Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government provides almost £430 million in funding for concessionary travel and bus services to support the bus sector across Scotland. This includes funding of almost £50 million to help bus operators support access to affordable transport locally, and £6 million to continue our support for the Community Bus Fund which aims to help local authorities improve bus services in their area, through exploration of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 powers.

The Scottish Government has no plan for a revaluation of domestic properties in 2024.

The specification for the Single Building Assessment (SBA) is under development with an expected publication date of May 2024, initiated to give further clarity on the SBA process. When complete, the document will set out any divergence from the PAS 9980 for it to work within the context of the Building (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2022.

This information is not held by the Scottish Government

The list of practices accepting new patients in NHS Lanarkshire can be found at: Dental Practices accepting new NHS patients | NHS Lanarkshire (scot.nhs.uk), and as with all Boards, is subject to change at short notice.

Scottish Government officials are continuing to work with the design advisory group to establish the Anti-Racism Observatory for Scotland (AROS). The design advisory group is providing expert support ahead of a procurement process that will select a host for AROS.

This is an important step forward in our journey to a fairer Scotland for all, and will build upon the Anti-Racism Interim Governance Group’s participatory research work with over 500 individuals from racially minoritised communities across Scotland.

We are committed to completing an equality impact assessment before AROS is established. We will engage with stakeholders to examine the evidence available and understand the impacts that may be felt by communities.

The establishment of the Anti-Racism Observatory is one part of our wider strategic approach to tackling racism. We continue to work with all our partners and stakeholders to achieve our ambition of eradicating racism in Scotland.

Legislation and regulations relating to electricity networks are reserved to the UK Government, with National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) responsible for electricity system planning and electricity network planning across GB. As set out in the UK Transmission Acceleration Action Plan, the UK Government has committed to develop a Strategic Spatial Energy Plan, which will bridge the gap between government policy and infrastructure development plans across the whole energy system, land and sea, across Great Britain. The Scottish Government is broadly supportive of a more strategic approach to energy planning however, we are continuing to press the UK Government to ensure that the SSEP respects the devolved competencies of the Scottish Parliament.

We are committed to engaging with stakeholders to help inform the specification of the Single Building Assessment (SBA).

As part of this we established a Technical sub group, the SBA Task and Finish Group, which has met over the period November 2023 – March 2024 and has included developers, technical experts, building standards officials and fire engineers.

Additionally, we have contracted with external consultant fire engineers, The Joule Group, who have been reviewing from an independent perspective the use of PAS 9980 as the basis for the SBA within the Scottish Context.

The recruitment and promotion of Senior Civil Servants must include a robust selection process. Standards for hiring Senior Civil Servants (SCS) are set by UK Cabinet Office. These include the use of additional forms of assessment including psychological assessment, which have supplemented interviews for SCS for over 10 years. Academic research suggests that interviews alone are a poor predictor of future job performance, and supplementing interviews with other forms of assessments, including psychological, strengthens hiring decisions.

A Prior Information Notice was published on 13 February 2024 to inform the market of our intention to issue an Invitation to Tender for a new assessment contract for Senior Civil Service recruitment and promotion. The Tender is yet to be published and a new contract will be awarded, after all bids are assessed for quality of service and value for money, later in 2024. In the last 12 months, the current provider of psychometric assessments to the Scottish Government assessed 125 candidates for 30 SCS recruitment and promotion campaigns, at a cost of £165,401. This is in line with equivalent Cabinet Office contracts per SCS Campaign.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-25489 on 9 March 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/questions-and-answers

The statutory levy will be applied across Great Britain and will be used to support potential spending on projects and services across all three nations to reduce gambling related harms.

We continue to work with the UK Government and the Welsh Government over the levy proposals to ensure that Scotland receives a fair allocation of this funding. It is Scottish Government’s view that this should be, at least, reflective of a population share of the funding.