Seòmar agus comataidhean

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-34203 on 27 February 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The SG has today published a Legal Aid Reform Discussion Paper which sets out the three areas of work the Scottish Government will be undertaking to improve legal aid. We will bring forward Regulations by the end of 2025 to simplify the regulatory framework which governs the eligibility for legal assistance and to improve the application process, reducing the burden on both solicitors and those that need legal services and ensuring funding is provided as quickly and easily as possible.

We will also resume work to conduct research on legal aid fees and to implement changes informed by that research. Both of these areas of work will make it easier for solicitors to work with legal aid funding and for those who need help to obtain it.

Longer-term we will take forward a review of the whole system to ensure that it is adaptable, flexible, affordable and sustainable for the future.

We are committed to working with private sector law firms, third sector organisations and users of legal assistance services to develop that system and identify what primary legislation would be required to deliver it.

The Budget 2025-26 freezes the Basic Property Rate for properties with a rateable value up to and including £51,000, delivering the lowest such rate in the UK for the seventh year in a row. It also provides a package of non-domestic rates reliefs worth an estimated £731 million, including the most generous small business rates relief in the UK, a 40% relief for hospitality premises liable for the Basic Property Rate, capped at £110,000 per business, and a continuation of 100% relief for hospitality premises located on islands as defined by the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018, and in prescribed remote areas (Cape Wrath, Knoydart, and Scoraig), capped at £110,000 per business.

Based on Scottish Government analysis, using the non-domestic rates valuation roll and a snapshot of councils’ billing systems, Hospitality Reliefs in Scotland could benefit up to 13,000 properties, including up to 5,000 hotels, public houses and restaurants. Of these, we estimate that this relief, in combination with existing reliefs, could allow up to 300 hotels, public houses and restaurants to pay no rates at all in 2025-26 with up to 300 more benefiting from the 100% relief for hospitality premises in island and specified remote areas.

The precise number of premises that will benefit from these measures will depend on take-up of the relief and the ways in which businesses with more than one eligible property choose to claim relief in cases where the value of their relief is limited by the £110,000 per-business cap.

Further information on impacts with respect to the 100% relief for hospitality premises on islands and in specified remote areas has been published in an Island Community Impact Assessment which is available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2025/40/resources.

There are a number of factors which make it challenging to estimate the full economic impact of non-domestic rates relief. These include:

?where a relief is available nationwide comparisons with a control group of similar non-domestic properties would be limited by important differences, such as being a different property type or being outside of Scotland, allowing few meaningful comparisons;

• differences in the characteristics of businesses and organisations eligible for a particular relief;
• the unpredictability of the behavioural response to any changes in tax liabilities;
• the effects of a relief on businesses or organisations that have multiple properties, not all of which qualify for a given relief, or may be subject to the cap on the overall value of relief;
• difficulties in matching non-domestic rates valuation roll data to business level datasets to understand the effects of a relief on businesses economic outcomes and behaviour makes a business-based analysis resource intensive.

Further detail will be published in the Operational Improvement Plan in March, as committed to in the answer to the GIQ (S6W-34287)

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. However, I have contacted the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland (the Keeper) and they have been able to provide some of the information. The breakdown by each year the rural housing burden was applied is not available. The property registers maintained by the Keeper do not include council tax band. The following number of titles contain rural housing burdens by local authority:

Argyll and Bute 134

Dumfries and Galloway 109

Highland 388

Inverclyde 1

Moray 4

Na h-Eileanan an Iar 110

Orkney Islands 24

Perth and Kinross 13

Total 783

Category 1 defects are defined within the term maintenance contract as those that present, or could present, an immediate hazard to trunk road users. They are typically detected during the twice weekly driven safety related inspections. Category 2 defects are defined as those which do not present an immediate hazard to road users and are typically identified during walked annual inspections.

The following table contains the number of signs on the routes requested along with the number of signs with open defects of all types as at 12 February 2025.

Transport Scotland’s Operating Companies are required to either repair or make safe Category 1 sign defects within 24 hours of detection. The following table provides the number of Category 1 sign related defects that were not recorded as either repaired or made safe within 24 hours.

Since 1997, Freight Facilities Grants have removed over 50 million lorry miles from Scotland's roads. The exact impact on road congestion and air quality of each project cannot be confidently described due to the effect of other local influences on transport demand.

Traffic monitoring is undertaken after a facility funded under the grant scheme becomes operational.

Transport Scotland requires applicants to provide a return of traffic passing through the grant-aided facility. Transport Scotland will require verified tonnages reports from the applicant, in cases where the applicant is required to provide evidence to corroborate the traffic the documentation required will be agreed prior to the award of grant.

Monitoring will cover an agreed period of time to allow the required environmental benefits from the grant to be accrued by the applicant.

A total of £70,443,984 has been allocated through the Freight Facilities Grant (FFG) since its introduction in 1997. Of this the spend on rail projects was £44,708,510, or 63% of the FFG budget. The spend on water projects was £25,735,474 which equates to 37% of the budget.