More frequent and meaningful engagement with COSLA and Councils, in the spirit of the Fiscal Framework with Local Government, was fundamental to the decisions that led to record funding of over £15 billion for Local Authorities in the 2025-26 Scottish Budget.

All new policy or changes to existing policy that have a financial cost for local government are routinely considered through the formal financial governance processes including assessment through the joint Scottish Government and COSLA Officers’ Settlement and Distribution Group prior to political endorsement from Scottish Ministers and COSLA Leaders.

As independent corporate bodies, it is then for individual councils to manage their own budgets and workforce.

The safety of patients and staff is an absolute priority. Assaults on patients or staff are completely unacceptable, and everyone has the right to access healthcare, or their place of work, without the fear of verbal or physical abuse.

NHS Boards have reporting systems to capture data on violence and aggression - including sexual assault. I strongly encourage staff to report any and all instances of violent and aggressive behaviour. All instances of such behaviour should be reported and escalated to Police Scotland as quickly as possible for consideration of necessary action. The courts have extensive powers to deal robustly with sexual offending.

Health Improvement Scotland are working with all NHS boards and partner organisations to standardise the reporting of adverse events, and have developed a national framework which was published in February.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of national standards of reporting and the requirement for monitoring and publishing of data. We have committed to work with HIS and Health Boards to improve the collection of data nationally.

In circumstances where the authority considers that a person’s need for services is a matter of urgency, they have the power to provide community care support to individuals, carers and their families without an assessment under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968.

Local authorities also have duties under the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 to provide adult carer support plans (ACSP) or young carer statements (YCS) for any carer that wants one and to provide support to carers according to their eligible needs. In circumstances where a carer is caring for someone with a terminal illness, the authority must offer and prepare an ACSP or YCS in set timescales, ensuring associated support is provided in an efficient and timely manner. These responsibilities are set out in the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 Statutory Guidance.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. This would need to be requested from the NHS Boards directly. It is for NHS Boards to ensure best use of available resources to support service delivery whilst prioritising patient safety and care.

NHS Board Executive staff are required to set objectives annually which are aligned to the Board strategy and priorities. Executives must have objectives which demonstrate the contributions made to national and regional working, the delivery of the Health and Care strategy and the delivery of specific Board and local objectives. The performance of individual Executive staff is measured against these agreed objectives, with annual pay progression dependant on performance against these objectives.

There is a national governance and accountability process each year overseen by the National Performance Management Committee (NPMC) which provides scrutiny of performance management arrangements for NHS Scotland’s Executive staff. The NPMC requests and reviews evidence from NHS Boards to ensure that performance markings above fully acceptable are robust. Only after this process is complete can Executive staff then receive pay progression.

The Scottish Government does not collect information on the age profile of scanning equipment held by NHS Boards. As holding bodies, NHS Boards are responsible for the management of their infrastructure assets and for identifying maintenance and replacement requirements.

Where new energy developments come forward, applications are subject to site-specific assessments by the decision maker. Our Fourth National Planning Framework (NPF4) policy 11 (energy) requires that project design and mitigation demonstrate how impacts to communities, landscape, biodiversity and other receptors, including cumulative impacts, are addressed. It also encourages development to maximise net economic impact, including local and community socio-economic benefits. We have no current plans to introduce guidelines in addition to NPF4.

The number of Care Experienced Bursaries that have been awarded in each year since the establishment of the support in the 2017-2018 academic year is as follows:

The online app for health and social care, which is part of our ‘digital front door’ programme, will initially be available to a small cohort of people in Lanarkshire from December 2025. Whilst work continues on preparing for that initial release, we are simultaneously engaging with Health Boards and COSLA to develop the rollout approach beyond Lanarkshire. It is our intention to set this out in more detail from Summer 2025.

Information on the number of pupils accessing colleges courses is collected by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC). Data on the number of enrolments by category of student, which includes school based students in S4, S5 and S6, is published in the SFC annual College Statistics publication.

Latest publication: College Statistics 2023-24 - Scottish Funding Council (sfc.ac.uk)

Available in background table 13. No data is published by local authority.

Further information can be requested directly from the SFC.