Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government (SG) is aware of the Civil Air Publication to address the design requirements and options for new heliports located at hospitals in the United Kingdom. Any new recommendations will, of course, be considered by Health Boards and organisations with responsibility for maintaining helicopter landing sites.

The SG is also aware that HM Coastguard Search and Rescue has paused helicopter landings at a number of landing sites across the UK.

Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) and Scotland’s Charity Air Ambulance aircraft continue to land at helicopter landing sites across Scotland. Should a helicopter landing site not be available for use by one of these assets then another suitable site will be identified. A SAS vehicle will transfer a patient and clinical team to the appropriate receiving medical facility.

In 2023-24, there was a monthly average caseload of 134 young people supported by the service, this included 1818 hours of one-to-one sessions, 1,234 group services, 241 hours in professional meetings with housing, education and teaching. This information can be found in the Scottish Families Affected by Drugs and Alcohol 2023-24 impact statement; Impact Reports - SFAD

Scottish Families Affected by Drugs and Alcohol have an active caseload of 152 young people in East and West Dunbartonshire. They have supported a total of 187 young people.

Each of the six Grow Your Own Routes partnership services has between 27 and 77 young people on their current caseload. The total number of young people being supported by the Grow Your Own Routes partners is 296.

The total number of young people who have ever been supported by Routes across Scotland is 483.

Since the Scottish Digital Academy was established in 2018, it has recorded 19,209 registrations from people working across the public or third sector.

The Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 places the statutory responsibility for local roads with the local road authorities, including parking. The provision of parking, the charges levied and how they are collected is therefore at the local authorities discretion and this is not something in which the Scottish Government would become directly involved.

There is a National Parking Platform available across the UK, run at no cost to local authorities by the Department of Transport, which local authorities in Scotland would be free to participate in if they so wish.

Data provided by the NHS Research Scotland Cancer Research Network on the number of blood cancer clinical studies that have been supported by the Network in each financial year since 2018-19 are shown in the following table, noting that individual studies can take a number of years to complete. The figures are inclusive of studies open to recruitment and in participant follow up in any given year, paediatric and adult studies, and public, charity, and industry sector funded studies.

So far £23,094,147 has been spent on trunk road improvement schemes in the North East of Scotland during the 2024-25 financial year. This figure includes capital expenditure on Minor Improvement works, Structural Maintenance, Strategic Road Safety and Structures improvement schemes. This figure includes Construction, Design and Investigation costs.

An additional £993,181.21 has been spent on Major Project schemes in the North East of Scotland for financial year 2024-25. This figure provided includes spend for taking the various projects through design and statutory process stages, acquisition of land compensation payments, preparatory works, as well as costs associated with construction.

The Scottish Government has been actively assessing the issue of cladding on high-rise buildings across the country. As part of its commitment to ensuring the safety of residents, several steps have been taken to determine the scale and cost of cladding remediation.

1.Building Safety Assessments: A nationwide review of high-rise buildings has been conducted to identify those with potentially unsafe cladding. This includes a comprehensive inventory of buildings affected by materials such as Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) and other types of cladding.

2.Financial Impact Analysis: The Scottish Government has commissioned detailed financial assessments to estimate the overall cost of remediation efforts. This process involves consultation with local authorities, housing associations, and private sector stakeholders to gather data on the number of affected buildings and the potential costs of necessary remedial work.

3.Pilot Project and Funding Allocations: The pilot project has been initiated to address cladding issues, and these have provided initial data on the costs associated with removing and replacing unsafe cladding. Additionally, funding schemes such as the Single Building Assessment Programme have been introduced to support building owners in conducting safety assessments and implementing remediation where necessary.

4.Collaboration with the UK Government: As part of a broader UK-wide effort, the Scottish Government continues to liaise with the UK Government on financial support mechanisms, including potential contributions from developers and building product manufacturers responsible for defective cladding.

We are committed to providing funding to safeguard homeowners and residents by addressing the risk to human life that is (directly or indirectly) created or exacerbated by a building’s external wall cladding system.

The cumulative spend of the programme to date is £9.0m. Spend of £0.5m was incurred in quarter one 2024-25 to support programme delivery works.

Our framework Drug and alcohol services - improving holistic family support - gov.scot (www.gov.scot), which was published on 8 December 2021, sets out principles of how we will improve holistic support for families affected by drugs and alcohol by taking a whole family approach and using family inclusive practice.

The framework is supported by investing totalling £6.5 million per year over the life of the Parliament.

We are working with local areas to improve their family support and implement family inclusive practice across alcohol and drug services. This is supported by a national working group.

The Scottish Government is keen to ensure that local areas provide support at all times and that they assess the needs of people in their areas and work with them to design and deliver services in a way that meets the needs of people impacted by drugs and alcohol, including services being easily assessable and available at weekends.

As well as local contacts, we support national phone lines that are available for anyone to call. Know the Score operate a phoneline which is open until 9pm during the week and then open 10am until 4pm on weekends. This provides free, confidential support for people experiencing issues with drugs, alcohol or mental health.

For families, Scottish Families operate a phoneline which is open until 11pm on weekdays and operates a call back service on weekends. This provides support for anyone concerned about someone else’s drug use with information, advice and linking to local support.

Through our National Mission we are providing an additional £250 million of investment over the course of this parliament to support reduce deaths and improve lives.

ScotPayments is currently in the private Beta phase of delivery, with the first Beta partner fully transitioned onto the platform (including a new fund launched in June 2024). Feasibility assessments with three additional public bodies responsible for large volume and value outbound payments concluded in May 2024. A new Beta partner is planned to onboard to the service in January 2025 before the programme moves into public Beta phase in late 2025. Currently two public bodies and three internal Scottish Government departments use the ScotPayments Confirmation of Payee feature.