The Scottish Government does not routinely disclose the content or source of any legal advice it has received on any topic or whether it has received any legal advice.

Agricultural Officers do not all carry out the same duties and the type of work is not evenly distributed across Scotland. This means a single reply applicable to every Agricultural Officer is not possible.

Resource planning information shows that agricultural wages inspections currently take between 5% to 20% of time for those officers who carry out this duty. Rural payments take between 5% to 60% of an Agricultural Officers time for those officers who carry out this duty.

The Scottish Government has engaged with individual landlords and representative bodies and more information can be found in the Housing Policy Memorandum and Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA)

Since introduction of the Bill, the Scottish Government continues to engage with landlords and their representatives.

Crown Estate Scotland has the following arrangements in place with private sector providers for wind and solar electricity generation on land in its ownership or management:

• One commercial lease agreement with a tenant farmer, which involved the installation of a 50KW solar PV scheme, installed on a 50/50 basis under a FIT scheme a number of years ago. This project resulted in the payment of £9,300 to Crown Estate Scotland in 2023-24 and has 16 years to run.
• Three onshore wind electricity generation projects in the planning stages that are yet to be consented as follows:
  • Wind farm in planning phase in Moffat with a view to 7 turbines on two tenanted farms with potential capacity of 50.4MW.
  • Access rights over CES ground and tenanted farms to facilitate potential 16 turbines (sited elsewhere) in Moray with potential capacity of 105.6MW. The scheme is still in planning phase.
  • Access rights over CES ground and tenanted farms to facilitate 10 turbines (sited elsewhere) with potential wind farm capacity of 72MW in Moray. The scheme is still in planning stages.

There are currently no operational onshore wind farms with a lease from Crown Estate Scotland. Also, Crown Estate Scotland does not manage any onshore leases for hydropower projects.

Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) manages the majority of land owned by Scottish Ministers, in the form of Scotland's national forests and land. Currently FLS has 76 land agreements in place with private companies covering renewable energy schemes which are currently operational. There are 25 windfarms and 51 hydro schemes. There are no solar schemes. The assets comprising the FLS renewable energy portfolio are managed under operational leases.

The current operational capacity of this portfolio is 1257.95 MW, this comprises 1213.7 MW wind and 44.245 MW hydro.

The most recently recorded annual income for this portfolio is £21,800,000 wind and £2,049,842 hydro.

The lease end dates vary depending on lease length and whether any variations are applied during the lease period.

Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) manages the majority of land owned by Scottish Ministers, in the form of Scotland's national forests and land. Currently FLS has 10 land agreements in place with 100% community owned or part community owned organisations covering renewable energy schemes which are currently operational. These are all hydro schemes. There are no windfarms or solar schemes. The assets comprising the FLS renewable energy portfolio are managed under operational leases.

The current operational capacity of this portfolio is 5.501 MW.

The most recently recorded annual income for this portfolio is £250,158.

The lease end dates vary depending on lease length and whether any variations are applied during the lease period.

Crown Estate Scotland has no current leases with community-owned providers for wind, hydro and solar electricity generation on land in its ownership or management.

The Scottish Government recognises the pressure on household budgets which is why the 2025-26 budget continues to allocate over £3bn a year to policies which tackle poverty and the cost of living, including providing free bus travel for all children and young people under 22.

In terms of general support, there is range of support available to anyone experiencing financial difficulties. We continue to support free welfare, debt and income maximisation advice services across all areas of the county with funding of over £12m allocated in 2024-2025 and have a dedicated Cost of Living website, signposting to helpful information across a range of subjects including energy and bills, debt and money and health and wellbeing.

Recognising the specific impact of the cost of living crisis on island communities, since December 2022 the Islands Cost Crisis Emergency Fund has distributed over £3.4 million to support islanders facing cost of living pressures.

The significant investments that we are making in Regional Growth Deals will have an important role to play in developing rural economies. The Scottish Government has committed over £379 million to Regional Growth Deal rural projects to accelerate inclusive economic growth, investment which will support a range of projects on themes like key sector innovation, skills, connectivity, housing and infrastructure improvement. As an example of how the Growth Deals are supporting young people in rural communities, the Affordable Housing project, delivered through the Inverness & Highland City Region Deal, is an ongoing project to complete over 500 affordable new homes. Of those completed, over 200 are now occupied by people younger than 30 years of age.

In addition, the Borderlands Growth Deal aims to develop the regional economy by addressing three main economic challenges: narrowing the productivity gap, increasing the working age population, and delivering inclusive growth. In Dumfries and Galloway SG is investing £4m in the Dairy Nexus project, which will deliver innovation to decarbonise the dairy sector and boost dairy sector businesses. Other planned investments include £16m to repurpose Stranraer and Loch Ryan as a vibrant marine leisure destination and £20m to stimulate the reinvigoration of towns and centres across the Borderlands area, with plans being developed in 5 Dumfries and Galloway towns.

The Scottish Government supports the use of crumb waste as a fuel for electricity generation, where it adheres to the guiding principles for bioenergy as set out in our draft Bioenergy Policy Statement (BPS).

These include prioritising the use of available waste feedstocks so that the use of biomass complies with the principles of a circular economy and a cascading use of biomass, which means wood being first used where it can deliver the highest economic and environmental benefit (for example in construction), then life extension, reuse and recycling of the wood should be sought before use in bioenergy applications. We want to ensure that any feedstock utilised for electricity generation has no wider residual value within society.

The Scottish Communities Climate Action Network has received the following funding from the Scottish Government since 2021:

2021-22: £67,000

2022-23: £88,800

2023-24: £135,787

2024-25: £80,000

In addition to their core grant they received funding to support the design and set up of a number of climate action hubs. They employed regional co-ordinators to work with community groups to understand their needs and priorities and identify how this could be best delivered by a hub for their area.

To support this work they received the following:

2022-23: £441,000

2023-24: £393,921.