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Since the launch of the Young Person’s Guarantee in November 2020, we have provided additional funding, with the aim of supporting new and enhanced opportunities for young people, through Local Employability Partnerships (LEPs). In 2022-23, Local Employability Partnerships will receive almost £113 million in funding for local employability services through the No One Left Behind approach, which includes the Young Person’s Guarantee, to provide support that meets both individual and labour market needs in each area. This is crucial to achieving shared aims around tackling poverty and inequalities.

As part of funding arrangements, Local Authorities are required to complete Equality Impact Assessments for the funding provided through the Guarantee, outlining how their plans and policies will support young people with protected characteristics, including disabled young people, and where they will target supported education, employment and training projects.

Recently published experimental statistics show that between January 2021-December 2021, 1189 disabled young people received employability support via LEPs, which included Young Person’s Guarantee funding. This data cannot be further disaggregated by type of disability.

The Scottish Government has no functions in relation to Kickstart, which is reserved to the UK Government. Data relating to the Kickstart Scheme is collated by the UK Government and is not currently shared with the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government remains committed to answering all correspondence as quickly as possible and within agreed timescales. This question has been interpreted to be seeking figures from the start of session 6 to date.

a) The Scottish Government responded to 2750 freedom of information requests within the statutory 20 working day deadline during this period. The time limit was exceeded 470 times. FOI performance figures are published on monthly basis on the Scottish Government website: https://www.gov.scot/publications/freedom-of-information-foi-reporting/ .

b) The Scottish Government produces statistics, available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, which show how many written parliamentary questions were answered after the substantive date.

c) A high volume of Ministerial correspondence was received by the Scottish Government during this period. Of the 44991 pieces of correspondence received, 77% were answered on time with 10370 exceeding the response deadline.

We have logged correspondence from numerous homeowners and factors across Scotland and invite all to follow the progress of the pilot. Additionally we regularly work with local authorities to understand any developer led remediation in their area.

In 2020-21 academic year, the estimated number of school leavers who self-identified as deaf/having a hearing impairment was 170, which represented 0.6% of all school leavers who were enrolled in college. Of the estimated 680 school leavers recorded for Young Person’s Guarantee funded courses (which began in January 2021), 10 were school leavers who self-identify as deaf/having a hearing impairment, which represented over 1% of enrolments. The number of enrolments in 2020-21 for Kickstart placements cannot be provided due to small numbers.

Advancing equality and inclusion, and working to eliminate discrimination, is central to the Young Person’s Guarantee, ensuring that no one is left behind. Provision is supporting tailored education, training and employment opportunities for young people with protected characteristics across Scotland, including young people who identify as deaf or have a hearing impairment.

Through the Guarantee we have provided colleges with additional funding of £10m per year in 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23, to enable them to deliver shorter industry focused opportunities for young people, including skills boost and fast track courses, to meet the needs of employers and support economic recovery. We are continuing to engage with the college sectors and key partners to ensure opportunities are targeted at supporting individuals who experience barriers to participating in the labour market, including disabled young people.

It’s important to note that as disabilities and health conditions are self-declared at the point of application, these figures may not provide the total number of deaf school leavers accessing these opportunities. The figures are also estimates based on data returned from colleges.

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.

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.

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 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

All new policy commitments or changes to existing policy, that have a financial cost for local government, must be approved through the formal financial governance process which requires agreed recommendations from the joint Scottish Government and COSLA Officers’ Settlement and Distribution Group and political agreement from Scottish Ministers and COSLA political Leaders.

To ensure local authorities had the capacity and resources required to deliver any new policy commitments in the last two years, all new policy or changes to existing policy that had a financial cost for local government were approved through the formal financial governance process which required agreed recommendations from the joint Scottish Government and COSLA Officers’ Settlement and Distribution Group and political sign-off from Scottish Ministers and COSLA political Leaders.