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The Scottish Government is clear that temporary accommodation should be of a high standard and households living there should receive good quality support services that meet their needs. That is why the Scottish Government published the temporary accommodation standards framework in 2023. The framework sets out the physical, location, service and management standards to ensure that temporary accommodation is of good quality and is safe, warm and affordable.

Most households with children are placed in suitable temporary accommodation in the social rented sector. However, the Unsuitable Accommodation Order (UAO) was extended in 2020 to ensure that no homeless household has to stay in unsuitable accommodation, such as hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation, for more than seven days.

The numbers of households and time spent in temporary accommodation is too high, particularly for households with children, and the Scottish Government is taking decisive action to increase housing supply. We have provided funding of £80 million over this year and next, 80 per cent of which has been targeted to five local authorities with the most sustained temporary accommodation pressures. This funding is to increase the supply of social homes of the right type and size – including larger properties suitable for families – where the need is greatest. To date, this has supported local authorities to bring 1,000 homes back into use through acquisitions and to reduce the number of empty social homes.

We have provided local authorities with over £65 million since 2020 to fund community mental health and wellbeing services for children, young people and their families. This investment will continue with the baselining of £15 million per annum funding into the local government finance settlement from 2025-26.

The community-based supports and services are focused on prevention and early intervention, promoting positive mental health and wellbeing, and tackling emotional distress. Supports and services are available in every local authority area, and more than 300 have been put in place across the country, including supports for trauma, anxiety and depression. Local authorities have reported that nearly 83,000 people used the supports and services between July 2023 and March 2024, including more than 10,000 family members and carers.

In addition, we continue to provide £16 million a year to local authorities to ensure that all school pupils aged 10 and above have access to school counselling services, and local authorities have confirmed that services are in place across Scotland. We have also supported school staff to understand and recognise the range of mental health and wellbeing concerns that young people may experience through a professional resource, which complements 2021 guidance to support whole-school approaches to mental health and wellbeing.

The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) service specification highlights that all children and families should receive support and services that are appropriate to their needs. For many children and young people, such support is likely to be community based, and should be easily and quickly accessible. We continue to work with NHS boards to monitor the service specification’s implementation, to improve services and support for children and young people and their families.

We continue to invest in mental health services for children and young people and we have directly allocated £123 million to NHS boards and integration joint boards for a new enhanced mental health outcomes framework in 2024-25. The framework provides a single, flexible funding stream to support continued improvements and better outcomes across a range of mental health and psychological services in line with the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy, including CAMHS. The priorities for the funding this year are to continue delivering improvements in CAMHS, psychological therapies, eating disorders and neurodevelopmental services, as well as ongoing innovation and service reform for mental health services.

A Scottish Government amendment to the Housing (Scotland) Bill will, if passed, confer a new power for relevant bodies to share information in connection with their new duties to prevent homelessness. This should help decision makers plan better services but will also mean that those seeking assistance do not have to share distressing information on multiple occasions with different services.

The Scottish Government published updated information sharing guidance in September 2022 as part of a suite of refreshed ‘Getting it right for every child’ (GIRFEC) policy and practice guidance, which is intended for practitioners and service leads in services that work with children, young people and families. This guidance promotes lawful, fair and proportionate information sharing that complies with all relevant legal requirements. The Scottish Government will continue to work in partnership with stakeholders to better understand local challenges around GIRFEC implementation, including information sharing, in order to strengthen its consistent, high-quality application across Scotland.

The National Care Service Bill, as introduced, contained two critical provisions, section 36 (information sharing) and section 37 (information standards), within part 2 of the bill to support our data and digital infrastructure across health and care in Scotland. Section 36, as introduced, sets out the power of Scottish Ministers, by way of regulations, to establish a scheme for sharing information in order that public health and social care services can be provided efficiently and effectively. This will allow safe, secure and efficient sharing of social care and health data across relevant care settings, including with the individual and will ensure up-to-date information is available to those who support and provide care.

Assumed council tax revenues are a key element of the needs-based distribution formula that is discussed and agreed with COSLA on behalf of all 32 local authorities each year.

