latest published set of tables for 2017-2019 are available at:

Scottish House Condition Survey: Local Authority Analysis 2017-2019 .

As the 2020 SHCS was suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic and results from the 2021 External+ SHCS are not yet published and unlikely to be consistent with previous years, the 2017-2019 results are the latest available at Local Authority level.

More recent estimates of fuel poverty at a national level based on scenario modelling have been produced. These reflect the Energy Price Guarantee of £2,500 from April to June 2023 and the end of the £400 Energy Bill Support Scheme with differing levels of additional support for various households. These estimates show fuel poverty increasing from 613,000 households (24.6%) in 2019 to 920,000 households (37%) by April 2023. This 50% increase in the number of fuel poor households will also be reflected across all local authorities in Scotland, albeit with some variation based on the characteristics of dwellings and households in each local authority.

The SHCS recorded households who reported receiving CWP in 2018 and 2019. As three years of data are needed to provide analysis at local authority level, this is not currently available.

At a national level, the SHCS estimates that about 10% of fuel poor households received CWP in 2018 and 2019, as shown in the following table. 2019 is the most recent year for which SHCS data is available.

Fuel poor households self-reporting receipt of CWP

Year	Total Fuel poor households 000's	Of which received CWP 000’s	Percentage receiving CWP
2018	619	62	10.1%
2019	613	63	10.2%