Chamber and committees

In October 2015, Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL) announced that Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd (FMEL) in Port Glasgow had been awarded the contracts worth £97 million to build two 100 metre ‘dual-fuel’ ferries; i.e. £48.5m per vessel.

In my letter of 9 November 2017 to the Convenor of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee, I noted that FMEL has indicated that delivery of the first of these ferries, the MV Glen Sannox, is expected to be delayed from summer 2018 to winter 2018-19. The vessel will subsequently enter into service following trials and familiarisation by CalMac Ferries Ltd.

There have been some agreed design changes during the build process. Additional costs agreed between CMAL and FMEL relate to enhanced mooring winching arrangements at £800k per vessel.

The figures are defined as follows:

• Niche Occurrences (all crimes/offences) recorded on D Division, committed between 1 Dec and 2 Jan for each year

• Counts occurrences either flagged as Alcohol-related and/or alcohol-specific offences

• Counts only occurrences where premises are described as “On-Train”

In 2010, the Scottish Government legislated to reduce the maximum class size in Primary 1 to 25, its lowest ever level. Since then the number of P1 pupils in a class size of 26 or more has decreased by 90% from 6,896 in 2010 to 631 in 2017.

The Scottish Government is taking a range of actions to help increase the number teachers, including committing £88 million this year to make sure every school has access to the right number of teachers with the right skills, investing over £1 million through the Scottish Attainment Challenge to support universities in developing new innovative routes into teaching, and launching the second phase of our “Teaching Makes People” recruitment campaign. This action has halted a period of steady decline in teacher recruitment, resulting in almost 800 more teachers than there were two years ago.

The information requested is not held centrally. The data the Scottish Government receives from Police Scotland is a general count of the number of crimes and offences recorded by the police, split by local authority, and the number cleared up by the police. We don’t receive further details on the specific dates of these crimes and offences. This means we are unable to identify how many drink driving offences were recorded over the festive period in 2015-16 and 2016-17.

The Scottish Government is strongly committed to encouraging increased use of public transport. That is why we invest over £1billion a year in public transport. It is a matter for individual employers whether they levy a charge on employees to park at work. In our draft Climate Change Plan we propose that, where there are charges to park at workplaces, that these should be used to incentivise ULEVs.

The Scottish Government is currently undertaking a review of the water and sewerage charges exemption scheme. The results, including any proposed changes, will be published in early 2018.

Over £2m has been invested in average speed cameras (ASC) on the A90 to make the road safer for everyone travelling along the route.

As part of this spend, £43,853 was invested to develop and deliver a robust communication strategy which aimed to raise awareness around the introduction of ASC on the route.

These cameras are already encouraging improved driver behaviour and better speed limit compliance, which will lead to fewer camera detections, fewer penalty points, fewer drivers fined, and ultimately reduce the number of people being killed or injured on this route.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the percentage of services each year on the Borders Railway that have arrived at each stop on time.

Performance in the railway system in Great Britain is measured using the Public-Performance Measure (PPM), which counts all trains planned to run, which run and arrive within five minutes of their scheduled arrival time.

ScotRail provides Transport Scotland with performance information by Sector Group and these are monitored against the specified benchmarks contained in the Franchise Agreement.

The Scottish Government recognises the concerns of the local community following the tragic death of Logan Carrie in 2015 on the A92 north of Glenrothes and is committed to improving crossing provision on the route. We have invested over £35.1 million on the A92 since 2007 to ensure it continues to operate safely and efficiently. We have also been evaluating potential measures, which have highlighted a number of issues and we are considering alternatives which may be more appropriate for this location.

We have recently constructed a new footpath alongside part of the A92 and reduced the speed limit in this area.

As previously discussed with community representatives, we will meet them again early in the new year to discuss our progress on the A92 around Glenrothes and Freuchie.

ScotRail is required through the Franchise Agreement to manage the delivery of rail services, to accommodate the anticipated increase in rail traffic around the festive holiday period.

While the responsibility for day to day operation rests with ScotRail, Transport Scotland has contractual processes in place to regularly monitor ScotRail’s performance in delivering the obligations of the Franchise Agreement. This includes ensuring that services are punctual and reliable by achieving contractual targets for arriving on schedule and minimising cancellations. It also includes ensuring that ScotRail provides the capacity that they have committed.

In the event of any unplanned disruption, ScotRail are obliged to ensure customers are kept well informed in a timely manner through announcements at stations and on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter; and their customer service app provides live updates, and a live map of where the disruption is happening.

There are no planned engineering works that would affect ScotRail’s services over this period (the planned work at Edinburgh Waverley and at Stirling station, will be on days when trains will not be running). The work at Glasgow Queen St is external to the railway proper.