Chamber and committees

A collaborative approach including stakeholder engagement was undertaken by Jacobs in taking forward the work to consider the roles and responsibilities of the bodies within Scotland as part of its review of transport governance structures. Transport Scotland published a report in July 2019: national-transport-strategy-transport-governance-working-group-report.pdf .

Stakeholders engaged in this process included: the National Transport Strategy (NTS2) Roles and Responsibilities Working Group; the Society of Chief Officers in Transportation in Scotland (SCOTS); Regional Transport Partnership (RTP) leads; Transport Scotland and Scottish Government modal policy leads; and public transport operators.

In July 2019, the Scottish Government launched a consultation on the draft National Transport Strategy for Scotland including two questions relating to transport governance regarding democracy, decision-making and delivery. Trade unions had the opportunity to provide a response to the consultation and one trade union, ASLEF, did so and 1, 221 responses to the consultation were received in total.

The Scottish Government has had no approach from either Sector regarding increasing the numbers of spoken language interpreters.

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) is the national, strategic body that is responsible for funding teaching and learning provision, research and other activities in Scotland's colleges and universities. It’s budget provides investment in Scotland's colleges and universities to support the development of well-educated, highly-skilled people and to enable sustainable, inclusive economic growth through enhancing skills and securing world-class research and cutting-edge innovation.

Scottish universities are autonomous institutions therefore it is for the individual universities to decide how to distribute the places it receives between faculties, what courses to offer, and how many of the total funded places will be available on each course.

As I noted in my statement to Parliament on 24 June, a single NHS Board first discovered in December 2020 that a small number of women who had subtotal hysterectomies had been wrongly excluded from the cervical screening programme and subsequently developed cervical cancer. All affected individuals or their families were directly contacted on 15 April 2021 by their NHS Board.

Network Rail is currently assessing the options identified for delivering the required capacity enhancements and journey time savings between Aberdeen and the central belt. When the most effective options have been selected in alignment with available funding, it will then be possible to compile a detailed plan for delivering the project and to spend the remaining budget .

An Island Communities Impact Assessment (ICIA) was published on 10 December 2020 in our 2020 consultation report on proposals for a licensing scheme and planning control areas for short-term lets in Scotland. The ICIA can be found at: Short-term lets – licensing scheme and planning control areas: consultation analysis - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Scottish Government and Zero Waste Scotland have ongoing engagement with local authorities, individually and collectively, as well as with private companies & industry associations. For example, our Waste Sector Forum, which meets monthly, includes representatives from COSLA, the local authority waste management officers network, SEPA, and waste sector and third sector trade bodies. Other examples of engagement include:

• A workshop on addressing contamination of recyclate.
• Provision of an online platform to match availability and demand for resource during the early stages of the Covid pandemic across local authorities and private companies.
• Workshops to gather input from local authorities and material recovery facility operators to support the review of the Household Recycling Charter Code of Practice.
• Support to local authorities and private companies to adapt recycling facilities to allow operation whilst meeting Covid restrictions.
• Support for local authority collaborative procurement of a glass reprocessing contract.

This information is publically available through the SEPA Waste Discover Data Tool: https://informatics.sepa.org.uk/WasteAllSources/

The Borderlands Inclusive Growth Deal includes a commitment to progress work to assess the benefits and challenges of extending the Borders Railway. The Deal also states that the Scottish Government will progress the evidence base for extending the Borders Railway from Tweedbank to Carlisle through the second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2) process which is ongoing through Transport Scotland. This forms the strategic case for extending the Borders Railway from Tweedbank to Carlisle. STPR2 is being funded separately from the Deal and will report later this year. A decision on progressing feasibility work will be made following the conclusion of STPR2.

The 2019-20 Programme for Government outlined our commitment to phase out the need for all petrol or diesel cars in the public sector fleet by 2025 and for all other new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030.

Crown office and Procurator Fiscals office (COPFS) is committed to moving its entire fleet to zero emission vehicles by 2025, has begun to install EV charging stations and will purchase its first zero emission vehicles before the end of the financial year.

In 2016, SEPA developed and implemented an automated tool to capture and summarise commercial and industrial waste data from data returns. This automation reduces errors and allows revision of historical data to account for resubmissions of data more easily.

We are working with SEPA and other governments and regulators in the UK to develop and implement an electronic waste tracking system. This will provide a step change in the quality and timeliness of waste data. A joint consultation on the implementation of a mandatory electronic waste tracking system is planned for autumn on behalf of all four nations of the UK.