Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government provided £2.4m to support the development of Nevis House, as part of our aim to increase residential rehab capacity – particularly for areas outside the Central Belt.

Nevis House will provide six beds, equating to up to 22 placements a year. It aims to support referrals from more remote parts of the Highlands alongside the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland.

Nevis House expands on existing work carried out at Beechwood House, offering residential rehabilitation, community outreach and social care to people affected by substance use in rural areas.

In keeping with our network security policy, we can neither confirm nor deny the use of VPNs by revealing any cost or lack thereof. This is consistent with our response to a recent FOI (202500480214) asking a similar question and aligns to the approach taken by government bodies across the UK. Providing details on the type of networking tools used could provide hostile actors with information on the setup, and potential weak points, of sensitive government systems.

At the time of response six ScotGEM 2023 graduates have already taken up GPST 1 posts in Scotland, these are broken down by health board in the following table.

The Regeneration Capital Grant Fund for 2024-25 was paused. Funding totalling £9.4 million was provided to support existing projects.

Place Based Investment Programme (PBIP) funding is allocated directly to Scotland’s 32 local authorities, who are responsible for targeting investment locally in line with the agreed objectives of the fund. As such, the Scottish Government does not receive applications from local organisations for this funding.

The Regeneration Capital Grant Fund was paused in 2024-25 and no applications were received.

The numbers of entrants to first degree pre-clinical medicine courses, by university, have been provided in the following table.

The tables only cover those entering ‘pre-clinical medicine’ and do not include other students entering medical schools on ‘clinical medicine’ or students in continuing years of study.

First degree entrants to pre-clinical medicine at Scottish Providers

The Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) scheme has, on occasion, provided ad hoc support to communities looking to repair small scale wind turbines. Currently, CARES supports renewable energy generation projects through its Community Energy Generation Growth Fund. While support is focussed on the development of new projects, repairs can be considered as part of a wider project on a case-by-case basis.

Since 2021, CARES has offered a total of £63,772 in funding to support the repair of community-owned wind turbines. £24,000 was offered in 2021 and £39,772 has been offered in 2025.

During the current regulatory period (2021–2027), Scottish Water plans to invest over £6 billion in maintaining and improving Scotland’s water and wastewater infrastructure, including over £2.5 billion in wastewater investment. Scottish Water have provided an indicative breakdown of investment by local authority area for this period in the following table:

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-39882 on 1 September 2025. 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.