Chamber and committees

The Northern Isles Ferry Services 4 will be competitively procured via the restricted procedure in accordance with the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015. Transport Scotland has no plans to publish the names of interested parties before the issue of the invitation to tender.

The latest calendar year estimates available from the Office for National Statistics Annual Population Survey, which we use to measure the disability employment gap, are for January to December 2024. The January to December 2025 estimates will be published on 29 April 2026 as part of the Scottish Government’s Scotland’s Labour Market Insights publication.

Screen Scotland’s Broadcast Content Fund has awarded the following sums to production companies based in the Highlands and Islands region, in each year since 2021:

2021-22 - £170,000

2022-23 - £12,376

2023-24 - £165,000

2024-25 - £435,000

2025-26 – data not yet available

As part of the record funding package for Local Government, in 2026-27, Highland Council will receive £665.1 million to fund local services which equates to an extra £32.3 million or an additional 5.1% compared to 2025-26.

The vast majority of funding available to councils is provided by means of a block grant from the Scottish Government with the Scottish Budget also providing Councils with full discretion over decisions on Council Tax. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on the maintenance of roads and bridges, on the basis of local needs and priorities.

Recommendation 40 in the second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2) recommends that safety, resilience and reliability improvements are made to both routes. This will include, but is not limited to improving junctions, enhancing overtaking opportunities and widening or realigning carriageways to alleviate pinch points such as narrow structures or at stretches of older standard single carriageway.

This recommendation is underway and Transport Scotland are currently exploring the development of previous schemes along the A77, as part of a wider assessment of these and new potential improvements on a route wide basis. This is so that they can be prioritised for improvement, beyond general maintenance schemes.

The Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline, published alongside the Scottish Budget on the 13 January 2026, includes transport projects and programmes including a commitment to develop the necessary business case(s) for improvements to both the A75 and A77. This commitment is aligned to the Scottish Government’s whole portfolio of infrastructure investments, the Spending Review and STPR2.

We are making progress to meet our commitment to halve the disability employment gap by 2038 to 18.7 p.p. The disability employment rate gap is estimated to have reduced by 5.8 percentage points (p.p.) from 37.4 p.p. in January to December 2016 (our baseline year) to 31.5 p.p. in January to December 2024, and the interim milestone to increase the employment rate for disabled people to 50 per cent by 2023 was met one year early in 2022. Between 2018 and 2024 the Workplace Equality Fund (WEF) provided over £3.1 million funding to 71 projects to reduce labour market barriers for priority groups - providing support, training and advice on workplace culture, to enhance retention and progression of disabled staff.

We have also developed a Fair Work digital resource hub, designed to provide information and signpost to support on the implementation of fair work practices within organisations across Scotland. This includes information on inclusive recruitment and reasonable adjustments for disabled employees. We have provided investment of £5 million in 2025-26 for the delivery of Specialist Employability Support in every Local Authority area, and this is protected in our draft budget for 2026-27. This budget ensures every Local Employability Partnership has funding to implement place and train approaches to support for disabled people and people with long term health conditions.

Local authorities are independent data controllers for their use of digital learning platforms in schools are responsible for ensuring that any processing of pupils’ personal data complies with the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.

As with other areas of local service delivery, responsibility for decisions about the use of commercial technology providers in schools, including procurement arrangements, rests with local authorities as part of their statutory role in delivering education. The Scottish Government does not oversee or approve individual commercial partnerships entered into by councils.

The Scottish Government has not allocated seed funding for the Scottish Marine Recovery Fund (MRF) within the 2026–27 Scottish Budget as development of a comprehensive suite of compensatory measures to be used by the MRF has to be completed first. This work is progressing at pace and includes the advancement of wider and more strategic measures enabled by the Conservation of Habitats and Species (Offshore Wind) (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Scotland) Regulations 2026, which will come into force on 25 May 2026.

The policy and legislative developments enabled by these regulations will directly inform future decision-making on budgetary provision to seed fund measures, operate the Scottish MRF, and set the charging structure developers will use to apply to the fund.

Local authorities are independent data controllers for their use of educational technology and are responsible for ensuring compliance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018, including completing Data Protection Impact Assessments where required.