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Remediation is a complex construction task requiring agreement from a number of participants. This includes homeowners, their representatives, architects, construction supply chains, legal representation and those involved in any agreed reconstruction. We are working with stakeholders to ensure, once we have a finalised SBA, we can agree remediation plans.

16 buildings are now in delivery stage with a further 11 buildings finalising applications. We have expanded the pilot to 27 buildings in order to capture an additional building attached to an original pilot building.

It is an engineering decision on areas of risk when completing a Single Building Assessment. The Assessment is a whole building approach, and fire engineers highlight areas of risk to ensure safety for homeowners.

Grant payments are generally issued within 5 working days of the returned signed letter being received. This applies to initial and other grant payments in this programme.

No Single Building Assessments are paused. We are in receipt of multiple SBA reports that are undergoing technical review and due diligence.

We have made 18 payments so far to 15 buildings, with 10 currently under assessment with a partial payment and 5 with full payment and assessment having concluded. All buildings with cladding concerns have and will continue to be offered fully funded assessments.

In the programme to date this has been raised twice with regard to buildings participating in the pilot. As part of the building assessment programme we have had discussions with fire engineers when they have raised concerns regarding carparks in buildings.

The New Scots refugee integration strategy is built on partnership and collaboration, led by the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Scottish Refugee Council, and involves a wide range of partners across different sectors.

The New Scots Core Group brings together key stakeholders and is responsible for monitoring and reviewing progress against the overarching outcomes of the strategy. The Core Group is chaired by Professor Alison Phipps, UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow.

The Core Group usually meets four times per year. This year, the group undertook a two-part workshop in January and February, as part of the New Scots Refugee Integration Delivery Project. The Core Group then met in June and in October, with the final meeting of the year set to take place in December.

We will publish the minutes from the October meeting in December, once cleared by Core Group at the next meeting. We will also publish minutes of the Group’s other meetings from 2022.

The Scottish Government provides funding to Local Government annually through the Local Government settlement. This is made up of a combination of the general revenue grant, general capital grant, income from non-domestic rates as well as specific revenue and capital grants.

Included in the table (BIB 63725) is the Local Government budget following the annual Spring Budget Revision ('SBR') as a proportion of both the Scottish Governments total fiscal budget excluding FTs (i.e. its discretionary spending limit) as well as its Total Managed expenditure. Note that the SBR budget figure does not include amounts provided by other portfolios via grant funding to local government.

Given the changes in the Scottish Governments devolved powers since devolution it is not possible to draw a direct comparison between the funding levels since 1999. To illustrate this point we would note that in 2013-14 funding of over £1bn in respect of Police and Fire was removed from Local Government.

ScotRail does not record passenger complaints data by region or local authority area, but by rail route. The following table shows ScotRail’s complaints data for routes which serve the South Scotland region from 1 April 2022: