Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is enabling access to superfast broadband through the £600 million R100 contracts (North, Central and South) and the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (SBVS).

All three island local authority areas are covered by the R100 North Contract, with build already underway in Orkney and Shetland which is expected to conclude in 2026. Build is currently expected to begin in Na H-eileanan Siar in 2025 and conclude in 2028.

In 2022, as part of the R100 North contract, 16 new subsea fibre broadband cables were laid, providing future-proofed, resilient connections to 15 Scottish islands, including 4 islands in Shetland and 7 in Orkney.

All premises not in commercial or R100 contract plans can access a minimum of a superfast service via the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme. However, this is a demand-led scheme, meaning it is ultimately up to tenants and owners to secure a connection through this route.

The Scottish Central Government Energy Efficiency Grant scheme will invest, as a minimum, capital funding of £30 million in 2023-24 to enable the delivery of heat decarbonisation projects across the public sector, including the NHS, and £1.5 million of resource funding to enable the building of a pipeline of investment ready, strategic heat decarbonisation and energy efficiency projects across the public sector. Since the scheme was relaunched in 2022-23, Health Boards have successfully applied for over £13 million.

In addition, the Scottish Government has funded Health Boards to prepare initial net-zero route maps which will be used as a basis for planning the decarbonisation of the NHS estate.

More information on NHS Scotland’s approach to decarbonisation is set out in the NHS Scotland Climate Emergency and Sustainability Strategy 2022-2026 which is available here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/nhs-scotland-climate-emergency-sustainability-strategy-2022-2026/

Consultation with statutory stakeholders was completed in January 2023. It was agreed through this process that given the May 2023 timetable was an interim step due to resource constraints, it could not be viewed in isolation and it was appropriate to hold a public consultation on the longer term proposals. ScotRail advises that this public consultation will be held in the coming months.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-17446 on 9 May 2023. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at the https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

As set out in my response to PQ S6W-16276 on 6 April 2023, Transport Scotland intend to publish the Outline Business Case for the Aberdeen to Central Belt Rail Enhancement Project later in the year. This will provide the requested details of the specific infrastructure upgrades and their contributions to journey time savings.

In the meantime, Transport Scotland has been updating key stakeholders on the progress of the design of this project.

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 sets Statutory Guidance for the Scottish Welfare Fund, outlining the responsibilities for Local Authorities in their administration of the Fund and making clear guidance available on how to apply for a grant. Local Authorities are required to ensure that other services which have contact with people in crisis have up to date information about the Fund, including promotional posters and leaflets. At a national level, the Scottish Government continues to signpost the Scottish Welfare Fund, including through our cost-of-living campaign website.

The Independent Review into the Scottish Welfare Fund was published on 24 March 2023. As set out in answer S6W-16168 on 24 March 2023, the Scottish Government is working to publish an Action Plan by the end of Spring 2023. The Action Plan will set out policy improvements that the Scottish Government will deliver with Local Authorities and wider stakeholders, including on improving clarity and consistency of communication and promotion.

A final draft of the updated version of Planning with People: Community engagement and participation guidance published in April 2023 was shared with Healthcare Improvement Scotland – Community Engagement in February 2023. The guidance is co-written with COSLA, and Healthcare Improvement Scotland were involved in the process.

As is stated in the updated version of Planning with People, the established principles and requirements for major service change decision-making process for NHS Boards, remain unchanged from those outlined in CEL 4 (2010).

A consultation on the final Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and its first Delivery Plan will take place over Summer 2023. Publication of the final versions of both the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and the first Delivery Plan will follow in Autumn 2023.

Natural Flood Management (NFM) is one of a range of measures available to manage flood risk, however, it is a matter for individual local authorities to work with their communities to determine which solutions would best manage flood risk in their areas. As a result, the Scottish Government does not have any specific targets for the use of NFM.

We are committed to promoting and advancing our understanding of NFM projects and as part of this commitment we are funding the long term Eddleston Water research project and the Allan Water improvement project. These projects are helping to develop an evidence base to improve our understanding of NFM and will help stakeholders to understand its potential value as an alternative flood prevention measure. Evidence produced from these projects have indicated that NFM can help to delay flood peaks, deliver multiple environmental benefits and help mitigate the impacts of climate change.

As set out in the Programme for Government 2022-23 (A Stronger & More Resilient Scotland) the Scottish Government is committed to consulting on a new flooding strategy for Scotland, including how we can build community flood resilience and engage a broader range of delivery partners to deliver more diverse flood management actions, such as NFM, faster.

NHS Boards are responsible for ensuring they have local policies in place to recruit effectively and retain their staff. They are supported in this through the Scottish Government’s National Workforce Strategy, which sets out the actions it will take in partnership with Boards to plan, attract, train, employ and nurture the health and social care workforce. At national level these actions include increasing workforce supply through international recruitment and providing additional medical and nursing student places.

Since 2014, Scottish Ministers have created 725 expansion posts across a wide range of medical specialties including 20 posts in geriatric medicine. This 32% increase in geriatric medicine training brings the total number of established places to 82 across all years of the Geriatric Medicine training programme.