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The Scottish Government is allocating £35 million in 2014-15 to mitigate the impact of the bedroom tax in Scotland. This is in addition to the £15 million funding for discretionary housing payments made available by the Department for Work and Pensions. The breakdown by local authority of the initial £20 million from the Scottish Government is described in Local Government Finance Circular 2014 No 2, available on the Scottish Government website:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/local-government/17999/11203.

The breakdown of funding from the Department for Work and Pensions is contained in their Housing Benefit Circulars HB S1/2014 and HB S2/2014.

The remaining £15 million of Scottish Government funding will be allocated to the 20 local authorities that still have insufficient funds to fully mitigate the bedroom tax. The distribution will be agreed with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

Communication with social tenants about their rent or housing benefit is the responsibility of local authorities and housing associations.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-17591 on 29 October 2013. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

As set out in the Scottish Budget 2013-14, the Scottish Government will invest £7 million in each of the three years from 2013-14 to 2015-16 in a range of welfare reform mitigation measures such as for advice and support services. The most recent announcement on 24 April 2014 is for the Tackling Money Worries Programme which is to be administered by the Scottish Legal Aid Board (SLAB).

The Scottish Government has approved that SLAB can spend up to £2.4 million on new projects focussing on supporting the outcomes of the revised Child Poverty Strategy for Scotland by connecting low income families with children to debt advice and to help them manage their money better at times where they are more vulnerable to debt.

The application period for the programme opened on 6 May 2014 and will close on
15 June 2014 after which SLAB will assess the proposals submitted. Once the bids have been assessed and applicants notified the list of successful projects will be published on the SLAB website.

This is a matter for Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS).

I am advised that HIS have published a correction to the report and the local report compendium. This can be accessed via the HIS website:

http://www.healthcareimprovementscotland.org/our_work/long_term_conditions/chronic_pain/where_are_we_now.aspx

The Scottish Welfare Fund comprises of Community Care Grants and Crisis Grants.

For Community Care Grants, £14.3 million was distributed between 1 April 2013 and 31 December 2013. Information on the distribution by local authority is published in Table 15 at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Social-Welfare/swf/AprilDec2013.

For Crisis Grants, £3.7 million was distributed between 1 April 2013 and 31 December 2013. Information on the distribution by local authority is published in Table 16 of the publication.

Statistics on the Scottish Welfare Fund can be found at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Social-Welfare/swf.

Funding levels for the Scottish Welfare Fund are based on historical spend by the Department for Work and Pensions. The budget for 2014-15 is detailed in the Supporting Document to the Budget (Scotland) Bill 2014-15 which was approved by Parliament on 5 February 2014. The planned budget for 2015-16 will be published in the Draft Budget 2015-16 in the autumn.

With regard to the Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland: Area Based Schemes (HEEPS: ABS), local authorities complete quarterly reports on activity which will cover work completed in the previous months, works started on site and works committed but not yet started. This will include an analysis of the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) for committed and completed homes. Local authorities will also provide details of the measures completed to homes which will be cross-referenced to the data Ofgem provides on ECO delivery in Scotland.

With regard to the HEEPS: Affordable Warmth Scheme, participating energy suppliers provide a performance scorecard to the Scottish Government on a monthly basis which forms the basis for monthly discussion of delivery, quality and service issues. Similarly, with regard to the HEEPS: Energy Assistance Scheme, Scottish Gas provides a performance scorecard to the Scottish Government on a monthly basis which forms the basis for monthly discussion of delivery, quality and service issues. Additionally, data from invoices for installations completed under the Energy Assistance Scheme allow a fuller report to be compiled for each financial year.

We intend to publish a monitoring report on all the HEEPS schemes later in the year, subject to receiving satisfactory performance data from councils and utility companies.

Scottish Government funding for the Home Energy Programmes for Scotland: Area Based Schemes (HEEPS: ABS) is distributed across all local authorities in Scotland. For 2014-15, £42 million of the £60 million available for HEEPS: ABS is allocated on the basis of need, which takes into account levels of fuel poverty and reflects the different types of properties within rural areas. This ensures that funding is directed to those areas most in need of assistance, including our rural areas.

£14.4 million, 34% of the allocated HEEPS: ABS funding for 2014-15, has been distributed to local authorities in rural areas. This year’s funding will support delivery in off-gas grid areas by providing specific funding to be used to deliver heating and insulation improvements for low-income and vulnerable households who meet the affordable warmth eligibility criteria in off-gas grid properties.

In addition, from April 2014, eligibility for the Energy Assistance Scheme takes precedence over the Affordable Warmth Scheme, helping to address a lack of service for off-gas grid households.

We are also lobbying the UK Government to amend the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) to ensure fairer delivery for rural and remote areas in Scotland. I have written to the UK Government flagging up concerns over the slow delivery of the ECO to rural and remote areas. Following extensive engagement with our stakeholders, the Scottish Government recently responded to the UK Government’s consultation on proposed changes to the ECO. We welcomed the UK Government’s proposals to widen eligibility and include additional incentives for delivery in areas that are off the mains gas grid. However, we remain concerned that this may not go far enough and have called for additional support for rural areas to be applied across all targets within the ECO.

The Scottish Government strongly disagrees with the UK Government’s proposed reduction of support for hard to treat properties. We have written to the UK Government flagging up concerns over this switch of focus which will undermine investment in energy efficiency, jobs in the insulation industry and progress in tackling fuel poverty and climate change.

In Scotland’s Future, we set out how, given the powers of independence, we would remove the cost of the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) and Warm Homes Discount from household energy bills providing year on year savings while maintaining investment in energy efficiency. With our existing powers, we are taking action through our Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland (HEEPS) to mitigate the impact of these changes as far as possible.

Following extensive engagement with our stakeholders the Scottish Government recently responded to the UK Government’s consultation on proposed changes to the ECO. We raised the importance of this issue and requested that the impacts are mitigated as much as possible and that the UK Government’s final plans following consultation address this. We also gave councils greater flexibility on our HEEPS: ABS (Area Based Schemes), including increasing the maximum grant available, to ensure they could continue to deliver more expensive measures to hard to treat properties.