An Assumed Council Tax of £911 at Band D has been included in the calculation of the 85% funding floor since the 85% Floor was introduced in the 2012-13 Settlement (see Annex I of Local Government Finance Circular 11/2011).

Local Government Finance officials would be happy to meet with you to discuss the assumed council tax calculation in more detail, if required.

The 85% funding floor is a key element of the needs-based distribution formula that is discussed and agreed with COSLA on behalf of all 32 local authorities each year.

To apply the 85% funding floor, the Scottish Government first calculates the total funding in the Local Government Finance settlement, per person, for each local authority and for Scotland as a whole. The total funding includes General Revenue Grant, Non-Domestic Rates, Specific Grants, and an Assumed Council Tax level of £911 at Band D.

Funding for all local authorities in Scotland is included in the calculation of the 85% Floor although the contribution of the three island councils and Argyll and Bute to the average calculation, is capped at 115%.

The capping adjustment has no effect on funding actually provided to those four authorities and it only applies for the purpose of calculating the average, in part to mitigate the risk that the Special Islands Needs Allowance (SINA) has a distortive impact on the calculation.

The weighted average including these adjusted figures is then calculated to obtain a new Scotland average. As the local authorities with more than 115% of the Scotland total are small, the capping adjustment does not have a significant impact on the calculated average.

If any local authorities’ per-head support is less than 85% of this adjusted average, additional funding is provided to lift that local authority up to the 85% floor.

Local Government Finance officials would be happy to meet with you to discuss the calculation in more detail, if required.

The Scottish Government is in regular contact with the UK Government to set out Scotland's priorities for the future relationship with the EU. We are clear that the UK Government should seek to agree a generous and wide-ranging youth mobility visa agreement with the EU. A youth mobility visa agreement will never replicate the benefits of freedom of movement, however, it will provide more opportunities for young people to live, work or study overseas. The UK already has reciprocal youth mobility agreements in place with 13 countries and territories and recent opinion polling shows strong support across Scotland for a UK/EU agreement.

Assumed council tax revenues are a key element of the needs-based distribution formula that is discussed and agreed with COSLA on behalf of all 32 local authorities each year.

The inclusion of Assumed Council Tax in the overall distribution calculations reflects structural differences in the housing stock across the country and ensures that local authorities with a greater proportion of houses in band A to C are not disadvantaged, relative to those with a higher proportion of their houses in band E to H.

The absence of an Assumed Council Tax adjustment in the formula would disproportionately benefit more affluent local authorities. By way of illustration, for every £1 raised on a band D council tax bill, more affluent authorities receive 50% more income than the least affluent authorities. Including Assumed Council Tax in the settlement calculations is therefore a critical element of the needs-based distribution by ensuring that the impact of those structural differences are partially redistributed.

Excluding Assumed Council Tax from the 85% floor would remove this partial redistribution and would therefore be incompatible with the concept of a needs-based distribution methodology.

Distribution involves a complex and dynamic calculation with the impact on subsequent years being influenced by prior year calculations, primarily through the operation of the main funding floor.

If Assumed Council Tax were excluded from the calculation of the 85% floor, in the past five years, a hypothetical static analysis would indicate that Aberdeen City would have additionally been below 85 per cent in 2021-22 and 2022-23, and City of Edinburgh would have additionally been below 85 per cent in 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26.

The 85% funding floor is a key element of the needs-based distribution formula that is discussed and agreed with COSLA on behalf of all 32 local authorities each year.

Funding for all local authorities in Scotland is included in the calculation of the 85% Floor although the contribution of the three island councils and Argyll and Bute to the average calculation, is capped at 115%.

The capping adjustment has no effect on funding actually provided to those four authorities and it only applies for the purpose of calculating the average, in part to mitigate the risk that the Special Islands Needs Allowance (SINA) has a distortive impact on the calculation.

The capping adjustment has been in place since the 85% Floor was introduced in the 2012-13 Settlement (see Annex I of Local Government Finance Circular 11/2011).