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Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6W-39956

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 05 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Mairi McAllan on 10 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the average waiting time for households applying to the Warmer Homes Scotland Scheme to move from initial application to installation, broken down by local authority area in each year since 2018.

The Warmer Homes Scotland scheme has a key performance indicator (KPI) recording the percentage of customer journeys, from referral by the Energy Saving Trust to completion of installation for full jobs, completed within 65 working days.

We do not have analysis of average customer journey times by region but instead use this KPI, to record the numbers of jobs completed within the specified target time. This KPI is performance based and linked to payment. A reduction in the KPI performance will automatically result in a reduced payment to Warmworks thereby continually incentivising a consistent performance standard.

Warmworks submit a monthly performance report and scorecard, detailing delivery volumes and performance against KPIs and service levels across six regions. One key target is for 95% of installations to be completed within the 65-day timeframe. While performance is tracked regionally, data is not broken down by individual local authorities but a table showing which local authorities are represented by each area is included in this response.

It is important to note that performance in 2020-21 and 2021-22 was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. More recently, the 2023-24 and 2024/25 periods have seen extended waiting times due to a high volume of referrals following the launch of the new WHS2 scheme in October 2023. This surge in demand and the resulting delays were anticipated and communicated to customers in advance.

The tables below show Warmworks' performance for the referral to completion (RTC) KPI from April 2017-18 to 2025-26 (to end of July 2025), The dates requested cover both Warmer Homes Scotland phase 1 (WHS1) and 2 (WHS 2) and were reported on separately for the period of 2023-24.

RTC - WHS1		2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22	2022-23	2023-24
South West	96%	99%	98%	89%	94%	97%	89%
South East	96%	99%	98%	93%	91%	97%	94%
Strathclyde and Central	98%	99%	98%	93%	95%	99%	95%
North East	95%	97%	95%	89%	88%	94%	91%
Highlands	93%	96%	98%	83%	91%	95%	96%
Islands	91%	93%	97%	81%	70%	94%	94%
Total	96%	98%	98%	91%	92%	97%	93%

RTC - WHS2	2023-24	2024-25	25-26 (July 25)
South West	49%	75%	98%
South East	65%	81%	98%
Strathclyde and Central	66%	74%	98%
North East	62%	86%	95%
Highlands	38%	90%	95%
Islands	29%	97%	95%
Total	62%	79%	98%

The following table outlines which Local Authorities map to each KPI region:

KPI Region	Local Authorities
South West	North Ayrshire (excluding islands) East Ayrshire South Ayrshire Dumfries and Galloway
South East	Fife Edinburgh Midlothian East Lothian West Lothian Scottish Borders
Strathclyde and Central	Glasgow Renfrewshire East Renfrewshire Inverclyde East Dunbartonshire West Dunbartonshire Clackmannanshire North Lanarkshire South Lanarkshire Stirling Falkirk
North East	Moray Aberdeen City Aberdeenshire Perth and Kinross Angus Dundee City
Highlands	Argyll and Bute (excluding islands) Highland (excluding islands)
Islands	Eilean Siar (Western Isles) Shetland Islands Orkney Islands (and all other islands: Skye, Arran, Bute etc)

Question reference: S6W-39960

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 05 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 9 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what support it provides for schemes that assist people leaving prison to reintegrate into the community, and how much funding it has allocated to any such programmes in each of the last five financial years.

The Scottish Government currently provides funding to Upside, the national voluntary throughcare service. Upside launched on 1 April 2025, replacing the previous Public Social Partnerships ‘New Routes’ and ‘Shine’, which had been in place for 12 years and 10 years respectively prior to Upside launching. Upside supports men and women leaving a period of remand or a short-term prison sentence (less than 4 years) without statutory supervision requirements. It is a partnership of third sector organisations, which provides person-centered support including help to access sustainable housing, healthcare, social security and employment opportunities.

The Scottish Government also provides funding to Justice Social Work, through payments to Local Authorities, to deliver both statutory and voluntary throughcare. Local Authorities have autonomy to direct this funding to meet statutory justice services and local priorities which are aimed at reducing reoffending. This funding covers long term prisoners, short term prisoners released on a statutory supervision order, and community payback orders.

