A National Mission with Local Impact - draft infrastructure investment plan 2021‑2022 to 2025‑2026: consultation

Chapter 7 - Theme 3: Building Resilient and Sustainable

Some achievements from our 2015 Infrastructure Investment Plan

• £3.5 billion made available to support the single biggest investment in, and delivery of, affordable housing since devolution.
• Delivered new healthcare facilities such as NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s Woodside Health Centre, Stirling Care Village, and NHS Orkney New Hospital and Healthcare Facilities.
• £476 million to support the expansion of Early Learning and Childcare – investment so that more parents will be able to participate in work, training or study.

Delivering on our ambitions for a fairer Scotland starts at the local community level. Opportunities exist in many of our towns, villages and neighbourhoods to bring together individual investments for greater impact.

The COVID-19 pandemic has required us to rethink how and where we work, opening up new ways to think about our neighbourhoods, towns, cities and rural communities. We must also respond to changes in demography, and in the way in which people wish to access and consume services. Our next National Planning Framework, the Place Standard tool and new Digital Planning System will help us to do that.

Through our Place based Investment Programme, we will implement the Place Principle at pace to ensure that investment is relevant to each place and for the benefit of all the people in that place. This is a collaborative place based approach driven by the needs of communities – collectively getting behind community led changes at the heart of an area.

It is ever more crucial to ensure everyone has a suitable home: one that is safe; warm and affordable; close to services, shopping, work, and green space for recreation. A new emphasis on localism informed by concepts such as 20 minute neighbourhoods will help to achieve that.

We will invest in our housing and better delivery of services locally – be that in adapting our housing stock to better meet peoples’ needs, delivering a network of community treatment centres and Near me health services, designing more integrated education facilities to help all learners reach their full potential and modernising our justice facilities and transforming emergency services to adapt to the digital age.

Case Study - Loanhead Centre

Partners seized the opportunity of Schools for the Future investment significantly to shape and modernise previously separate and poorer quality public sector facilities. Through a more holistic approach to service planning, a new combined centres was developed which co-located a primary school, NHS medical centre, and community library and leisure facilities.

The community were consulted from the beginning, ensuring buy in to the new hub and facilities provided. The sense of community ownership of the building has developed trust and ensured that the building is well used. Take-up of services has been higher than before – including a 50% increase in footfall in the library compared to pre-hub figures. The Centre has allowed multiple generations to mix and engage and ultimately be proud of the facility and their place

Theme 3: What the Infrastructure Investment Plan will deliver: 2021-22 to 2025-26

Creating better local places

We will build on our “Place Principle” to promote place-based economic development and cohesion, ensuring all city, town, village and island communities can thrive by establishing a Place Based Investment Programme.

• As part of this programme we will invest £275 million to support community led regeneration and town centre revitalisation, including the repurposing of buildings, maintenance and repairs, reallocating external space and community led land acquisition. This will build on the Regeneration Capital Grant Fund and the ongoing work on Clyde Gateway.

We will continue to address the inequalities of land ownership through a 5 year Scottish Land Fund programme of £40 million.

We will develop a £35 million new, open-access, digital planning system.

We will invest £17 million over the next three years to support the introduction of Low Emission Zones into Scotland’s 4 major cities.

Access to a high-quality sustainable home that is affordable and meets people’s needs

Implementing our Housing to 2040 Vision and Principles Route Map later this year, we will create and fund a plan for high quality, energy efficient, zero carbon affordable housing with access to green space, sustainable transport links, digital connectivity and community services:

• We will invest £2.8 billion in capital, over 5 years, to deliver more affordable and social homes reflecting and supporting Local Housing Strategies and regional development priorities, alongside our work to enhance the suitability of our current stock – ensuring the right types of homes in the right places to support demographic need, economic opportunity, and to assist in delivering climate change targets. Further activity will be funded to deliver more affordable and social homes through Financial Transactions and the Transfer of Management of Development Funding budgets, and will be set out in due course.
• We will invest £58 million in a programme to help Registered Social Landlords deliver adaptations needed to enable tenants to stay in their homes for longer, or permit them a speedy and safe return from hospital care. As part of Programme for Government 2020-21 we will also review the current housing adaptations system and make recommendations on how best to improve and streamline the system and maximise the impact of investment.

High quality social infrastructure

We will boost digitally accessible services, whilst improving the condition of our buildings and enabling the right new facilities.

In Health we will:

• Double our annual funding for maintenance over 5 years, investing over £1 billion in enhancing or refurbishing existing facilities, and updating and modernising key equipment.
• Invest over £220 million in the Baird and Anchor project in Aberdeen which brings together all Maternity, Neonatal, Reproductive Medicine, Breast and Gynaecology services in the Baird Family Hospital and consolidates Haematology, Oncology and Radiotherapy Day and Outpatient services under one roof in the ANCHOR Cancer centre.
• Reduce the pressure on our acute health facilities, and improve treatment times for patients, through a £300 million programme of investment to expedite completion of our elective care centres in Clydebank, Inverness, Livingston, Aberdeen, Tayside, and Kirkcaldy.
• Upgrade the Edinburgh Cancer Centre (£20 million), build the new national secure adolescent inpatient service in Irvine (£10 million) and replace the St Brendan’s facility in Barra (£18 million)
• Invest over £50 million to modernise our radiology equipment nationally, and over £100 million to upgrade and replace our ambulance fleet.

In Education & Skills we will:

• For Colleges, invest nearly £90 million in the Dunfermline Learning Campus.
• Together with Councils, fund an ambitious £2 billion Learning Estate Improvement Programme, using an outcomes based revenue finance approach. The first phase of 11 new school projects was announced in September 2019 a second phase of investment will be announced by the end of 2020.

In Justice we will:

• Replace HMP Inverness and HMP Barlinnie – an investment of around £470 million. In that time the new Highland establishment should be concluded, and a majority of progress might have been made on the new HMP Glasgow.
• We will complete investment by 2022 in the construction of the innovative new female custodial estate, including a new national prison and two Community Custody Units in Dundee and Glasgow, tailored to the specific support needs of women.

Scottish Water is planning to invest over £4 billion in the next charge control period 2021-27 to maintain and improve services across Scotland, address the challenges of its aging asset base and make progress towards the achievement of its commitment to net zero emissions by 2040.