National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) expects city and town centres to be at the heart of place-based strategies.NPF4 wants planning to help town centres adapt and be vibrant, healthier, creative, enterprising and resilient places for people to live, learn, work enjoy and visit; and identity opportunities to enhance them.

As NPF4 now forms part of the statutory development plan, it has an enhanced position and influence on planning decisions which we expect to make a real difference to places, including our town centres.

Aberdeen City Council has received direct funding of £590k through the Place Based Investment Programme (PBIP) for 2023-24 and will receive further funding over the course of this Parliament. The Programme accelerates ambitions for place, 20-minute neighbourhoods, town centre action, community led regeneration and community wealth building.PBIP includes £140m allocated to Scotland’s local authorities over this Parliament.

Aberdeen City Council has also benefitted from £9.849m from the Regeneration Capital Grant Fund supporting a number of projects including £1.9m for the Inchgarth Community Regeneration Hub in 2023-24.

The Scottish Government welcomes the Our Union Street white paper and the range of ideas it captures.

The Scottish Government recognises that our cities and towns are a national asset and is pleased to see that many of the aims in the Our Union Street white paper align with aims of National Planning Framework 4.

The Scottish Government would encourage Our Union Street, as it progresses, to consider entering its achievements into the government’s new Scottish Planning Innovation Awards in the future.

There are currently different standards to meet depending on tenure. All housing must meet the Tolerable Standard, Private Rented Sector homes must meet the Repairing Standard with only social homes required to meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard.

Local authorities have broad discretionary powers to support home-owners who have difficulty covering the cost of repairs required to meet with minimum standards. They are required to have a Scheme of Assistance in place which sets out the financial and non-financial help that is appropriate for that area.

The Scottish Government’s Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Gateway was involved in managing the statutory correspondence between Aberdeen City Council and the consultation authorities (Scottish Environment Protection Agency), NautreScot and Historic Environment Scotland) for Aberdeen’s Beachfront Development Framework as required by the Environmental Assessment (Scotland) Act 2005.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting local communities through city regeneration projects such as the Aberdeen beachfront regeneration and will work with Aberdeen City Council and other partners as they take forward its regeneration.

Skills Development Scotland (SDS) works closely with schools across Scotland to support young people with Additional Support Needs (ASN), as set out in its school partnership agreements. SDS take a person-centred approach, offer support to transition planning and have created a module for staff on the principles of transitions.

Resources and guidance are available and frequently updated for SDS staff supporting customers with ASN and disabilities.

SDS also provides Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training to its training providers to support learners with ASN and disabilities as well as signposting to other organisations for support. They offer Enhanced Funding Contributions (EFC) to enable providers to offer additional support for disabled people and/or those who are care experienced aged 20-29 on the Modern Apprenticeship Programme, when reasonable adjustments are required.

SDS undertake focal point group calls with disability stakeholders across Scotland 3 times a year to better understand barriers and consider interventions for disabled people.

In October 2020 The Skills Development Scotland Digital Economy Team published the Neurodiversity in Digital Technology report following which a call to action was made. Particular focus in 2023-24 will be building on diversity and business work, and furthering the work with employers on inclusive recruitment.

The Scottish Government usually publishes local authority analysis using a three year pooled data set to ensure sufficient sample sizes.

As set out in the most recent Scottish House Condition Survey 2021 Key Findings Report, (available at Scottish House Condition Survey 2021 ) there will be no Local Authority publication relating to the 2019 to 2021 three year period for two reasons.

Firstly, due to the Covid 19 pandemic the SHCS survey was suspended and there is no data for 2020. Secondly, the data from the 2021 external+ SHCS is not directly comparable with that for earlier years, due methodological differences, and therefore it would not be appropriate to combine it with the data for 2019 (or earlier) to produce a multi-year analysis.

As three years of data is required to produce local authority analysis there will not be a return to the usual approach for producing local authority estimates until the 2024 wave of the SHCS has completed and published in early 2026.

