Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government remains committed to supporting the specialist third sector services that provide crucial support to survivors of violence against women and girls.

That is why the Delivering Equally Safe Fund has been extended into 2025-26, allowing for the continuation of vital support to survivors of violence against women and girls across Scotland. The fund has benefited from a £2.4 million increase, bringing the total investment in the Delivering Equally Safe Fund to £21.6 million for 2025-26.

Our Equally Safe Delivery Plan commits to the development of a flexible and stable funding model that reflects the ambitions of Equally Safe.

The Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), the source of the Businesses in Scotland publication, is not a public register. The IDBR is a statistical register, built from a range of survey return data, administrative data and estimated data.

The IDBR data are held by the Scottish Government on behalf of the United Kingdom Statistics Authority and are classified as ‘personal information’ according to the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. The 2007 Act requires that the Scottish Government must not disclose the personal information, held on behalf of the United Kingdom Statistics Authority, unless directly authorised by the UK National Statistician. Authority will only be given in exceptional circumstances.

Asking businesses permission to publish the information they return on a named basis would very likely result in reduced overall response rates. Additionally it may affect the quality of the data response.

Information on businesses in Scotland is publicly available from the Companies House register. A downloadable snapshot containing basic data for live companies on the Companies House register is available at:

https://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_output.html

In the Highlands and Islands region, there are currently 9 Historic Environment Scotland sites which are temporarily closed. Within the Highlands and Islands region, there are no Historic Environment Scotland sites which are permanently closed.

The temporarily closed sites are:

Aberdeenshire Council:

Glenbuchat Castle

Huntly Castle

Comhairle nan Eilean Siar:

Kisimul Castle

Highland Council:

Castle of Old Wick

Moray Council:

Bishops House, Elgin

Dallas Dhu Distillery

Orkney Islands Council:

Eynhallow Church

Tormiston Mill

Shetland Islands Council:

Scalloway Castle

Any further queries from the member regarding the day-to-day operational matters of Historic Environment Scotland, including information relating to any repair and maintenance works of any specific site, are best answered directly by Historic Environment Scotland.

While the impacts that AI will create are not yet fully understood, the Scottish Government will develop improved methods for assessing the potential impact of AI on jobs in Scotland, recognising the urgent need to understand both the risks and emerging opportunities in a rapidly evolving labour market.

The Scottish Government last met with the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Sustainable Funding Project Board on 14 November 2024.

The items discussed were the Delivering Equally Safe Fund, the next steps for consideration of the funding recommendations from the Independent Review of Funding and Commissioning of VAWG Services and the future of the Project Board.

Following the meeting, the VAWG Sustainable Funding Project Board was stood down and a short-life working group established to oversee the development of a VAWG Needs Assessment Tool.

Regular updates on progress are provided to the Equally Safe Joint Strategic Board, the advisory and oversight body for the Equally Safe strategy, which is co-chaired by the Equalities Minister and the COSLA Spokesperson for Community Wellbeing.

Whilst the Scottish Government does not provide direct funding to create community growing sites, since 2012 we have awarded nearly £2.5 million to expand and encourage food growing skills and access to community growing sites across the country. This includes £100,000 awarded to Green Action Trust annually since 2021 to deliver the Growing Food Together Fund. On average, around 9 to 10 groups or projects are supported by this funding each year.

To best utilise the funding available and maximise the number of groups it can support, the fund has understandably prioritised expanding existing growing spaces (such as through the addition of new planters, polytunnels or other similar infrastructure) rather than providing funding to establish entirely new sites.

Prior to the implementation of Oracle Cloud, the Scottish Government’s previous HR Information System did not require Job Title to be a mandatory field for completion. This meant that individuals could be operational in substantive posts, but with missing or out of date job titles recorded on the system.

There are 45 civil servants, directly employed by the Scottish Government, whose Job Title does not appear on the organisation’s HR Information System, Oracle Cloud, when a report is downloaded. Further information on Scottish Government workforce numbers is available here Scottish Government workforce information - gov.scot).

A Professions Strategy is in operation within Scottish Government. This enhances workforce management by adopting a classification system that links all jobs to a profession and a related job family and job type. While the majority of jobs have been through this classification system in preparation for Oracle Cloud going live, there is a small minority of roles (~7%) still to be formally classified which Scottish Government are currently progressing.

The Scottish Government Statement on Creative Industries in 2019 did not include podcasting and audio as part of the Creative Industries sector.

Since the publication of that statement it is clear that consumers are now using both a wider range of devices to access media content as well as a larger variety of services.

Whilst there are no plans at present to revise the definition of the creative industries within Scotland the expanded, and continually innovating, variety of delivery channels will be a crucial factor to consider in any future work.

The Scottish Government continues to support free income maximisation, welfare and debt advice services with £16.9 million invested in
2025-26, a significant increase on the £12.3 million invested in 2022-23.

This investment supports a range of advice and income maximisation services including the Advice in Accessible Settings Fund. Since launching in 2023 the Fund, which aims to increase the availability and accessibility of advice in places that people already go, has supported more than 13,000 clients and unlocked £27 million in financial gains. The fund supports and encourages partnerships between existing advice providers and a wide range of other community based services. This includes charities, housing and homelessness services, specialist health services, carers support services and 3 partnerships involving schools.

The Scottish Government provides an annual grant to Scottish Mountain Rescue, which they distribute onwards to all of Scotland’s individual volunteer teams. This distribution follows an agreed and established formula that takes into account relative changes in team activity levels, alongside a range of other relevant factors. Scotland is the only part of the UK in which volunteer mountain rescue teams are supported in this way. While the overall budget for this grant is determined on an annual basis, the Scottish Mountain Rescue grant has, for this year, been included in the Scottish Government’s Fairer Funding pilot. This inclusion offers increased assurance that funding will be maintained at no less than the current level until at least March 2027.