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The Home Energy Scotland Grants and Loan Scheme does not directly accredit installers for external wall insulation, however we do require that businesses installing this measure are accredited to the PAS2030 British Standard

Since June we have published our Heat in Buildings Supply Chains Delivery Plan which sets out the practical steps that we are taking to support the growth of the green heat sector.

As part of our Supply Chains Delivery Plan, Skills Development Scotland are currently leading on pathfinder research to build the evidence base in the Glasgow City and Shetland council areas. This will build an understanding of forecast skills demand and identify gaps, providing a model for undertaking such an assessment in other areas. The pathfinder research will be complete spring 2023.

As part of this package of actions, we have also re-launched our previous 'Sustainable Energy Supply Chain Programme' as the ‘Green Heat Installer Engagement Programme’, with a dedicated focus on working with installers in the heat and energy efficiency supply chain.

There is ongoing work related to identifying and monitoring risks from PFAS.

The environmental regulator SEPA has been working with partners in recent years to understand the sources, environmental concentrations, and risks of perflourinated compounds in the environment.

A 2019 SEPA study looked at the potential for organic contaminants to be present in materials spread to land, and carried out a basic risk assessment using monitoring data for prioritised substances. This study included measurement of 1 PFA substance (PFOA) levels in sludges from two waste water treatment plants, and did not identify a risk for reasonable worst-case spreading scenarios. In 2018, SEPA carried out a limited monitoring exercise looking at several PFAS in a number of rivers across Scotland, though monitoring locations were not directly targeted to potential sources of these chemicals. 65% of the 550 datapoints reported were below limits of detection.

A Scottish Government commissioned report by the James Hutton Institute on the impact of sewage sludge spreading on human health was published in 2021 and indicated that risks to human health from the polyfluorinated compounds PFOS and PFOA in sewage sludge spread to land in Scotland are likely to be low.

However, scientific understanding of risks posed by PFAS in the environment continues to develop. For example :

• SEPA is reviewing its approach to evidence gathering to better characterise the current distribution of PFAS in Scotland’s environment. It is working with partner organisations to develop this understanding, and working across the regulatory landscape to support revisions to legislation, regulatory approaches, and support site operators or users of PFAS based substances to meet their legal obligations. This includes engagement with large research programmes such as ECORISC (Ecotoxicological Risk Assessment Towards Sustainable Chemical Use).
• UK environmental regulators have been engaged in the UK Water Industry Research Chemical Investigations Programme (CIP UK). Through this programme SEPA has been working in partnership with Scottish Water on various workstreams for a number of years, and this investigation has included evaluation of PFAS in waste water treatment works effluent and sludge, risks to the environment and effectiveness of treatment processes.

I understand the importance of school age childcare and the benefits it brings for the whole family. That is why the Scottish Government is committed to design an all-year-round system of school age childcare, which will be funded for those families on the lowest incomes by the end of the Parliamentary Term.

We will soon publish a School Age Childcare Delivery Framework which will set out the approach and principles we will apply to designing and building a school age childcare system.

We have supported and listened to private providers and other key stakeholders throughout our policy development. We will continue to do this, using a place based and people centred approach to design, recognising that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to providing school age childcare within communities.

Across 2020-22 we invested £3 million in 15 Access to Childcare Fund projects, some delivered by private providers. The projects explored new models of school age childcare including holiday provision, flexible delivery and specialist services for children with additional support needs. This year, we also provided £10 million to the Summer 2022 programme. This helped Local Authorities and a range of delivery partners, including private providers, to offer free summer holiday and food provision to families from the six priority groups outlined in the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-26 .

Building on our learning from these projects, in this year’s Programme for Government we will continue to invest and involve a range of providers and communities to help us design an all-year round school age childcare system.

We are also progressing the actions set out in the Financial Sustainability Health Check , published in August 2021, including funding pilot programmes for targeted Business Gateway support for childcare services. In early spring we will conduct a second Financial Sustainability Health Check to gather further evidence on the sustainability of the sector, helping us to tailor future policy.

I would also refer the member to the answer to question S6W-13101 on 9 January 2023. 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 latest Scottish Government Private Sector Rent Statistics, Scotland, 2010 to 2022 was published on 29 th November 2022, which presents average private rents by property size and Broad Rental Market Areas between 2010 and 2022 (years to end September), based predominantly on advertised rent data. This is the lowest level of granularity available for the Scottish Government Private Rent Statistics. The figures cannot be disaggregated to local authority level as the data collection method used has not been designed for this purpose. and therefore the Scottish Government does not produce or publish rental data at local authority level. In addition, data is not held for the years prior to 2010.

In terms of average rents in the social rented sector, the Scottish Government Housing Revenue Account (HRA) Statistics publication contains a time series by local authority area (Table 8) of the average weekly rent on local authority HRA properties from 1997-98 onwards. These figures are also included alongside corresponding figures for housing association average rents by local authority area in an archived Scottish Government Housing Statistics publication table , although this table covers the period 2005-06 to 2012-13 only. More recent data on average rents in the social rented sector for local authority and housing association properties, including by property size, is published as part of Scottish Housing Regulator Charter Data outputs for the years 2013-14 onwards, available in the Scottish Housing Regulator Statistical Information webpages . The Charter Data figures are available at a social landlord level only, and so housing association figures are presented as landlord level averages rather than by the local authority location of their housing stock. However separate Scottish Housing Regulator stock data for the latest year 2021-22, available in the same Statistical Information webpages, includes information for on average rents split by both social landlord and local authority area for the year 2021-22.

The Scottish Government accepts that this statistic needs revising and we have already committed to undertake further work to quantify Scotland’s offshore wind potential. In response to the issues raised in the UK Statistics Authority’s letter, dated 7 December 2022, the Scottish Government has engaged directly with the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) setting out the steps that have been taken to ensure the statistic is not used further, and provided an update on the analytical work that is underway to produce a replacement statistic.

Scottish Government allocates sustainability payments on a per patient basis. Practices with higher list sizes will receive a proportionally larger sum than smaller practices.

The Scottish Government has no plans to reduce the allocated £10m in sustainability payments to general practices.

We have reached an agreement with social landlords on below-inflation rent increases for the next financial year.

Organisations representing social landlords have announced their members’ plans for average rent increases for 2023-24, which will keep rents significantly below private market levels.

Under the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) Act 2022, rents are effectively frozen in the social rented sectors until 31 March 2023. Decisions on future plans for the private sector rent freeze, as well as other measures contained in the Act, will be announced in the coming weeks.

Data on deaths from all causes in Scotland are available from National Records of Scotland: Vital Events - Deaths | National Records of Scotland (nrscotland.gov.uk).

The Scottish Government does not hold data on the number of industrial units built for SMEs. Relevant asset owners are responsible for property within their ownership. Local authorities may hold data on development in their area.