Chamber and committees

‘Aggressive Cancer’ is not a term recognised or used by NHS Scotland.

As stated in the response to S7W-01350 on 8 July 2026, The Scottish Government has commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland to undertake an independent scalability assessment of our Rapid Cancer Diagnostic Service Pilots. This project will explore what our options are to expand access to non-specific symptom pathways for cancer in the most efficient and effective way, ensuring we reach population level coverage.

This initial phase of work is due to be complete by Spring 2027 after which point the we will work with Healthcare Improvement Scotland, the Centre for Sustainable Delivery and NHS Boards to develop an appropriate plan for service expansion.

There remains a focus on reform and expansion of non-specific cancer symptom referral, both in Scottish Government policy and across NHS Scotland outside of the RCDS development programme. The updated Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer were published in August 2025. For the first time, these guidelines include urgent suspicion of cancer referral criteria for patients presenting with non-specific symptoms.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery have also developed a RCDS toolkit that is available for all health boards to use to access support in setting up a service at any time.

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.

We have invested over £40m over the past five years to support cancer services and improve waiting times, with a focus on urology, colorectal and breast as our most challenged pathways.

In response to oncology pressures, we have committed to additional funding for chemotherapy services reaching up to £10m per annum by 2027, with £3m released in 2023-24, £4.6m released in 2024-25 and £6.6m in 2025-26.

In addition to this, we have provided 13 mobile MRI and 4 mobile CT scanners to increase activity to 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, to help people get diagnostic tests they need, reducing diagnostic waits.

We have funded additional endoscopy and cystoscopy training places via the NHS Academy to future proof the workforce and provide sustainable diagnostic capacity. There are currently seven one-stop Urology Diagnostic Hubs in NHS Scotland and we will look to establish more.

The Scottish Government accepts that continued diagnostic pressure is affecting 62-day performance. This is seen particularly in the high-volume pathways including colorectal, urological and breast cancer pathways.

Cancer remains a national priority for the NHS and Scottish Government which is why we published our ten-year cancer strategy for Scotland in June 2023, focused on improving cancer survival and providing equitable access to treatment. We have invested over £40m over the past five years to support cancer services and improve waiting times, with a focus on urology, colorectal and breast as our most challenged pathways.

94.5% of patients are being treated within 31 days of a decision to treat, with the median wait for treatment just two days – the joint lowest on record. We are treating more patients with cancer on time, within both standards, compared to pre-pandemic and 10 years ago.

Continued diagnostic pressure and an increase in referrals is affecting the 62-day performance. We recognise that we must do more to ensure more patients are treated within the 62-day standard. NHS Boards treated around 4,200 more cancer patients in the year to March 2026 compared to the same time pre-pandemic (April 2018 to March 2019), on the 62-day pathway.

The following table provides a breakdown of spend and homes delivered through acquisitions by local authority area. The National Acquisition Programme operated in 2023-24. In 2024-25 and 2025-26 the Affordable Housing Supply Programme provided targeted acquisition funding as well as supporting acquisitions through core Resource Planning Assumptions.

Information obtained from the national landlord registration system indicates that there were 177,870 landlords registered with one property in 2015, 180,971 in 2020 and 156,274 in 2025.

Equivalent information for 2010 is not available from the current data held on the national landlord registration system.

The Scottish Landlord Register is primarily an administrative system and was not designed to produce official statistics. Registrations remain valid for three years and there may be a delay before properties that are no longer available for rent are removed from the register. As a result, the figures should be treated as a snapshot of the register at a point in time.

The Scottish Government engaged with mortgage lenders, representative bodies and key partners in the development of the First Homes Fund. This helped to identify and address potential barriers, with clarification of processes and early sharing of guidance facilitating support and a consistent approach across the sector. We will continue this engagement and work closely with partners through phase one of the Fund to inform successful future phases and ensure the scheme delivers as effectively as possible for those seeking to access home ownership.

We have also published Information for Lenders and Independent Financial Advisers.

Housing stock by tenure estimates are published on an annual basis. The latest data published is up to 2024 and can be found in the Stock by Tenure Excel tables which are linked to here: Housing Statistics 2025: Key Trends Summary - gov.scot. Please note the relevant caveats for 2020 data, as estimates were affected by reduced data collection during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Data for 2025 will be released later this year and an announcement on the exact publication date will be found on the Official statistics: forthcoming publications calendar when finalised.

The Scottish Government recognises the role of developers of all sizes in contributing to new housing delivery, including both large-scale housebuilders and small and medium-sized enterprise developers.

More broadly, we continue to engage with the Construction Leadership Forum’s Skills and Workforce Group as they consider potential opportunities for government and industry to work together even more to sustain and enhance a skilled and competent workforce for Scotland, and we are working to further improve both access to the Construction Industry from Further Education and apprenticeship retention.

Through the establishment of the new national housing agency, More Homes Scotland, we will take a strategic, system-wide approach to increasing housing delivery, working with developers and others to help deliver the homes that Scotland needs.

The Scottish Government monitors productivity trends in Scotland’s construction sector using a range of sources, including data published by the Office for National Statistics and Scottish Government publications.

• Information on output per job is available from the Scottish Annual Business Statistics (SABS), which includes estimates of Gross Value Added (GVA) per head for the construction sector. These provide a proxy for output per job, noting that they are not strictly measures of output per worker.
• The Scottish Government also publishes labour productivity estimates, including GVA per hour worked and GVA per job, at Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) section level, including construction. These statistics are currently designated as official statistics in development, reflecting data quality considerations relating to underlying labour market survey sources, and no construction-specific analysis has been undertaken using these measures.
• Information on the number of construction enterprises is available from the Businesses in Scotland publication. While this shows changes in the number of firms over time, the Scottish Government has not undertaken specific analysis of the relationship between the number of construction businesses and overall sector output, and a consistent measure of output per firm is not held.