Chamber and committees

Residential rehabilitation services in Scotland are regulated by appropriate governing bodies independent of the Scottish Government; namely the Care Inspectorate, Healthcare Improvement Scotland or the NHS.

It is the responsibility of these bodies to monitor and ensure that residential rehabilitation services are providing safe, quality support to people in recovery across the country.

The Scottish Government are working with regulators and providers to develop and publish a series of “Principles for Residential Rehabilitation” to support regulatory bodies with their evaluation of RR providers, and to empower individuals to understand what they should expect from a stay in residential rehab, including pre-rehab support and appropriate aftercare.

We are aware of two alcohol death reviews that have been conducted since 2020. These were completed by the Borders Alcohol and Drug Partnership and NHS Fife.

The Residential Rehabilitation Development Working Group defines residential rehab as facilities offering programmes which aim to support individuals to attain an alcohol or drug-free lifestyle and to be re-integrated into society, provide intensive psychosocial support and a structured programme of daily activities, and which residents are required to attend over a fixed period of time.

The Scottish Government recognises that diversity of treatment options is important to empower individuals to have more choice and to meet the needs of individuals seeking different types of recovery, and this includes taking a person-centred approach to the duration of treatment.

It is the responsibility of the bodies responding to Public Health Scotland to ensure that reporting of residential rehabilitation placements meets this definition.

Alcohol death reviews are a valuable practice for Alcohol and Drug Partnerships to undertake in order to gain a deeper and more detailed understanding of the circumstances surrounding alcohol-specific deaths. To assess to what extent the people who have died were in touch with local services, what interventions had taken place, whether there is an identifiable profile of the people who are suffering an alcohol-specific death and whether there are lessons that can be learned, changes or improvements that can be made to services to prevent future deaths in the local area.

We have asked Public Health Scotland (PHS) to investigate the reasons behind the apparent 40% reduction in the number of people accessing specialist alcohol treatment services. We will use this information to better understand the reasons for treatment number decline and how we can improve and better support alcohol treatment services in Scotland.

The Scottish Government school estate statistics are collected and published annually at: School education statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The number of schools refurbished since April 2021 is (a) 88 in primary and (b) 13 in secondary. Only projects with a cost of at least £500,000 for primary and £1m for secondary have been included.

To date, 9 school infrastructure projects have opened through the £2bn Learning Estate Investment Programme (LEIP). Furthermore, 16 projects are currently in construction.

The LEIP aims to deliver 47 projects by the end of 2027-28.

The Scottish Government is proud to have played a leading role in the Under2 Coalition for the past four years. The Coalition is made up of 260 governments representing over 1.75 billion people and 50% of the global economy and has been named one of the international partnerships with the highest potential for emissions reduction - 3.3-3.9GtCO2e/year in 2030 – more than the current annual emissions of the EU.

Over the last four years as co-chair, we have increased member governments’ ambition via a new MoU committing them to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier.

We have increased the influence of non-party governments in the global climate debate, including in UNFCCC processes and in COPs. Finally, we have increased the sharing of best practice between sub-nationals via our co-chairing of the Net Zero Futures Policy Forum and establishing and funding the Just Transition Taskforce.

Going forward, the Scottish Government will continue to play a key role in the strategic direction of the coalition. We will look to increase devolved, state and regional government’s role and influence within international climate policy and processes and to develop the capacity building and knowledge exchange offer for the coalition, via the Net Zero Futures Policy Forum.

As Scotland moves towards a circular economy, we must treat residual waste responsibly. This is why the Scottish Government commissioned the independent review of the role of incineration in the waste hierarchy (the Review), published in 2022.

The Review underlined that that the best form of residual waste treatment is preventing waste from occurring in the first place, but in the short-term incineration has a role to play as we make the transition to a circular economy and end the practice of sending biodegradable municipal waste to landfill by 2025.

The Pollution Prevention and Control (Scotland) regulations 2012 (“the PPC regulations”) require that SEPA make impartial assessments of all PPC Permit applications and make decisions relating to environmental permits in accordance with these regulations. Whilst Scottish Ministers do have the ability to intervene in the PPC process by way of a direction, they would not normally do so in the absence of exceptional circumstances.

The Review recommended that no further planning permission for incineration facilities, beyond what was already in place, should be granted. This was reflected in National Planning Framework 4, which came into force on 13 February 2023 and is clear that development proposals for energy from waste facilities will not be supported except under very limited circumstances.

An updated incineration capacity analysis by Zero Waste Scotland (which is being finalised for publication later this year) indicates that facilities currently in development are required to help meet Scotland’s impending waste management needs, including for when the ban on landfilling biodegradable municipal waste comes into force on 31 December 2025.

The key policy levers on this matter exist within the planning system. We will continue to work with SEPA, planners and the wider sector to ensure appropriate management of incineration capacity issues.