Table 1 details the amount of funding which has been provided to each programme to support people leaving prison to reintegrate into the community in each of the last five financial years.

Table 1: Funding for throughcare services 2021-22 to 2025-26. To note, all figures in the table have been rounded off.

Programme/Organisation	Financial Year
Programme/Organisation	2021-2022	2022-2023	2023-2024	2024-2025	2025-2026
Upside	-	-	-	£0.30m*	£5.3m
Shine PSP	£1.43m	£1.43m	£1.46m	£1.46m	-
Moving On PSP	£0.50m	£0.50m	£0.50m	-	-
New Routes PSP	£1.76m	£1.76m	£1.8m	£1.9m £0.060m*	-
Justice Social Work****	£120.5m	£123.4m	£123.3m	£136.4m	£141.8m

*Start-up costs for Upside

**New Routes funding increased due to the wind down of Moving On, and New Routes taking on clients from Moving On who still required support.

***Additional funding to support with the Prisoners (Early Release) (Scotland) Act 2025 at the end of 2024-2025 FY

****The funding was distributed to Local Authorities through an agreed funding distribution model (Justice Social Work funding formula).

Question reference: S6W-39910

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 05 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 9 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-36360 by Fiona Hyslop on 6 June 2025, what proportion of its active travel budget was allocated to each partner organisation in each of the last three financial years, and whether it can provide an update on what proportion of the active travel budget was spent in 2024-25, based on consolidated expenditure.

The spend achieved on the Sustainable and Active Travel budget for 2024-25 was £147,700,000. This equates to 85% of the value allocated for investment at the start of the 2024-25 financial year.

The Scottish Government is transparent on all investments that are made to delivery Partners. On an annual basis this information is publish via the Transport Scotland section 70 returns, these are available for all to view on the Transport Scotland Website. For the years mentioned in question S6W-36360 (2021-22, 2022-23, 2023-24), the funding distributed from the Sustainable and Active Travel budget to delivery partners has been placed with SPICE under bib number 66035.

Question reference: S6F-04291

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 08 September 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 11 September 2025

To ask the First Minister whether the Scottish Government will review its policy on public sector settlement agreements, in light of reports that £4 million of public money was spent on public sector pay-offs in 2023-24.

Question reference: S6W-40149

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 05 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 8 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reports of 23 assaults on prison officers at HMP Greenock between 2020 and 2024, and what measures it is taking to ensure the safety of staff at the facility.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

SPS has a zero-tolerance approach to violence towards staff and has support mechanisms in place to assist prison officers who have been affected by it. Incidents of criminality are reported to Police Scotland and SPS will actively seek prosecution.

Following the successful pilot of Body Worn Video Cameras at 3 prison sites, cameras are to be rolled out across the prison estate which will include HMP Greenock.

The cameras will complement an already well established range of staff training, security systems and clear operating procedures used to promote and support safety for everyone working and living in prisons.

Question reference: S6W-40065

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 05 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 8 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has assessed how devolved social security spending per capita varies across different local authority areas, and, if so, whether it will provide details for each of the last five years.

Social Security Scotland does not currently publish statistics on spending per capita. Expenditure for each individual benefit is included in its Official Statistics publications available on the Social Security Scotland website.

Social Security Scotland recently published Official Statistics on the number of individual clients paid, which includes total expenditure by local authority area for financial year 2024-25.

Social Security Scotland continues to review the statistics it produces, taking account of user needs when developing future publications, in line with Code of Practice for Statistics.

Question reference: S6W-40022

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Friday, 05 September 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 8 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how much has been spent in total on prisoner rehabilitation and reintegration programmes in each of the last five years, and what percentage of the total Scottish Prison Service budget this represented in each year.

Question reference: S6O-04911

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Wednesday, 03 September 2025
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 10 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to increase the availability of residential social care beds in the west of Scotland, in light of reported closures and service reductions in the region.

Question reference: S6W-39710

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 04 August 2025
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 1 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government at what time the last ScotRail service of the day on each route (a) currently departs and (b) departed in 2019.

Question reference: S6W-39709

Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
Date lodged: Monday, 04 August 2025
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 1 September 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many ScotRail evening rail services currently operate on each route, and how this compares with the number of evening rail services on each route in 2019.