Chamber and committees

Henry Graham.

A wide range of public bodies and infrastructure providers have compulsory purchase powers, which can be used to support the delivery of projects in the public interest. Bodies with compulsory purchase powers are known as ‘acquiring authorities’. As set out in Circular 6/2011: Compulsory purchase orders,https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-planning-series-planning-circular-6-2011-compulsory-purchase-orders/, acquiring authorities are expected – where practicable – to seek to acquire land by agreement before making a compulsory purchase order (CPO). In this context, it is not possible to predict how many CPOs will be made over the next twenty years.

The Scottish Government remain committed to ensuring the Arran ferry service is fit for the future, and to finding a solution at Ardrossan that can be delivered in a cost effective way, reflecting the needs of all of the partners involved. We understand and share frustrations at the pace of progress on the Ardrossan Harbour redevelopment.

Ongoing discussions and negotiations around the delivery of improvements at the port have been complex but the business case review is substantially complete, and project partners continue to work on this as quickly as practicable. The next meeting of the Ardrossan Task Force will be convened soon after the business case and cost review exercise has been submitted to Ministers for a decision.

A wide range of public bodies and infrastructure providers have compulsory purchase powers, which can be used to support the delivery of projects in the public interest. Bodies with compulsory purchase order (CPO) powers are known as ‘acquiring authorities’.

The Scottish Government regularly publishes a register of CPOs submitted by acquiring authorities to the Scottish Ministers for confirmation since 2012: https://www.gov.scot/publications/compulsory-purchase-order-register/. The current register, published in December, includes CPOs received up to the end of October 2024.

The register includes information on when a CPO is submitted, who the acquiring authority is, the date of the Scottish Ministers’ decision on confirmation, a description of the project, the location, including local authority area, the type of CPO (for example, for Planning, Housing, Energy or Transport purposes) and legislation under which it was made.

Professional memberships are funded by each Directorate - i.e. the home location of the job and the person.

Our financial systems do not hold central or aggregable data on how much each Directorate or Division spends on memberships.

In most cases this would be an element of their local learning and development budgets and not a distinct, identifiable budget component. The information requested could therefore only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

All Scottish Government licensing is managed and maintained to ensure our legal and regulatory obligation under procurement arrangements are met, as well as meeting our Cyber Security commitments.

Modern software subscriptions are usually multi-year deals to spread cost and maximise the return on investment. Most agreements include elements of support and integration costs. As the Scottish Government has over 400 validated instances of software, to extract annual costs for every software subscription or agreement could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

Complying with this request would breach the upper cost limit of £600 due to the analysis of significant amounts of data split by supplier and type in a 5-year period between 2019 and 2024.

However, working within the upper cost limit, we are providing details of spend on major elements of software to provide illustrative costs of delivering shared services for the Scottish Government and 50+ public bodies. Please note that the annual figures provided may be averaged over the length of the contract and may also include bundled support and integration costs.

There are 6 buildings with Solar PV, 1 building with an air source heat pump, 2 buildings with biomass heating.

The solar PV provides approximately 5% of each of the building’s total electricity use.

The air source heat pump replaced a gas boiler.

The biomass boilers replaced gas and oil heating at rural locations.

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting the delivery of national emissions reduction targets, directed by our new Carbon Management Plan. As part of ongoing maintenance and upgrades within our buildings, we aim to incorporate energy efficiency improvements alongside these works wherever possible.

Feasibility studies have been conducted on all buildings owned by the Scottish Government to look at options for installing renewable energy and to improve the buildings fabric in line with net zero standards.