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Marketing for the Open Market Shared Equity scheme is carried out by the administering agent as part of their contract to administer the scheme on behalf of the Scottish Government

It is the responsibility of Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) who deliver the New Supply Shared Equity scheme to carry out marketing for each of their developments.

Our clear preference would be for people to move into housing as soon as possible, however due to the speed and size of the evacuation we recognise that the use of temporary hotel accommodation was necessary. Refugee resettlement and relocation are UK Government schemes and the Home Office is responsible for the sourcing of hotels to accommodate people.

There are currently 6 hotels located in Scotland used for bridging accommodation (2 in Edinburgh, 1 in Fife and 3 in Aberdeen). In line with the key principle of the New Scots refugee integration strategy, local authorities are working to support integration from day one of arrival in Scotland, including those within hotels.

We continue to engage with the UK Government to ensure that property offers that local authorities have already made can be matched with Afghan families as soon as possible.

Working with industry, we have developed a set of installer skills requirements to help professionalise services in this sector, and provide clearer career pathways for young people. We consulted on these earlier last year and we are now integrating these requirements into the relevant industry standards.

We have partnered with Scottish Renewables and Skills Development Scotland (SDS) to undertake a 'Heat in Buildings Workforce Assessment Project' which will help us define the timing of workforce growth and how best to support people transitioning into key roles. This work will report back in Spring 2022. This will improve our understanding on how best to support workforce investment and ensure that jobs will be available for people to move into as they complete their training.

At the end of 2020 the Scottish Government and Skills Development Scotland (SDS) published the Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan (CESAP) setting out the actions we need to take to ensure our workforce is able to support the transition to net zero.

As part of the implementation of the CESAP, Skills Development Scotland (SDS) and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) are currently reviewing training needs and available provision required to deliver the ambitions of our Heat in Buildings Strategy. We have commissioned a workforce assessment which will serve as an evidence base for this review.

Modern Apprenticeships are the key pathway for young people into the heating and plumbing industry. The Scottish Government provides a contribution towards training of Mas through SDS. The public funded training contribution is structured by age and level, and prioritised to support outcomes within the Scottish Government's skills and economic strategies.

Three colleges are currently offering insulation apprenticeships - West College Scotland, South Lanarkshire College and Edinburgh College. A further two training facilities at West Lothian College and Dundee & Angus College are due to open August 2022 to meet the increased demand.

In addition the new Insultation Building Treatments (IBT) Level 5/6 qualification approved by Apprenticeship Approvals Group (AAG) to support external wall apprenticeships. This qualification will be supported within Scotland's colleges insultation training facilities with funding received from SP Energy Networks Green Economy Funding and Scottish Government.

This new qualification will further improve the quality and standards of installations in Scotland, in addition to creating new Apprenticeship Opportunities.

The Scottish Government collects snapshot information through the HL2 aggregate data collection on the number of households in temporary accommodation placements at the end of each quarter, by accommodation type. This information is available for all Local Authorities from 2002. This information is published as part of the Homelessness in Scotland Statistics publications. Table 29 of the ‘Main tables’ associated with the 2020/21 publication – the latest full year available – provides the number of households in bed and breakfast accommodation placements as at 31 March 2021, by local authority.

Supporting documents - Homelessness in Scotland: 2020 to 2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

By its nature, snapshot data cannot provide a true reflection of the entirety of temporary accommodation usage across a period of time.

The Scottish Government also collects record level data relating to individual temporary accommodation placements through the HL3 data collection. The HL1 data collection gathers information on the number of homelessness applications and number of people associated with households making homelessness applications. Information relating to the number of people within temporary accommodation placements is not collected via the HL3 collection. Therefore, to provide an estimate of the number of people in temporary accommodation placements, this must be derived by linking household records between the HL1 and HL3 data collections.

However, it is important to note that it is not necessarily the case that all household members associated with a homelessness application will enter the associated temporary accommodation placement(s). For example, a household may make alternative arrangements for children so the children are never present in the temporary accommodation.

Comprehensive HL3 data is only available for all local authorities from 2017-18, which can include temporary accommodation placements which commenced prior to 2017-18. While some local authorities have provided HL3 data prior to 2017-18, coverage is variable across local authorities with some not providing any data prior to 2017-18 and some providing a much smaller number of placements compared to subsequent years, suggesting this data is incomplete. Therefore, only B&B placements that were live from 2017-18 onwards have been provided to give robust comprehensive statistics across Scotland and a consistent time series over the past 4 years.

Data is provided up to 2020-21 as this is the most recent full-year data available.

Temporary accommodation placements in hotels are captured within a broader ‘other’ category (via the HL2 or HL3 collections) and so this data cannot be provided separately.

The following table shows the estimated number of people in Bed and Breakfast (B&B) temporary accommodation placements by year and local authority. Where the same household has had multiple B&B placements within the same year, the people within that household have only been included once. Where the same household has had multiple B&B placements in different years, the people within the households have been included in each of the years they were in a B&B placement. his includes instances where B&B placements have spanned multiple years, with the people being included in the figures for all years in which the B&B placement was live.

Values of 1, 2, 3 or 4 are denoted by ‘<5’ for disclosure control purposes.

Estimated number of people in B&B temporary accommodation placements, by local authority: 2017-18-2020-21

As a national service, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service can deploy its resources in a flexible way to ensure that fire and rescue cover is maintained. Managing resources in the most effective way is an operational matter for SFRS.

We engage regularly with the UK Government about the Afghanistan Relocation and Resettlement Schemes and continue to press the UK Government to address lengthy delays in the matching process and ensure local authorities receive adequate funding.

Refugee resettlement is reserved to the UK Parliament and handled by the Home Office but Scotland remains committed to playing our part in welcoming and supporting people fleeing Afghanistan. All 32 local authorities have confirmed their participation in the Schemes.

The UK Minister for Afghan Resettlement committed to regular Four Nations discussions when she met with the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government in January and we look forward to further arrangements being made.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-06639 on 5 March 2022. 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 .

Following our consultation in 2019, a short-life working group was established in October 2021 to help produce a new temporary accommodation standards framework, identify if legislative changes are required, consider how the framework can be applied and regulated and produce the processes to support this.

The working group has met five times to date and aims to produce a temporary accommodation standards framework later in 2022.

Asylum is a matter reserved to the UK Parliament and handled by the Home Office. This includes provision of asylum accommodation to people who require it while awaiting the outcome of their asylum application.

I have written to the Home Secretary and the UK Immigration Minister to express my concerns about the use of hotels to accommodate people seeking asylum. Three letters I have issued are published on the Scottish Government website: Use of hotels to accommodate asylum seekers: correspondence with UK government - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The Home Office procures asylum accommodation through private sector contracts. Mears Group is the current contract holder in Scotland. The Scottish Government has no control of asylum accommodation and support and do not have access to Home Office systems or to operational systems run by their contractors.

The Scottish Government is aware that the Home Office has procured hotels as contingency initial asylum accommodation in Scotland and understands that five hotels are currently in operation for this purpose in Scotland. We are also aware that Mears Group has retained use of a hotel in Glasgow as contingency accommodation to enable people who have presented in Glasgow to undertake Covid quarantine prior to moving into dispersal accommodation in the community.