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Following the 2019 consultation on the future use of the Scottish Ministers’ power under section 5 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 to extend coverage of the Act, the Scottish Government is currently considering all the issues highlighted in the responses. One area of particular consideration is social care services provided on behalf of Scottish public authorities. No decisions have yet been taken. Before making any order under section 5 the Scottish Ministers have a statutory obligation to consult those to whom the order relates, and there would also be wider public consultation on any proposed order.

The operational recording of information on incidents of domestic and sexual abuse against men is a matter for Police Scotland, and as with any report of criminal behaviour, will be underpinned by the Scottish Crime Recording Standard (SCRS). The Standard sets out to ensure a more victim-oriented approach is taken to recording crime, and ultimate responsibility for compliance lies with the Chief Constable.

The Official Statistics on both recorded domestic abuse and sexual crime in Scotland are based upon data returns made by Police Scotland to the Scottish Government (and are a by-product of their administrative processes). Further quality assurance work is then undertaken between Scottish Government and Police Scotland statisticians prior to their publication. Many of the categories used to record crimes that may be typically associated with domestic or sexual abuse, such as those under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 or Rape / Sexual assault, also identify whether the victim is male or female.

Starting from Autumn 2023, the Fund will be subject to annual reviews which will consider to what extent the Fund is meeting its aims, in particular, in assisting households who are unable to access self-build finance. The reviews will also consider if adjustments should be made to the Fund to ensure it continues to meet these aims.

The number of Self Build Loan Fund loans and value of these loans issued by year of operation is shown in table 1.

Table 1: Number and Value of Self Build Loan Fund loans by year of operation

At the end of June 2022, the Self Build Loan Fund administrators, Communities Housing Trust (CHT) had approved 40 loans to successful applicants committing £6.02 million over 13 local authority areas. The average loan offered to borrowers was £150,000.

Of the 40 homes funded through the national Self-Build Loan Fund since 2018, 37 are located in a rural area according to 6-fold urban rural classification. In addition, over one third of all approved loans (14), with committed funding of almost £2.3 million has been made available to people living in the islands. Five of these borrowers have also benefitted from a Croft House Grant.

The Scottish Government publishes monthly and annual information on time held on remand in the Justice Analytical Services Safer Communities and Justice Statistics Monthly Report [1] and the annual official Scottish Prison Population Statistics [2]. Official statistics for 2020-21 were published on 23 June 2022, and the June 2022 monthly figures were published on 30 June 2022.

The latest monthly report shows that on the 1st June 2022, 661 (30.4%) of the 2,176 individuals on remand had held a remand status for over 140 days. It must be noted that the remand population includes individuals whose trial has commenced but not concluded, as well as those awaiting commencement of a trial. As a result, the figures referenced above reflect only that an individual has held the same status for an extended period, but do not reflect the relationship between these times on remand and the ongoing court procedure(s) to which they relate.

The annual official statistics are a compilation of data collected over the full financial year from the Scottish Prison Service prisoner records system. To produce the annual statistics, the data needs to be processed into a longitudinal analytical dataset. This process has not yet commenced for 2021-22, so the Scottish Government does not currently hold the data requested.

[1] Justice Analytical Services Safer Communities and Justice Statistics Monthly Report, https://www.gov.scot/collections/crime-and-justice-statistics/ #justiceanalyticalservicessafercommunitiesandjusticestatisticsmonthlyreport

[2] Justice Analytical Services Scottish Prison Population statistics

https://www.gov.scot/collections/scottish-prison-population-statistics/

Access requests to commence fieldwork for the research were sent to the Lord President and Sheriffs Principal in March 2020. However, due to the rapid escalation of the pandemic and national lockdown, the judiciary collectively asked for the research to be paused. At the same time, the Scottish Government suspended all face-to-face social research to ensure public health measures were observed. For these reasons, the proposed fieldwork was paused. Fieldwork resumed in 2021, with the judiciary and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service participating remotely.

An interim findings report is due to be published on Wednesday 27 July 2022, with follow on fieldwork (including other key stakeholders) commencing in summer 2022.

Recognising that standard bank lending is often not available to support self-build projects, the Scottish Government acts as lender of last resort through the Self Build Loan Fund, supporting successful applicants to build their own home through short-term funding, normally around one year to 18 months. Up to £175,000 is available to eligible borrowers to assist with construction and professional fees costs resulting from their self-build project. The loan is intended to bridge the gap in construction funding and must be repaid in full once building is complete either from mainstream mortgage finance or from equity from the sale of the home.

The Scottish Government has not prepared a comparison between the Self Build Loan Fund and the UK Government’s Help to Build Scheme, which operates on different terms and administrative arrangements and is a matter for the UK Government.

The Scottish Government holds data on the number of long term empty homes that have been empty for 6 months or more, by local authority from 2005 to 2021. This can be accessed using the following link: Housing statistics: Empty properties and second homes - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

This data is sourced from Council Tax information. Caution should be applied when considering this data as improvements have been made to the data collection systems by several local authorities since 2005, with some local authorities reporting zero long-term empty properties up until 2013. In addition, local authorities gained discretionary power to remove the empty properties discount or set a council tax increase of 100% in 2013. The council tax changes have led to the reclassification of a number of properties.

The review, Improving the Management of Sexual Offence Cases , led by the Lord Justice Clerk, Lady Dorrian, developed proposals for an improved system to deal with serious sexual offence cases, including recommending consideration of a time-limited pilot of single judge rape trials. We have committed to give careful consideration to all of the Review’s recommendations.

We have established a Governance Group to further explore the recommendations on an individual and collective basis. The Group established a short-life working group to consider the specific issues involved in any potential pilot of single judge rape trials. In addition, we launched a consultation on 12 May to gather wider views on the recommendation and other proposals to improve victims’ experiences of the justice system. Decisions on whether to proceed with legislation to implement a pilot will be informed by the outcomes of the working group and the consultation.