Chamber and committees

Local authorities have a duty under the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 to manage and maintain local roads in their area and duties under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 to secure the expeditious, convenient and safe movement of traffic.

The vast majority of funding to local authorities from the Scottish Government is provided via a block grant and we do not stipulate how local authorities should utilise their individual allocations. It is therefore the responsibility of each local authority to manage their own budget and to allocate the financial resources available to them on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

In 2024-25, Glasgow City Council will receive over £1.6 billion to fund local services, which equates to an extra £74.9 million to support vital day to day services or an additional 4.9% compared to the 2023-24 budget.

Ultimately, it is for locally elected representatives to make local decisions on how best to deliver services to their local communities.

The development work delivered at Anniesland Station is led by Network Rail. Network Rail advises that painting of the adjacent bridge is not included in the scope for the current station accessibility improvements. Accessibility is a matter reserved to the UK Government.

I will be shortly providing Parliament with an update on the implementation of short-term let licensing, which will highlight the difficulties with the accuracy and completeness of different datasets about short-term let numbers. Prior to licensing there has not been a single robust data source about the number of short-term lets in Scotland and while we recently started publishing data on short term lets licensing applications, this is still provisional and partial data that is subject to upward revision in future releases. The Scottish Government therefore does not hold the information requested.

The Scottish Government continues to provide £16 million per year to ensure that all secondary schools have access to school counselling services.

Local authorities have confirmed that all secondary schools in Scotland have access to counselling services. All school pupils aged 10 and above have access to the service.

It is up to local authorities to decide how to deliver the service in their area to best suit the needs of their children and young people.

School counselling is just one of a range of services that schools and authorities have in place to support the mental health of children and young people.

In 2024-2025 we are making available £12.113 million for the provision of more social and affordable homes in the Scottish Borders Council area. We will invest almost £600 million in affordable homes across Scotland in 2024-2025 and will continue to work with partners – including in the Scottish Borders – to increase the delivery of more affordable homes, the majority of which will be for social rent, including supporting acquisitions of existing properties.

It is for individual local authorities to decide whether they wish to declare a Housing emergency and to outline their reasons for doing so. The Scottish Government has asked individual local authorities who have declared housing emergencies to share specific actions that they are taking in response.

Review of NHS Hyperbaric Medicine Services in Scotland is ongoing. Scottish Government officials have been in contact with NHS National Services Scotland as commissioner of these services and NHS Grampian who provide and co-ordinate hyperbaric medical services in Scotland.

NHS Grampian have continued to engage with the private service provider in Oban and agreed to undertake further review of the facility. This took place in early May. Findings from the visit are being compiled and analysed before next steps are determined.

Discussions with stakeholders regarding the service are an operational matter, however we are being kept updated as review of the situation continues and have been assured risk is minimised, service capacity is in line with demand and plans are in place for the timely transfer and treatment of patients.

The impact assessments for the Housing (Scotland) Bill will be published in tranches. The first of these to be published was the Equality Impact Assessment, published on 21 June 2024 on the Scottish Government website, and the remaining impact assessments including the Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment will be published in the coming weeks.

The Scottish Government intends to update the School Premises (General Requirements and Standards) (Scotland) Regulations 1967.

Given the time elapsed between the previous consultation exercise that took place in 2017-18, we must now consider the updated context that the regulations will exist in. We are now taking this work forward.

We recognise the pioneering research and private investment in Web 3.0 technologies across Scotland. Nevertheless, our focus in applying digital technologies for Public Service Reform is based on an understanding of end-to-end services and user needs, rather than committing to use particular technologies.

We invest expert staff time in continuing to advise and support Scottish Enterprise’s work coordinating private sector activity on Web 3.0 technologies, through its Digital Trust Scotland - Blockchain Taskforce. The work of Scottish Enterprise produced a report in May 2023, Blockchain In Scotland Landscape Overview , which demonstrates the comprehensive engagement we have through this Taskforce. Hence, through involvement in the Taskforce, we would expect to have opportunity to provide more support where there are gaps identified that clearly lead to economic impacts.

The Scottish Government’s CivTech Programme enables research, development and commercialisation between the public sector, industry, regulators and academia across a broad range of technologies, including Web 3.0 approaches where they are relevant.

Through open innovation challenges delivered by the CivTech programme a range of innovative start ups and SMEs have worked with Public Sector bodies including Scottish Government Departments, Local Authorities and Non Departmental Public Bodies to develop experimental technologies which use Web 3.0 approaches on a range of issues including,

• tracking of Scope 3 Carbon Emissions,

• Building Standards certification processes,

• helping people access support they are entitled to and

• high integrity approaches to Nature Finance.

The CivTech programme has a strong track record in developing innovative technologies to solving challenges faced by the public sector while creating jobs and opportunities for new innovative businesses.

The Scottish Government has also provided funding support to the Scottish GovTech Cluster, which aims to support collaboration within the technology sector focused on connecting government agencies, businesses, researchers, academia and all other groups and individuals wishing to use technology (including Web 3.0) to improve and transform public services. The Scottish GovTech Cluster are working to attract investment both from within Scotland and from outside the country matching businesses and researchers with funding opportunities and provide support to help them secure investment.

We recognise that one potential private investment channel available for Web 3.0 companies is digital assets - for example cryptographic utility tokens. Our Financial Services/FinTech team are currently addressing related policy questions around Digital Assets in Scots Private Law. We would expect this work give Web 3.0 businesses in Scotland more legal clarity about such funding mechanisms.