Chamber and committees

The general maintenance of hand driers is included within the Building Maintenance Contract and the only spend is on replacement parts or replacement hand driers if they fail. Below is spend for last 3 financial years and note on current year.

·        21/22 – No Spend

·        22/23 – No Spend

·        23/24 – £1560.87 – Spend is on parts & machines only as labour is included within planned maintenance.

·        24/25 – No spend to date.

This question relates to operational matters that are the responsibility of the Scottish Court and Tribunals Service (SCTS) corporate body. The question has been passed to the Chief Executive of the SCTS who reply in writing within 20 days.

Local authorities can use Experimental Traffic Regulation Orders (ETROs) as set out in The Local Authorities' Traffic Orders (Procedure) (Scotland) Regulations 1999. As with all other Traffic Regulation Orders, local authorities are under no obligation to inform the Scottish Government when they use these measures and as such, we do not hold an accurate record of how many have been deployed during this time period.

Details of Traffic Regulation Orders published by local authorities, including ETROs, can be found on Tell Me Scotland's website at: Public Information Notices for Scotland | Tellmescotland.

The Scottish Government assessed all of these options in reaching the conclusion to locate the accreditation functions in Qualifications Scotland. This involved seeking the views of a range of organisations and stakeholders, which included the Scottish Funding Council and the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) Partnership.

The key factors considered as part of this assessment included: the need to ensure appropriate independence from ministers, alongside suitable governance, accountability and operational arrangements for the accreditation function and any other functions it shares a body with; the need to avoid misaligned priorities between functions and not introduce any confusion between these; the need to avoid creating new and complex conflicts of interest and disrupting other parts of the system; and the need to retain existing benefits of other functions in the system, such as the charitable and independent status of the SCQF Partnership.

Across all these options there were a number of shared factors that influenced the decision not to locate the function in any of these bodies. This included the levels of staff disruption particularly with staff terms, conditions and employment status; costs; the available resource and capacity of organisations to absorb such a function compared to Qualifications Scotland; and planned reviews, such as the Skills Delivery Landscape Review, that created uncertainty over other functions managed by Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council.

As operator, CalMac have estimated 44tonnes (this equates to two HGV tankers) of LNG per week during vessel operation. However this is being reviewed as part of the network trials which are currently being undertaken.

Individual policy teams within portfolios routinely allocate funding to local government to deliver our shared priorities. The intended allocations at the start of the financial year are set out in table 4.12 of the 2025-26 Scottish Budget, providing transparency to parliament. While the funding is included in the weekly revenue and monthly capital payments made to individual local authorities from the start of the financial year, the budget is formally processed at ABR and SBR – which are also published for transparency.

The Scottish Government’s intention in terms of funding available to local government is fully set out in the budget in the initial presentation, and given full effect as a technical increase to the general revenue or capital grants at ABR and SBR.

SEPA are responsible for flood forecasting and warning in Scotland and continually develop this service. They work in partnership with the Met Office to forecast for flooding and operate Floodline in Scotland to warn emergency responders, and the public, when flooding is likely.

The Scottish Government collaborates with and funds academics and research institutions through its Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Strategic Research Programme (SRP) 2022-2027. There are mechanisms within the programme used specifically for work on flood resilience. For example, the CREW Centre of Expertise for Waters provides the Scottish Government and its agencies access to water related (including flooding) expertise from Scottish Higher Education Institutes and Research Institutes. Recent CREW research commissions include work on is on improving flood forecasting in catchments influenced by reservoirs. The SRP also funds longer term strategic research including a five year research project on nature-based solutions at the James Hutton Institute.

The budget for the Scottish Government’s International Development Fund was set in the Budget (Scotland) Act 2024 at £11.5 million for financial year 2024-25. The settlement of £12.8 million, as published on 4 December in the Scottish Budget, relates to the next financial year 2025-26.

Over the course of 2024, we have continued to launch new programming following a series of competitive calls for proposals, as well as continuing to fund some existing long-term initiatives:

In Inclusive Education, we are funding: scholarships for women and girls in Malawi, Zambia, Rwanda, and Pakistan; and a programme which aims to remove barriers to quality education for out-of-school children with disabilities and additional support needs in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda. See our webpages for more detail: Inclusive education - International development - gov.scot

In Health, our projects focus on tackling non-communicable diseases – the world’s leading cause of death – by building stronger health systems in Malawi, Zambia, and Rwanda. See our webpages for more detail: Global health - International development - gov.scot,

In Equalities, in March we launched our Women and Girls Fund which will support the advancement of gender equality and empowerment of women and girls in our partner countries. We have additionally continued our support for the Police Scotland Peer-to-Peer Partnership Programme with the Police Services of Malawi and Zambia. See our webpages for more detail: Equalities - International development - gov.scot.

We continue to support the work of four networking organisations as part of our support for global citizenship in Scotland: the Malawi Scotland Partnership, and their sister organisation the Scotland Malawi Partnership, Scotland’s International Development Alliance, and the Scottish Fair Trade Forum. See our webpages for more detail: Global solidarity and citizenship - International development - gov.scot.

Through the Humanitarian Emergency Fund, we have provided provide lifesaving assistance to vulnerable communities in the Middle East, Sudan and neighbouring countries, Kenya, Southern Africa, Libya, as well as in our partner countries of Malawi and Zambia. See our webpages for more detail: Humanitarian response - International development - gov.scot.

Finally, the Scottish Government’s Global Renewables Centre has continued to drive innovation in renewables across Scotland and our African partner countries. See our webpages for more detail: Renewable energy - International development - gov.scot.

Please also see the Scottish Government Contribution to international development 2021 to 2023, which provides a holistic look at a wide cross-section of our international development activity during calendar years 2021-23, as well as providing (c11) details of our future programmes from 2024 onwards.

The National Flood Resilience Strategy commits to seek new flood resilience partners across the public, private and third sector and seek to influence policy across sectors who can contribute to creating flood resilient places.

In developing the Strategy the Scottish Government undertook an extensive programme of engagement with a range of flood risk management stakeholders and communities over 2023 and 2024. This included engagement at the annual Flood Resilience Conference in February 2024 attended by a range of public and private sector organisations.

More widely in November 2024 Scottish Government launched Scotland’s Natural Capital Market Framework which outlines the steps we will take to attract greater responsible private investment into high-integrity natural capital projects – including those that improve flood resilience.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-32614 on 14 January 2025. 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.