Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not hold this information because the statutory responsibility for managing and maintaining the school estate rests with local authorities.

However, through the £2bn Learning Estate Investment Programme, the Scottish Government will provide local authorities with substantial funding support to modernise their school estate, and also includes replacements for schools which were significantly damaged by deliberate fires. For example, we will provide funding support of £25.8m for a replacement Peebles High School in the Scottish Borders, and £40.2m for the new Greenfield Academy in Dundee which will replace Braeview Academy and Craigie High School.

I visited Salmar Aker Ocean’s Ocean Farm One, the world’s first offshore salmon farm, in Norway in August 2023, where I learned about high farmed fish survival rates, alongside reduced environmental impacts, made possible through farming in higher energy locations.

SalMar Ocean (previously Salmar Aker Ocean) has since met with the Scottish Government to discuss the consenting process for developing a salmon farm between 3 – 12 nautical miles.

Alongside work which builds on the fish farm consenting pilots aimed at delivering improvements to our consenting system, we have also been working to address regulatory gaps and to consider the long-term policy and regulatory framework required to support ‘offshore’ salmon farming in Scotland, as committed to in our Vision for Sustainable Aquaculture.

This includes our recent consultation on proposals to extend marine planning zones, to allow developers to submit planning applications for aquaculture developments out to 12 nautical miles to the relevant local planning authority. Results of the consultation are currently being analysed and will be published in due course.

Due to the innovative nature of the proposed development, Scottish Government officials and aquaculture regulators have met with the business to advise on consenting processes.

Performance management procedures in place for Senior Civil Servants and for Civil Servants at delegated grades, are regularly reviewed and include procedure in relation to management of poor performance and dismissal.

While workforce and terms and conditions of employment for Scottish Government civil servants are delegated to Scottish Ministers, the terms and conditions of Senior Civil Servants (SCS) are reserved to the UK Government and any changes made by UK Ministers and their application will be considered by Scottish Ministers in due course.

a) Scottish Government has not made any budget provision in this or future years to underwrite private investment in nature restoration.

b) No capital allocation has been made in the 2025-26 budget to pilot blended finance models in nature recovery. Any payments associated with it will not finalised until the pilot progresses. Resource to take forward the pilot will be from within existing staff time.

There may be contingent liability implications to the agreements entered into as a part piloting blended finance models for nature restoration and these will be managed in line with the Scottish Public Finance Manual.

Scotland's national forests and land, managed by Forestry and Land Scotland has 76 land agreements in place with private companies covering renewable energy schemes which are currently operational. There are 25 windfarms and 51 hydro schemes. There are no solar schemes. The assets comprising the FLS renewable energy portfolio are managed under operational leases.

The current operational capacity of this portfolio is 1257.95 MW, this comprises 1213.7 MW wind and 44.245 MW hydro.

The most recently recorded annual income for this portfolio is £21,800,000 wind and £2,049,842 hydro.

The lease end dates vary depending on lease length and whether any variations are applied during the lease period.

With regards to the 2019 update, I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-23191 on 7 December 2023 by Lorna Slater MSP. This update to the old model will not be published to ensure clear communication of Scotland’s current material consumption. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The revised Material Flow Accounts model is currently being developed and is expected to be released by June 2025. This will draw on the most recent dataset available from 2020.

The last report on the carbon footprint of Scotland’s waste [from all sources] was published by Zero Waste Scotland in 2021, reviewing 2018 data. Due to the SEPA cyber-attack, and limited waste data from all sources available for 2019 and 2020, producing carbon impact reports for these years in 2022 and 2023 was not feasible.

The final carbon metric report was published in 2023, on the 2021 carbon footprint of Scotland’s household waste.

In 2024 Zero Waste Scotland published the first Scottish Waste Environmental Footprint Tool (SWEFT) report. SWEFT is the successor to the Carbon Metric, and reports on the carbon impacts of waste alongside results of other environmental damage indicators such as biodiversity loss and air pollution. It is a vital tool in our work to address the climate and nature emergencies.

Currently SWEFT is only available for household waste, and Zero Waste Scotland intend to report on this on an annual basis. ZWS is currently reviewing the technical feasibility of SWEFT reporting on waste from all sources in the future.

The Scottish Communities Climate Action Network has received the following funding from the Scottish Government since 2021:

2021-22: £67,000

2022-23: £88,800

2023-24: £135,787

2024-25: £80,000

In addition to their core grant they received funding to support the design and set up of a number of climate action hubs. They employed regional co-ordinators to work with community groups to understand their needs and priorities and identify how this could be best delivered by a hub for their area.

To support this work they received the following:

2022-23: £441,000

2023-24: £393,921.

The review of potential methodological changes to the Material Flow Accounts was completed in early 2024. This review concluded that converting the Material Flow Account to an environmentally extended input-output model was both desirable and possible. This revised model is currently being developed and is expected to be released by June 2025.

The Scottish Government supports the use of crumb waste as a fuel for electricity generation, where it adheres to the guiding principles for bioenergy as set out in our draft Bioenergy Policy Statement (BPS).

These include prioritising the use of available waste feedstocks so that the use of biomass complies with the principles of a circular economy and a cascading use of biomass, which means wood being first used where it can deliver the highest economic and environmental benefit (for example in construction), then life extension, reuse and recycling of the wood should be sought before use in bioenergy applications. We want to ensure that any feedstock utilised for electricity generation has no wider residual value within society.