The most recent estimates of local authority fuel poverty rates are for 2017-2019 and are available at: Scottish House Condition Survey: Local Authority Analysis 2017-2019 , however these estimates pre-date the energy crisis.

Scenario modelling estimates that under the Ofgem energy price cap of £2,074 for a typical dual fuel households, from 1st July 2023, shows there will be around 850,000 fuel poor households in Scotland (34%) an increase of around 230,000 households and 9 percentage points since 2019. This analysis was based on one year of data so cannot be used to produce estimates at the Local Authority Level. However, the large increases in the fuel poverty rate will be reflected across each Local Authority in Scotland.

We have not undertaken an assessment of the impact of recent increases in mortgage rates on levels of fuel poverty among Scottish households.

National Statistics on fuel poverty use data on mortgage costs collected through the Scottish Household Survey, with the latest available figures being for 2019. Updated National Statistics on fuel poverty for 2022, incorporating mortgage costs for that year, are expected to be published in January 2024.

Given that our definition of fuel poverty uses a household’s after housing costs (AHC) income, it is likely that rising mortgage costs and/or rents will result in more fuel poor households.

The data we collect on mortgages does not include information on households' mortgage types, or on the time left before the debt is expected to be paid off. This makes it difficult to include changes to mortgages within the fuel poverty scenario modelling previously produced in relation to changes in the energy price cap and mitigation measures.

The most recent estimates produced using this scenario modelling approach suggest that, at the current energy price cap, approximately 850,000 households (34%) in Scotland will be in fuel poverty from July to September. This year we have tripled the budget for our Fuel Insecurity Fund to £30 million, which is there to support any household at risk of self-disconnection or self-rationing their energy use. We also continue to call on the UK Government to provide more targeted support.

The Scottish Health Survey , which is commissioned by the Scottish Government, asked respondents whether they were worried about running out of food. The most recent data was published on 8 November 2022 and found that in Aberdeen City 10% of people were worried they would run out of food compared to a figure for Scotland as a whole of 9%. For Aberdeenshire Council a slightly lower figure of 8% of people reported they were worried they would run out of food.

Alongside our aim to accelerate the development of industrial scale renewable hydrogen projects, the Scottish Government continues to foster demonstration, innovation and manufacturing and workforce skills development in the hydrogen sector.

To support research and innovation in hydrogen production, storage, and distribution, we launched the Hydrogen Innovation Scheme in 2022 and offered over £7m in grants to 32 projects last May.

Additionally, our £26 million Low Carbon Manufacturing Challenge Fund provides support to Scottish manufacturing businesses looking to grow through the development of low carbon products.

Many of the levers required to support the emergence of a flourishing hydrogen economy in the devolved nations are reserved to the UK Government, and so we will continue to work closely with the UKG to ensure that our collective vision for the development of the hydrogen economy is aligned and the benefits are realised across all nations of the UK.

The Scottish Government has an ambition of at least 5GW of hydrogen production capacity by 2030 and 25GW by 2025. The Hydrogen Policy Statement (2020) and the Hydrogen Action Plan (2022) set out how we will work collaboratively with the energy sector to drive progress over the course of this Parliament.

The Hydrogen Action Plan is supported by a programme of capital funding, designed to accelerate and maximise the production of renewable hydrogen in Scotland.

Funding to date includes:

• over £7m in grants offered via the Hydrogen Innovation Scheme to 32 projects that will drive innovation in renewable hydrogen production, storage, and distribution;
• over £6m awarded via the Just Transition Fund to HydroGlen, a green hydrogen farming pilot;
• and £15m awarded via the Energy Transition Fund to accelerate Aberdeen Hydrogen Hub.

The next tranche of the hydrogen investment programme, the Green Hydrogen Fund, will launch later this year. This fund will focus on supporting renewable hydrogen production from Scotland’s abundant renewable energy resources, seeking to give Scotland first-mover advantage.