Chamber and committees

I have asked Gerard Hart, Chief Executive of Disclosure Scotland to respond. His response is as follows:

Disclosure Scotland is currently performing back within its service level agreement to process 90% of applications within 14 days.

Improvements have been made to the employer dashboard so that accredited bodies can check the processing status of an application without the need to contact Disclosure Scotland directly.

Disclosure Scotland regularly engages with customers to support them in understanding their rights and responsibilities in relation to disclosure and the Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) scheme. To stay up to date on changes at Disclosure Scotland, we encourage customers to sign up to our quarterly newsletter or read it on our website. We also provide workshops to assist organisations in understanding regulated roles, their duty to refer and the practical and legal processes involved in countersigning disclosure applications. Our dedicated Customer Engagement team is also available to provide one to one advice and support to organisations who need it.

In response to user feedback, Disclosure Scotland has improved its regulated roles guidance and developed specific guidance for parent-run groups, sports organisations and health services.

Volunteer Scotland Disclosure Services (VSDS) are funded by the Scottish Government to help voluntary sector organisations process applications and provide advice, guidance and training.

The 2025-26 direct mental health programme budget remains as originally published at £270.5 million. There is no reduction to that budget. In keeping with normal practice, some of this budget is transferred to other portfolios for mental health projects and, for example, to NHS Boards to support improvement activity and local mental health provision. However, the reference to a £120 million internal transfer to Local Government is a transfer from another budget which supports a wide range of social care activity and bears no relation to the mental health services direct programme budget.

The Scottish Public Service Ombudsman (SPSO) has a statutory function in relation to complaints handling for most public bodies. If children and/or their representatives are not content with the way a public service within SPSO’s jurisdiction has dealt with their complaint they can escalate it to SPSO. When required to investigate complaints, SPSO highlight mistakes and failures in the complaints handling process and make recommendations to remedy those. SPSO also have legal powers to make a declaration of non-compliance if the public authority has failed to ensure their procedures are consistent with a model complaints handling process.

With extra funding from the Scottish Government, SPSO have created child friendly complaints handling principles and child friendly complaints handling process guidance to help public bodies under their jurisdiction to implement a model complaints handling procedure in a way that upholds children’s rights under the UNCRC.

The Scottish Government is also working with external stakeholders to co-develop data collection to help understand children and young people’s experiences of raising an individual rights issue to identify if and where children and young people encounter barriers and gaps in support, information, and services that they need to claim their rights.

Decisions made by the UK Government since the financial crash in 2008, and their overall austerity policy position since 2010, continue to have a profound and negative impact on the finances available to the Scottish Government, the economy, and to the college sector. In recent years this challenging scenario has been exacerbated by increased national insurance costs, high energy costs and high inflation.

Rising national insurance contributions have added over £11 million of extra cost on to our colleges. The Scottish Government is seeking to mitigate the impact of these costs by providing an additional £5.5 million in this current financial year, but the added costs to our public sector from increased national insurance contributions are not helping us to realise our potential for economic growth.

We recognise the pressures facing the college sector, which have been set out clearly by both Audit Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), and I will continue to work collaboratively with the college sector on those challenges.

Under Class 33 of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (Scotland) Order 1992, local authorities have permitted development rights (PDR) to carry out works for the erection of dwellings, provided that such works conform with the adopted local development plan. Use of the PDR is a matter for individual local authorities. There are no PDR specifically for registered social landlords.

The Scottish Government is exploring whether PDR can play a greater role in helping to address the housing emergency. The recent public consultation on Permitted development rights to support provision of new homes sought views on simplifying planning processes to encourage the provision of new homes in rural areas and town and city centres. The consultation closed on 27 October and feedback from respondents will help inform the formation and refinement of any proposals for new or amended PDR.

The Scottish Government supports new woodland creation through the Forestry Grant Scheme. Forestry Grant Scheme grant recipients are responsible for the maintenance of their new woodland planting and recipients of funding agree to maintain their new woodland creation projects for a period of 20 years.

On the rare occasion a project fails to establish, grant recipients must repay the funds that were provided to create the new woodland.

If a land sale transfers ownership of a new woodland creation project that was supported by the Forestry Grant Scheme, the liability for grant repayment rests with the original grant recipient, unless the obligations are formally transferred to a new owner. This new owner would enter into their own grant contract with Scottish Forestry to maintain the newly created woodland through to establishment.

Scottish Forestry are in discussion with the new owners of the Lost Forest project at Kinrara Estate, and they are working through the process of transferring the grant obligations to the new owner. Once this transfer is agreed, the new owners will assume liability for any potential repayment of grants should the project fail to meet the Forestry Grant Scheme requirements. If no such transfer occurs, this responsibility will remain with the original grant recipient.

Scottish Government does not comment on individual property transactions. We have set out our general expectations for landowners in Scotland in our Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement and we are looking to build on these with the measures in the Land Reform Bill such as the proposed requirement for landholdings above 1,000 ha to publish long-term land management plans. We have also set out our principles for responsible investment in natural capital in our Natural Capital Market Framework.

The following table has been published by Public Health Scotland on 28 October 2025 and shows the number of inpatient and day case admissions to hospital where a diagnosis of dog bites or strikes was recorded, from 2021-22 to 2024-25, in Scotland.

The information is provided by financial year.

The information requested regarding fines issued under the High Hedges (Scotland) Act 2013 is not held centrally.

The Scottish Funding Council’s (SFC) College Infrastructure Strategy (CIS) sets out the SFC’s approach to determining future investment in Scotland’s college estate and other college infrastructure. The SFC has been engaging closely with the college sector to deliver the CIS. This Strategy sets out the collective approach between SFC and colleges to develop a 10 year College Infrastructure Investment Plan which is due to be published in autumn 2026.

That plan will consider the size and shape of the college estate, taking account of future ways of working, different delivery methods, opportunities for collaboration and changing curricula. It will also consider the net zero credentials and the digital infrastructure, as well as the fabric.

It will also identify investment needs, which includes investment for net zero, training equipment and digital needed for a sustainable college estate to deliver good outcomes for students, staff and communities.