The Executive has no role in the approval of local authorities' capital expenditure plans.

This information is not held centrally.

Guidance to ensure that best value is obtained in contracts has been issued to the three water authorities. It is issued in the context of the Financial and Management Memorandum and Scottish Executive Finance Guidance notes. This guidance is reviewed periodically.

Guidance is currently being prepared for Scottish Water. It will include, amongst other subjects that establish how the new authority will be run, guidance to ensure that decisions on expenditure are taken with due regard to the principles of government accounting concerning the regularity, propriety and economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the proposals.

As I mentioned in my answers to questions S1W-17483 and S1W-17484, water authorities are expected to take their decisions on expenditure with due regard to the principles of government accounting concerning the regularity, propriety and economy, efficiency and effectiveness of their proposals. It is for the water authorities to establish the best means of securing this.

The authorities are expected to take their decisions on expenditure with due regard to the principles of government accounting concerning the regularity, propriety and economy, efficiency and effectiveness of their proposals. Given the number of projects undertaken at any one time by the authorities, it would not be appropriate for the Executive to monitor each of these on an individual basis. Projects exceeding the delegated authority are required to be submitted to the Executive for approval.

Four local authorities currently dispose of part of their waste streams through incineration - Dundee City, Angus, Shetland Islands and Orkney Islands.

Environmental and safety regulation of specific sites are matters for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the Health and Safety Executive. The Scottish Executive recognises the continuing public concerns over the possible health effects of emissions from incinerators, particularly dioxins and heavy metals. To address these concerns, a number of recent epidemiological studies have investigated the incidence of various diseases in populations likely to be affected by these emissions. However, no convincing evidence of any such link has been established. The University of Dundee is currently carrying out a further epidemiological study and I await the findings of this.

This is an operational matter for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency which licenses waste incinerators; information on waste incinerator licences is available on public registers held by the agency.

Responses to our initial consultation on the Renewables Obligation (Scotland), or ROS, raised concerns about the future of Scotland's existing large hydro stations.We have accepted that additional support was required and have successfully argued that case with colleagues in the UK Government. I was therefore able to announce recently that we will extend support under ROS to refurbished hydro stations up to 20 megawatts in size, and also to support the building of new hydro stations of any size, subject to their obtaining the necessary consents. This additional support will secure continuation of the refurbishment of Scotland's existing large hydro stations, and represents good news for the engineering jobs dependent on that refurbishment work.Our final statutory consultation on the ROS was published on 3 August, and is available in the Parliament's Reference Centre.