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Statistics relating to the progress of the Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP) are published quarterly on the Scottish Government website. These figures relate to the number of approvals, site starts, and completions of social and affordable homes, and can be accessed using the following link: https://www.gov.scot/publications/housing-statistics-for-scotland-new-house-building/ .

The following table provides a breakdown of the number of homes completed in each financial year since 2016-17:

Local authorities are responsible for the administration and enforcement of landlord registration, and are the data controllers of the information held on the landlord registration IT system for landlords in their area.

The Scottish Government works with Registers of Scotland to provide local authorities with an online platform to prepare and maintain their registers.

The Scottish Government receives monthly aggregate information extracted from the system, including the total number of active registrations and the number of properties that these relate to.

The Public Sector Geospatial Agreement, or PSGA, as its commonly known is a 10 year agreement between the Cabinet Office and the Ordnance Survey. The Agreement sets out Ordnance Survey’s public task and also provides the licence mechanism through which OS data is made available, and the basis on which the Scottish public sector may access the data.

In 2020 The Cabinet Office and the Scottish Ministers agreed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to extend the PSGA to cover Scottish Public Sector Bodies with a view to replacing the existing member licences under the One Scotland Mapping Agreement and the Greenspace Scotland Agreement with the Member Licences under the proposed PSGA. Scottish Public Sector Bodies played an extensive role in the development of the PSGA including defining the specification of the datasets that were captured and developed over the first 3 years of the PSGA as part of the National Geospatial Database. As such, the PSGA reflects the requirements of the public sector across Scotland, England and Wales.

The Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA) provides access to premium geospatial data, and facilitates the free sharing of data and outputs between members, which will enable efficient evidence-based decision-making across the Public Sector. Over the 10 year contract period starting from May 2020, PSGA is likely to provide Scottish Public Sector organisations with £30 million in savings.

The transition from the One Scotland Mapping Agreement to the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement resulted in an initial cost saving of around 30% to all Scottish PSGA member organisations, with a prime example of this being NHS boards costs which dropped from £700K in 2019/2020 to £472,500 in 2020 / 2021. ?Further to this, Ordnance Survey costs have been front loaded for the first 5 years of the agreement. What this means in reality is that from years 6 through 10, members will have no Ordnance Survey (OS) data costs to pay and for those years and will only pay contribution towards other components of the PSGA agreement such as Aerial Photography, Web Service costs etc. In monetary terms this equates to a £15 million saving to Scottish Public Sector members over the final 5 years of the agreement.

A major part of the PSGA agreement is the ongoing Governance review process, this is where monthly meetings with the Devolved Administrations and the Geospatial Commission look at the key performance indicators (KPI’s) of the agreement ensuring Ordnance Survey continue to meet their obligations and commitments under the agreed contract. The Scottish Geospatial Management Board also meet quarterly to ensure the PSGA continues to represent value for money and continues to provide robust data to Scottish members to support policy and ongoing Public Sector business requirements. This is also an opportunity for Scottish members to address any future or priority data requirements with Ordnance Survey. There is also a quarterly Board of Commissioners meeting where Scotland along with the other devolved administration are represented, with a view to shaping the strategic direction of the agreement going forward at a UK level.

The PSGA also offer substantial operational benefits to Scottish members such as collaboration, meaning procurement is handled centrally thus releasing the resourcing burden on the 80 Scottish member organisations. In terms of Data Access the agreement provides new and easier ways to access data through premium web services such Europa and OS National Geographic Database (OS NGD) API, thus lessening the burden on Scottish member organisation to manage the data locally. The agreement also provides data access at full GB coverage as opposed to just Scotland, this is extremely useful when collaborating with other devolved administrations or any cross border initiatives. Data Sharing within the PSGA makes it easier to share robust definitive Ordnance Survey data or derived data products between Scottish members that support and underpin key policy and business initiatives. This was essential during the recent Covid pandemic and fundamental to how the Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland and the Scottish Public Sector delivered our National response to the pandemic. Key initiatives such as Lock Down mapping, Covid Testing centres , Health and Social initiatives and National Resilience all relied heavily on Data Sharing between the Scottish Public Sector. The PSGA also included Support in terms of interoperability between important National and Local Government datasets due to the consistent high quality base date being provided the Ordnance Survey. Scottish PSGA members can also access Technical Support through the agreement, with four dedicated technical Ordnance Survey staff available to assist and support Scottish members needs if required at no additional cost.

Information on annual spend on the Affordable Housing Supply Programme is reported through our published annual out-turn reports and can be accessed through the following link Affordable Housing Supply Programme - More homes - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . The following table provides the expenditure on the Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP) in each financial year since 2016-17.

The expenditure incurred in a particular year does not correlate directly to the number of completions within that year as the construction of new affordable housing developments can span a number of years:

General guidance for local authorities to administer and manage the Private Landlord Registration scheme was issued in 2009: https://www.gov.scot/publications/registration-private-landlords-guidance-local-authorities/pages/1/ .

This was updated in 2017 to provide statutory guidance for local authorities regarding the effective regulation of landlord registration: https://www.gov.scot/publications/landlord-registration-statutory-guidance-local-authorities-2017-statutory-guidance-local/ .

We are preparing further guidance, in consultation with local authorities, that we expect to be issued later this year.

The Scottish Government issued statutory guidance to local authorities on the licensing of houses in multiple occupation in 2012: https://www.gov.scot/publications/licensing-multiple-occupied-housing-statutory-guidance-for-scottish-local-authorities/ .

I can confirm that funding for the Scottish 4G Infill (S4GI) programme is fully committed to building and activating 55 masts across Scotland and that no remaining funding is available.

Freight works on a commercial basis so the decision to move products by rail is a decision for the customer and its logistics provider.

However, I can confirm that a dedicated express rail logistics service is currently running into Scotland. This service which runs between Birmingham and Mossend, started with a trial period on 17 October 2022 followed by a full operational service running five nights a week from 9 January 2023, is operated by Varamis Rail.

The Retail Strategy Steering Group was established to guide the content and recommendations of the Retail Strategy and operated for the duration of the strategy’s development.

The Steering Group was Chaired by the then Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth, Tom Arthur, and was made up of members from bodies across Trade Organisations, Public Sector Bodies, businesses, and Trade Unions whose expertise and insight helped to shape the Retail Strategy. Actions and recommendations arising from the Steering Group were progressed through a number of thematic workstream groups chaired by members of the Steering Group and comprised of business, policy, and delivery experts.

Three workstreams were identified – People, Place and Sector, which transformed into a set of actions within the Retail Strategy. Following the publication of the Strategy in March 2020. An Industry Leadership group was established to drive and support the delivery of these actions. This group has agreed an outline Delivery Plan, identifying the group’s priorities as well as a critical review process and timelines for measuring success.

The Scottish Government continues to work in partnership with the sector, trade unions and employees, whose experiences are crucial, to help the retail sector in Scotland become an exemplar for inclusive economic growth and play its part in creating a wellbeing economy and a fairer, greener, and stronger Scotland.

The Scottish Government’s Ministerial Population Taskforce recognises the significance of long-term projected demographic change and since publishing the Population Strategy in 2021, it has focused - across government, and with local and regional partners – on ensuring Scotland’s population profile provides a platform for sustainable and inclusive economic growth and wellbeing.