Chamber and committees

GP Sustainability Loans are made by agreement between Health Boards and individual GP surgeries: the Scottish Government does not oversee an application process.

The following table shows how many loans have been agreed between Health Boards and individual GP surgeries in each year since 2018 and how much has been allocated to Health Boards by the Scottish Government for disbursement.

Since ScotAccount’s launch in February 2023, over 540,000 unique accounts have been created with more than 2,200,000 total sign-ins to ScotAccount made.

ScotAccount has been used to access the following services online:

Study leave for resident doctors is managed centrally by NHS Education for Scotland. All resident doctors in training, irrespective of board location, have access to the study leave budget. This includes regional or nationally provided courses, and individual training programme budgets. For further information, I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-41661 on 13 November 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

The Scottish Government remains committed to delivering the principles of the Armed Forces Covenant - that serving personnel and their families should face no disadvantage in accessing support and services in comparison to the civilian population as a result of their service.

Government officials have engaged with representatives of service families to understand their experience of living and working in Scotland, including access to childcare. At a local authority level, there has been particular engagement with Moray Council, to understand availability of childcare in the rural area around RAF Lossiemouth, and the impact this has on the ability to attract and retain service personnel.

This year, SG and MOD have participated in a short life working group convened by the local authority, which focuses on the school age childcare needs of all communities across Moray, identifying priorities for growth and development, test of change projects and community engagement. This has provided opportunity for the specific needs of service families to be heard and addressed.

More broadly, local authorities have statutory duties to consult and plan childcare provision locally in order to help them ensure the provision within their area reflects local needs, which would include the particular needs of service families. Scottish Government will be contacting local authorities in due course to set out planned changes to the Armed Forces Covenant and policies which will be impacted, including childcare.

The notional study leave allocation for each resident doctors in training is £600 annually but this is not a limit and, as requirements vary from year to year, where necessary doctors are provided additional study leave funding depending on curricular demands and availability. Resident doctors in training receive 30 days per year in study leave time, not including any study leave which is utilised to provide courses for all doctors including Leadership and Management training and simulation training. Foundation doctors have less access to study leave but are able to apply for taster experiences where they can shadow a resident doctor in a specific specialty. More information is available at https://www.scotlanddeanery.nhs.scot/resident-doctor-information/study-leave/.

Individual colleges are responsible for their own operational decisions, including course provision, as they are best placed to respond flexibly to emerging trends at local and regional level.

It is appropriate that course provision is reviewed by colleges on a regular basis, and there are many factors that can cause changes beyond the requirement to make savings. For example, this could include to refresh and update course content or to retire courses that no longer have student demand or support employer needs.

In response to a challenging fiscal environment, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) are seeing colleges take a variety of approaches. These include reviewing teaching provision, with a view to consolidating or rationalising curriculum, and the closure of courses that are not core to their strategic plan and are no longer financially sustainable.

Analysis of data from 2021-22 to 2022-23 by SFC showed, in the majority of cases, courses that are withdrawn tended to have low levels of uptake.

The SFC engages with institutions and other stakeholders, including employers, in line with their Outcomes Framework and Assurance Model - Scottish Funding Council (OF&AM). If any common themes are identified across the sector that suggest course provision is being negatively impacted, this will be further investigated.

The Scottish Government commissioned the report: Pupil projections and implications for teacher resourcing needs: education workforce modelling and research - gov.scot, which was published on 7 May 2024.

This independent research has informed our engagement with partners on the commitment to reduce class contact time for teachers. The modelling allowed for a range of scenarios based on various assumptions which indicates that phased implementation could begin provided teacher numbers were restored to 2023 levels.

The budget agreement reached with COSLA will therefore provided funding to Local Government to restore teacher numbers to 2023 levels, to allow meaningful progress on reducing class contact time for teachers to be made. We remain committed to working with the teacher unions, and COSLA, through the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers, to agree our approach to delivering a reduction in class contact time.

In recognition that Scotland’s colleges are a vital part of our economy and wider society, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) allocations provide a 2.6% sector increase in teaching funding for 2025-26 compared to last year, with an increase of almost 5% in capital maintenance funding over the same period.

The Scottish Government is engaging very closely with Colleges Scotland on issues affecting the sector, while the SFC robustly monitors the position of the sector and the challenges faced, and considers appropriate forms of support, including to address short-term cash flow challenges.

The figures of 1,020 to 1,200 residential buildings with a height of 11 to 18m are drawn from estimates developed by the Scottish Government and published in June 2025. These were estimates of the approximate numbers of buildings in this category that might require work to alleviate cladding risk.

In parallel, however, the Scottish Government has been identifying specific buildings which may be at risk from cladding, through the series of information-gathering exercises set out in the ‘Next Phase Plan of Action’ published in August. We are using the outputs of these exercises to seek assurance from building owners that appropriate action is being taken, including through the Scottish Government’s Single Open Call scheme which offers financial support for assessment and any mitigation and remediation work found to be necessary.

Public safety remains a foremost priority for the Scottish Government. To strengthen fire safety standards following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, an independent panel of fire safety experts was convened to assess the risks associated with combustible cladding materials and to review the role of the BS 8414 fire performance test.

The use of BS 8414 test data and BR 135 classification reports is now only permitted for buildings outside the scope of the combustible cladding ban. Where such evidence is submitted in support of a building warrant application, local authority verifiers must notify the Building Standards Division. In these cases, rigorous compliance checks must be carried out throughout the design and construction phases, with all supporting evidence thoroughly documented.

In addition, the Scottish Government will extend the ban from April 2026 on combustible external wall cladding systems to include hotels, boarding houses, and hostels, further reducing fire risk in buildings where occupants may be especially vulnerable.

Following the publication of the final Grenfell Tower Inquiry report and the Scottish Government’s formal response, a comprehensive review of fire safety standards will be undertaken. This will include a call for evidence later this year to ensure that future policy is informed by a broad range of expertise and stakeholder input.