Chamber and committees

A new contract was provided for the Chief Entrepreneur earlier this year. The procurement notice was published as per our standard procurement processes. There has been no further extension to this contract.

Following the recent resignation of Mark Logan from the role of Chief Entrepreneur, Ministers will now take time to consider how the role can be optimised in future.

Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation (NSET) is a ten-year strategy, and we stand by its vision to grow a sustainable and inclusive wellbeing economy. Two and a half years into that ten-year strategy, significant progress has already been made in driving us towards that vision of a fairer, greener wellbeing economy.

Through NSET we have established a Centre of Expertise in Equality and Human Rights, which is embedding equality and human rights in our economic policy development. We are committed to addressing the range of labour market barriers, including intersectional barriers, experienced by women that lead them to be paid less on average than men. In line with NSET’s ambition to tackle structural inequalities, we are supporting women furthest from the labour market through delivery of our person-centered employability support. Through our Fair Work approach, we are supporting the creation of good quality, well-paid and flexible jobs to support women to raise their income levels and progress in the workplace. Further, our work to tackle economic inactivity seeks to support more people to enter, remain and progress in employment. Women are more likely to be economically inactive than men and the main reason for inactivity for both women and men is long term sickness, therefore we have focussed our efforts on addressing this challenge.

Since publishing NSET we recognise that much has changed – fiscally, politically and internationally. Our focus is therefore now on accelerating delivery of NSET through our Programme for Government by prioritising actions that are affordable, deliverable and will have the greatest impact on the Government’s four priorities of eradicating child poverty, growing the economy, tackling the climate emergency, and delivering high quality and sustainable public services.

The Scottish Government is committed to aligning with a four-nation approach towards banning the sale and supply of single-use vapes.

In order to align with timescales recently announced by the Welsh and UK governments and provide consistency across the four nations, the Scottish Government will lay legislation to amend the coming into force date in the Scottish regulations banning the sale and supply of these vapes recently passed by the Scottish Parliament from 1 April 2025 to 1 June 2025.

The Outline Business Case is expected to be completed by early 2025 and will then be subject to review and consideration by the Transport Scotland Investment Decision Making Board and thereafter by Scottish Ministers, prior to agreeing the next steps.

Additional technical and economic studies, including ground investigation scoping, are now underway by CMAL and these will lead to an update of the draft Outline Business Case report.

The Outline Business Case is expected to be completed by CMAL by early 2025. It would then be subject to consideration by Transport Scotland and Scottish Ministers. Work continues on the project to develop the business case and once this work is complete, availability of funding and value for money will need to be considered

The indicative programme for Gasay (Lochboisdale) anticipates the next Scottish Government Gateway Review for the project within Q1 2025, however this is dependent on the options development and other key elements of work being satisfactorily concluded.

The Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund (SHNZHF) launched in August 2020 and provides capital funding to social landlords to retrofit their existing housing stock by installing clean heat and improving their energy efficiency. Projects are eligible for up to 60% of the capital costs of clean heating systems and 50% of energy efficiency measures.

This year the SHNZHF is investing approximately £16.8m in 19 projects. To date, the fund has awarded approximately £75.3 million to 80 projects across Scotland for the installation of net zero measures to existing social rented homes.

The date set for the next funding checkpoint of the SHNZHF has not yet been set. When set it will be communicated to stakeholders through the fund website and stakeholder channels.

Social Landlords interested in developing heat networks can also access Scotland’s Heat Network Fund which makes capital funding available for the construction of new heat networks in addition to the decarbonisation and expansion of existing heat networks.

Our Area Based Schemes target areas with high levels of fuel poverty and enable improvements projects to go ahead in mixed tenure blocks benefiting some social tenants. Since 2013 we have invested over £600 million in area based schemes. This has helped around 40,000 social tenants and their neighbours to benefit from net zero measures and warmer homes that are less expensive to heat.

The Nature Restoration Fund (NRF) makes funding available through two main strands: the competitive strand administered by NatureScot, and the Edinburgh Process strand, which provides direct allocations to Local Authorities and National Parks.

In total, to date, 220 projects have been offered funding from the competitive strand of the NRF, including 28 NRF-funded Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund (SMEEF) projects. This represents a total of £33,366,872 in committed funding.

The following table sets out by local authority area the 183 projects awarded competitive funding to the end of March 2024, the period for which data is currently available. We do not hold information about the amounts of funding offered in this format and this does not include the NRF-funded SMEEF projects referred to above.

The Just Transition Fund has allocated £75 million to date, supporting a cross-sector portfolio of projects ranging across sectors like energy, agriculture, digital innovation and construction while also supporting communities across the North East and Moray to create jobs, support innovation, and secure the highly skilled workforce of the future.