The following table shows charges reported to Procurator Fiscal Office, Aberdeen for the period 1 April 2019-31 March 2024 subsequently marked for court proceedings (prosecuted) – in cases where the accused is recorded as a company. The table shows the position as at 17 December 2024. It should be noted that a number of charges which have been reported may still be awaiting a marking decision.

COPFS employs 2501 staff comprised of 733 legal staff and 1768 support and administrative staff. As referred to in the answer for S6W-32302 on 9 January 2025 based within the Aberdeen Procurator Fiscal’s Office, there are 37 legal members of staff. In Addition, there are 84 members of support/administration staff. These figures are correct as at 30 November 2024.

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

COPFS uses a live, operational database to manage the processing of reports submitted to Procurators Fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies throughout Scotland. It is designed to meet business needs in the processing of criminal cases, rather than for statistical analysis. Any data in respect of the number of people currently being precognosed is updated each day and cannot be recalculated retrospectively or aggregated. This question cannot be readily answered by COPFS.

COPFS employs both legal and non-legal members of staff. As at 30 November 2024, COPFS employed 37 members of legal staff who are based at the Procurator Fiscal’s Office Aberdeen.

We can currently only provide information on mitigations or remediation works that we have funded for entries to the pilot phase of the Cladding Remediation Programme. Developers or other organisations may have carried out such works on other buildings without informing us.

We have funded work to remediate the external wall cladding system of one pilot entry. We have recently commissioned a Single Building Assessment to confirm that all works have been identified and completed.

Works to mitigate or remediate risks have also started for another five pilot entries. In this context, ‘work’ refers to any action taken to address known cladding related risks. This includes what are described as ‘Urgent Interim Measures’.

We have also commissioned Single Building Assessments for 13 pilot entries. This is made up of 12 recently commissioned following an Invitation To Tender (including the one noted above), and another that has now reached the reporting stage. We are fully funding these assessments at no cost to homeowners or residents.

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

The draft Scottish Budget sets out our spending plans for 2025-26 to deliver progress for Scotland, and to improve the lives of the people of Scotland. It includes investment for regeneration of over £62 million to support communities most in need, which I can advise includes the Investing in Communities Fund supporting community-led projects across Scotland which are addressing poverty and disadvantage.

The draft Budget requires the support of Parliament before confirmation of funding for individual allocations can be provided. I would therefore urge all MSPs to support the budget to ensure that investment for community projects continues.

This is a matter for the Scottish Charity Regulator. It is a non-ministerial office and its operations are independent of Scottish Ministers. The information requested is not held centrally and questions about any operational matters should be put directly to the Scottish Charity Regulator.

The ScotRail HSTs fleet is safe, and will continue to remain safe; this has been validated by an independent review of the HSTs’ design and construction, and endorsed by the industry safety regulator, the Office of Rail and Road.

Operational safety is a matter for ScotRail Trains and Network Rail, who are jointly responsible for the management of safety risks on Scotland’s Railway.