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The second Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH2) does not prescribe what measures a landlord should install.

The Scottish Housing Regulator does not currently publish data on the value of investment on complying with EESSH2 nor on the individual measures installed in order to comply with EESSH2 milestones.

Between 2018 and 2021, £7 million was made available by the Scottish Government to Local Authority and Housing Association landlords through the Energy Efficient Scotland Transition Programme’s Decarbonisation Fund to assist in compliance with EESSH and EESSH2. The funding was for energy efficiency measures, such as insulation and internal works, within projects that included decarbonisation activity (e.g. ground source heat pumps, air source heat pumps, biomass, solar PV and storage) and the conversion of off-gas grid properties to these technologies. The Scottish Government did not provide direct funding for heating in these properties.

Since 2020, the Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund has committed £14.33 million of grant funding to 20 social housing decarbonisation retrofit projects across Scotland. This includes the installation of zero emissions heating systems and “fabric first” energy efficiency upgrades. Non-zero-emissions solutions are not eligible for support under this fund. The Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme (LCITP) has provided a further £6.1 million of grant funding to two projects involving the installation of zero emissions heating.

Scottish Ministers are currently considering the City of Edinburgh Council’s proposed designation of the Edinburgh Short-Term Let Control Area, in accordance with the relevant legislation and Planning Circular 1/2021. There is no statutory timescale for considering such proposals but a decision on the proposal will be made and published as soon as possible.

The Scottish Government has no plans to update the published Resource Planning Assumptions at this time.

The spending review sets out the financial framework to support delivery of our commitments. It sets out high-level multi-year spending plans for the Scottish Government and does not replace the annual budget process.

Annual budgets will continue to be set through the annual parliamentary budget Bill process and the annual budget will be based on the latest fiscal information.

The next set of data will cover the three month period up to 31 March 2022 and will be published once all 32 local authorities have provided the relevant information. This was requested from local authorities in April and reminders were sent in May and June. We will continue to publish this information on a quarterly basis.

To date, data until 31 March 2022 detailing expenditure, grant and refusal figures have been obtained for 23 local authorities. This shows £4,463,069.51 expenditure, 4,003 grants and 1,298 refusals.

The latest set of full available data, broken down by local authority, is the Tenant Grant Fund monitoring report: January 2022 , which was published in March 2022.

As local authorities can continue to use any remaining allocation in 2022-23 until fully spent, a final review will be carried out once all LAs have closed their funds.

The Scottish Government does not require local authorities to record the grounds on which a tenant is evicted when they present as homeless.

Section 11 of the Homelessness etc. (Scotland) Act 2003 requires a landlord to notify the local authority when proceedings for possession are raised but there is no requirement for the local authority to record the grounds when it receives notice.

The Scottish Government’s code of guidance on homelessness recommends that on receiving notification, the local authority should take the most proactive approach possible to prevent homelessness occurring.

Local authorities can collect information on grounds for eviction when a household presents as homeless, especially if they can undertake activity which can prevent homelessness. Local authorities can also amend the section 11 notice to collect this information for their own purposes, in particular for the prevention of homelessness.

The Affordable Housing Supply Programme was allocated £134 million in Financial Transactions in 2022-23 and we have recently agreed that £60 million will be made available for the Open Market Shared Equity Scheme and £74 million for the Charitable Bond demand led programmes in 2022-23. A further £92 million in Financial Transactions was allocated to the wider housing budget for 2022-23, with £12 million of this earmarked for historic carry forward commitments. All options are being actively considered to maximise the use of the remaining Financial Transactions to support the delivery of homes.

This data is taken from UK Finance statistics, and relates to mortgage advances for home purchase extended by lenders to first-time buyers in Scotland. Over the 12 months to March 2022, there were 34,310 mortgage advances for home purchase extended to first-time buyers in Scotland, as compared with 30,360 in the preceding 12 months, a rise of 13%.

The information on properties purchased through the Scottish Government shared equity schemes (Help to Buy (Scotland), the Open Market Shared Equity (OMSE) scheme, New Supply Shared Equity (NSSE) and the First Home Fund is not recorded by Scottish Parliamentary region. It is recorded by Local Authority area and information on the numbers of properties purchased in each year of each scheme can be found in the published figures at the following links.

Help to Buy (Scotland) under Monitoring Information Report

https://www.gov.scot/policies/homeowners/help-to-buy/

Open Market Shared Equity and New Supply Shared Equity under Affordable Housing Supply Programme annual out-turn reports and related data

https://www.gov.scot/policies/more-homes/affordable-housing-supply/

First Home Fund

https://www.gov.scot/publications/first-home-fund-spend-and-units-monitoring-information-report-december-2019-to-march-2021/

We have already committed in Housing to 2040 to review and consider potential reforms to the current eviction grounds under the Private Residential Tenancy (PRT) after 5 years of operation, which will be at the end of this year.

We have already started to seek views on the effectiveness and operation of the existing eviction grounds for the Private Rented Sector as part of the New Deal For Tenants consultation to help inform the review when it begins and we will continue to work with stakeholders during it.

As highlighted in Generation Rent’s research, measures are in place under the PRT where a tenancy has been ended due to misleading information, the First-tier Tribunal have the power to make a wrongful termination order against the landlord and award compensation to the tenant. The use and effectiveness of wrongful termination orders will form part of the review.

The Open Market Shared Equity thresholds are reviewed annually each December to reflect the overall movement in average house prices across all transactions over the previous financial year in each area, based on house price data from Registers of Scotland on the lower quartile of house prices in urban areas and the median of house prices in rural areas. The price threshold figures used are rounded up to the nearest £5,000.

Every few years we carry out a more comprehensive analysis of house prices by linking house price data with property characteristics data. This provides more detailed figures by property size category for lower quartile and median prices. This was last carried out using data for 2015-16, and has been applied to the thresholds from 2018 onwards, with the price thresholds for each year as noted above being updated to reflect the overall movement in changes in house prices in each area over time.