Chamber and committees

Social Security Scotland directly employed 3,976 staff (headcount) as at December 2022. There were 3,566 directly employed staff who work in Social Security Scotland's central buildings in Dundee and Glasgow.

Social Security Scotland has adopted hybrid working in its central buildings. All colleagues based in Dundee and Glasgow are expected to spend part of their working week in an office.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-16876 on 25 April 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

The Small Producers Pilot Fund will launch later this year to support smaller producers increase the proportion of food grown and processed by small farms and small holders for their local community.

In the Financial Year 2023-24 up to £1 million is allocated for the Pilot Fund. This will support small producers and design the Pilot Fund. Further annual budgets up to 2025 will be informed by its uptake. From 2025 onwards there is no funding commitment due to the loss of multi-annual certainty caused by EU Exit, and the failure of the UK Government to collectively engage in future rural budgets as they publicly committed to.

Co-design of the Pilot Fund is through an industry-led Small Producers Pilot Fund Steering Group. Working in partnership with the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society (SAOS), agricultural, small holding and food industry stakeholders; this Steering Group will design a flexible funding approach that supports local food supply chains, improves access to the right training opportunities, and helps link together small producers into existing abattoirs.

Once the Steering Group’s work is concluded, Scottish Ministers will consider their recommendations before further information on the number of producers the Pilot Fund will support and eligibility criteria will be released. We are fully committed to publicising the launch of the Small Producers Pilot Fund throughout Scotland.

The Scottish Government has not carried out analysis on any association between local authority budgets and delivering waste collection and recycling services.

The Scottish Government has provided an additional £793 million to local government in 2023-24, which is a real terms increase of £376 million or 3 per cent. However, it is for locally elected representatives to manage the allocation of resources and the level of services that are delivered to their local communities, taking account of local needs and priorities.

Scottish Government continues to engage and support local authorities with waste and recycling operations. This includes our £70 million Recycling Improvement Fund, to support local authorities in improving recycling infrastructure and deliver modernised services.

This information is not held by the Scottish Government. Local authorities are able to purchase gift cards from the Love Local website hosted by Scotland’s Towns Partnership who are delivering the gift card scheme, working with local authorities.

The Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill was introduced to the Scottish Parliament on the 20 April 2023.

The overarching policy objective of the Bill, which builds on the existing regulatory framework, will, if passed, provide a modern, forward-looking regulatory framework for Scotland that will best promote competition, innovation, and the public and consumer interest in an efficient, effective, and efficient legal sector.

The Scottish Government recognise that social prescribing can be an effective method of improving an individual’s physical, mental and social health. There is growing interest in social prescribing approaches in Scotland and we are currently looking at how we can help develop these further.

At its core, social prescribing is a person-centred approach to supporting people to address the underlying causes of ill-health and an understanding of the importance of non-clinical community resources in helping with these challenges.

The Scottish Government already provides funding to third sector organisations to deliver a range of services, including social prescribing.

The Scottish Government continues to work with our delivery partners across Peatland ACTION to tackle the many barriers to upscaling peatland restoration in this relatively young sector.

Recent progress to address contractor availability and skills shortages include:

• NatureScot published a Technical Compendium in November 2022 which includes guidance on how to restore peatland; this is direct response to a call for greater standardisation which will help contractors to specify and plan works more efficiently
• A variety of skills initiatives are underway including: on-site demonstration days; a newly launched peatland restoration training course; on-the-job new entrants initiative; and targeted training on topics such as Public Contracts Scotland (PCS) tendering.
• A Peatland Skills, Capacity and Training Group has been established which brings together partners from the Peatland ACTION delivery partners, Skills Development Scotland, LANTRA, Confor, Scotland’s Rural Collage and the James Hutton Institute to develop a collaborative approach to addressing the skills shortages.

Peatland restoration is an industry in its infancy – it is only a few years old and has not yet developed significant supply capacity.

The £250 million multi-year government commitment entered into as part of the Bute House Agreement has increased confidence in the private engineering sector to invest in the people, machinery, skills and training needed to increase delivery capacity, is helping to increase capacity and output, and we expect that trajectory to continue.

The Scottish Government records and processes correspondence addressed to Scottish Ministers on its Ministerial and Corporate Correspondence (MiCase) System. Since the start of 2023, there have been three pieces of correspondence regarding gene editing recorded and processed via the MiCase system.

Scottish Government officials are also in frequent contact with a range of stakeholders and officials in other UK administrations, where gene editing may form part of ongoing correspondence around regular liaison meetings on a range of policy topics.

Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) is funded primarily by revenue receipts from commercial trading activities such as the sale of timber, renewables, recreation, venison, estates, and other income raised. In addition, an Annual Subsidy Limit (ASL) is agreed with the Scottish Government. This is agreed by Scottish Ministers and forms part of the budget setting and review process and is set out in the annual Budget (Scotland) Act. It is this element of its funding that has reduced.

FLS is classified as a public corporation, for the purposes of its accounts, by the Office of National Statistics. This classification was awarded based on the nature of activity within the business and the high proportion of business trading. The classification enables the agency to build and sustain essential financial reserves across financial years to sustain and deliver outcomes. These are essential in managing the dynamic activity in the forestry sector.

As a result of the level of reserves held by FLS, the ASL allocated for FY 23/24 has been reduced. The FLS Business Plan sets out the main actions that the organisation will take over the period 01 April 2023 - 31 March 2024 to deliver the commitments and outcomes identified in their Corporate Plan. Ministers approved that plan in March 2023.

Business Plan - Forestry and Land Scotland

The plan highlights that FLS will use an element of its reserves to fund its ongoing activities.