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There are currently 27 empty homes officers working across 25 local authority areas. We can advise that the following local authorities do not have an empty homes officer post:

All NHS Boards in Scotland have access to a range of tools and resources developed by Healthcare Improvement Scotland to improve reliable delivery of evidence-based interventions to patients at risk of harm from deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and to contribute to the overall aim of reducing mortality and harm in acute hospitals.

The timeline is a matter for Lord Hardie. Updates on the publication of his Report will be provided on the Inquiry website at the appropriate time, a link to which is included below. 

Home Page - The Edinburgh Tram Inquiry

The Scottish Government’s Social Enterprise Strategy was launched in 2016 and sets out a wide-ranging, ambitious and long-term programme to develop the potential of Scotland's social enterprise sector.

The latest Social Enterprise Action Plan was published on 24 March 2021 and covers the period 2021-24 and is available at: Social enterprise: action plan - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

To deliver the plan, we will spend over £5 million this financial year supporting Social Enterprises across the country. Some of the projects we have committed to support over the next three years include:

• Doubling our funding for Social Enterprise in Schools to almost £2m to ensure that by 2024 every school child will have the opportunity to engage with a social enterprise project in their school career, introducing the benefits of the social enterprise model to young people across Scotland.
• Investing an additional £1.5m to build on the successful programme of support offered through Adapt and Thrive which helps community organisations wanting to diversify their income streams.
• Investing £1.5 million to create a clear pipeline for social enterprises from conception to the international market, with a focus on ethical opportunities in emerging markets such as Africa and South East Asia.

The Scottish Government is committed to delivering the Promise, supporting families to stay together in a safe and loving environment, and reducing the amount of children who are taken into care. Fundamentally, Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) is the Scottish Government's approach to supporting children and young people. It supports families and helps to prevent family breakdown by making sure children and young people can receive the right help, at the right time, from the right people. GIRFEC is a strengths-based approach and is underpinned by principles that include working in partnership with families, and providing an early offer of support to improve outcomes for children, young people and families.

The Scottish Government also recognises more needs to be done to transform the system of holistic support that is provided to families. The Programme for Government 2021 commits to investing at least £500 million over the life of this Parliament to create a Whole Family Wellbeing Fund. This will enable the building of universal, holistic support services, available in communities across Scotland, giving families access to the help they need, where and when they need it. Furthermore, our ambition is that from 2030, we will be investing at least 5% of all community-based health and social care spend in preventative whole family support measures that will enable us to continue to Keep The Promise.

In addition, the Scottish Government continues to deliver a range of policies aimed at supporting the specific needs of children, young people and families. For example:

• National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland (published 2 September 2021), which places greater emphasis on prevention and support and working with children and families to reduce the risk of harm.
• Development of a Framework to improve holistic family support for families affected by a loved one's drug or alcohol abuse.
• £120 million through our Recovery and Renewal fund to address the mental health impacts of Covid-19 including a range of actions addressing relationship support.
• Funding to Relationships Scotland, who provide a number of services including family mediation, relationship counselling and “parenting apart” classes.

Charges for National Qualifications have remained unchanged since 2012-13 despite changes in costs. While charges contribute towards the cost of awarding National Qualifications they do not cover the full costs. In addition, 2020 and 2021 late entry fees have been waived and there have been no charges for appeals. There are therefore no plans to reimburse National Qualifications payments.

For 2021, SQA estimates that the costs of providing certification for national qualifications was £41.7m, while income from local authorities, colleges and independent schools is expected to be £30.5m. The remaining cost is covered by SQA’s grant in aid budget from the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. However, the number of patients who are registered with a NHS dentist can be found on Public Health Scotland at: https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/dental-statistics-registration-and-participation/dental-statistics-registration-and-participation-statistics-as-at-30-september-2020/ .

As set out within the Tackling Child Poverty third year progress report, published on 23 June 2021, it is estimated that the Scottish Government invested almost £2.5 billion to support low income households in 2020-21. The member can find the breakdown of this investment on pages 67-69 of the report using the following link:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/tackling-child-poverty-third-year-progress-report-2020-2021

This information is not held centrally.

As part of our ongoing review of existing land value capture mechanisms, we commissioned independent research on the value of developer contributions in Scotland. The research, which was published in July 2021, estimated that the value of contributions agreed by Scottish authorities in 2019-20 was approximately £500m.

However, the research highlighted a lack of consistency between authorities in terms of the way information on planning obligations is recorded at the local authority level.

Scottish Ministers have powers under the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 to require the publication of, and annual reporting on, planning obligations entered into by planning authorities. The implementation of these powers forms part of the Scottish Government’s planning reform programme, much of which has been delayed by the pandemic. Nevertheless, we remain committed to introducing new reporting requirements for planning obligations in order to improve transparency around their use. We are currently in the process of updating the implementation programme for the remaining aspects of the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 and will publish this in due course.

The Scottish Government does not hold the information requested. The data we receive from Police Scotland for production of the Recorded Crime in Scotland National Statistics is a simple count of the numbers of crimes and offences, for each local authority, which the police have recorded and cleared up. We do not receive further details on the characteristics and circumstances of individual crimes, therefore we are unable to identify how many crimes of vandalism were in relation to graffiti. Time series information on the total number of crimes of vandalism recorded by the police is available from the Recorded Crime in Scotland National Statistics (a link to the latest publication is found here: Recorded Crime in Scotland, 2019-2020 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) ). The 2020-21 Bulletin will be published on the
‎ 28 September 2021 here: Recorded Crime in Scotland - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .