Chamber and committees

The requested information can be found in Table 4 of both the Non-domestic rates relief statistics 2024 and the Non-domestic rates relief statistics 2025.

The figures in these publication are based on Billing System Snapshots, an annual property-level data return provided to the Scottish Government by councils. Values of reliefs are estimates based on the reliefs in place on the snapshot date. The values of reliefs reported are the total values of reliefs, funded by both the Scottish Government and by councils.

Outturn values of reliefs, including a breakdown by council area, are published in Non-domestic rates income statistics.

Of the organisations mentioned, the Scottish Government has engaged with the UK Government’s Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (ARIA) on the issues noted. The engagement, in May 2025 and January 2026, focussed on geo-engineering practices following media coverage highlighting ARIA’s launch of outdoor geoengineering experiments as part of a UK government-funded programme. ARIA confirmed that no projects or outdoor experiments were planned to take place in Scotland.

The Scottish Government recognises and greatly values the commitment of on-call firefighters and the flexibility of their primary employers in allowing them time off to provide the essential fire and rescue cover across Scotland. On-call firefighters are expected to obtain their employer's agreement to be released, where appropriate, for operational duties. On-call firefighters have contracts of employment with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) and receive an annual retainer fee together with additional payments for incident attendance, training and other approved activities. These payments are made directly to the firefighter rather than to their primary employer. Businesses which employ on-call firefighters do not receive compensation when employees are released from their primary employment to respond to operational incidents.

Scottish Water will deliver 95 improvement projects set out in its Improving Urban Waters Routemap Annual Update 2025 by December 2027. These projects include 19 overflows impacting Water Quality and 27 with sewage-related debris issues.

For Portobello specifically, Scottish Water, in collaboration with SEPA and the council, is currently carrying out a £1m study to identify potential bathing water impacts. This includes a pollution study to determine possible misconnections between the combined sewer system and the surface water/burn network. It also includes updating an impact assessment model to identify whether routine overflow events from the combined sewer system are impacting bathing water performance.

The Scottish Government does not hold Nature Restoration Fund (NRF) expenditure information organised in this way. Funding is awarded to projects which deliver benefits across multiple habitats and ecosystems.

Across both the Competitive Fund and Edinburgh Process funding strands, the NRF supports projects under five strategic themes: habitat and species restoration; freshwater restoration, including restoration of natural flows in rural catchments; coastal and marine initiatives; control of invasive non-native species; and urban nature restoration.

The NRF Interim Evaluation Report (2021-24) found that around 50% of the Competitive Fund's budget in its first three years was allocated to projects primarily categorised as freshwater and wetland, or coastal and marine projects.

Each location can present unique challenges. Given this and level of investment often required, an evidence-led, targeted and prioritised approach to managing water quality at specific locations is essential. Within the last 10 years, Scottish Water has invested £2.7bn in improving and maintaining Scotland's public drainage system and infrastructure, with the Improving Urban Waters Routemap committing an investment of up to £500m.

In preparation for the current investment period (SR21-27), comprehensive studies were carried out to prioritise actions. Investigations found that 24 overflow locations required upgrades to deliver an improvement in water quality, and these are included in Scotland's third River Basin Management Plan (211222-final-rbmp3-scotland.pdf) to be delivered by December 2027.

Statistical information about road collisions in which one or more people are injured is collected by Police Scotland and reported to the Scottish Government and the Department for Transport using the Great Britain-wide ‘STATS19’ data collection. Floating bus stops (and similar) are not amongst the pre-determined location options that police can select as part of this data collection. As a result, they are not separately identified in road casualty statistics.

The Scottish Government does not routinely collect data through other sources on the number of collisions or injuries involving cyclists and pedestrians at or around floating bus stops and bus boarders. Such infrastructure is typically delivered and managed by local authorities, who are therefore best placed to hold any location-specific information relating to incidents on their networks.

The Scottish Government welcomes the Scotland's Places of Worship Fund announcement by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) on 18 August 2026. This new pilot scheme for 2026-27 will provide up to £1 million to help eligible listed places of worship across Scotland recover VAT costs associated with repair and conservation works.

The Fund has been developed in direct response to the closure of the UK-wide Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme and is expected to open for applications in autumn 2026.

The Scottish Government and HES have worked closely to explore options to ensure that Scotland's listed places of worship are not disproportionately affected by the withdrawal of the UK-wide scheme. This pilot scheme will help assess demand and gather evidence to inform consideration of future arrangements.

Listed places of worship may also continue to access support through HES's wider grant programmes, details of which can be found on the HES website.

Following the reported damage to the Parallel Roads of Lochaber Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), a number of actions have been taken. This includes the arrest of alleged perpetrators of the damage and the preparation of a report for the procurator fiscal, and separate enforcement notice action by The Highland Council in relation to unconsented development.

The damaging activities at Achanbobane have caused irreparable damage to some of the protected interest of the SSSI because the processes which created them, glacial ice and meltwater deposition, cannot be replicated. Nevertheless, NatureScot is working with The Highland Council to ensure that the limited re-instatement which is possible is carried out without further damage to the site.

As a stronger deterrence to further damage to the SSSI occurring at Achnabobane, in September 2025 Scottish Ministers put in place a Nature Conservation Order. Only through the vigilance of the community, NatureScot and partners will any further damaging activity be detected and reported, allowing rapid action to be taken to stop it.

As part of the response to the significant wildfire in the Cairngorms two commercially hired helicopters were in use for water bombing the fire. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) assessed that additional aerial support to drop water on the fire could aid the response. The Scottish Government sought to explore every available avenue of support and that included requesting military assistance in the form of aerial support to drop water on the fire from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to supplement the existing aerial resources that were in place. The response was that the MoD did not currently possess aerial firefighting assets stationed within the UK.

The MOD did offer Chinook helicopters for the movement of people, troops and logistical support. However, the Scottish Government received assurance from SFRS that it had sufficient firefighters and volunteers along with logistical support to deal with the fire and therefore the offer of this other military support was not taken up.