Chamber and committees

The information requested is not held by the Scottish Government.

We fully recognise that we have more to do, and all institutions have to work hard to ensure students from deprived areas receive opportunities to achieve their potential.

The Scottish Government is engaging with the sector to develop a consistent and robust set of measures to actively identify students who would benefit from our Widening Access policy.

We have established an Access Data Short-life Working Group to consider proposals and to investigate other widening access measures and data sources alongside existing SIMD measures. The group is due to report its findings to Ministers this autumn.

The information requested is not held by the Scottish Government.

This is a matter for the Health Boards. The information requested is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information, however it is estimated that one in ten women in the UK currently have endometriosis .

The Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) supports communities across Scotland to participate in, and benefit from, the energy transition. CARES has advised over 1,000 organisations, offered funding of over £61 million to over 800 projects, and helped support the installation of 58.6 MW of renewable energy.

311 organisations are currently progressing live projects through CARES. A breakdown by local authority area is provided in the following table.

These figures relate to the date when CARES funding was offered, and so do not necessarily correlate to when the funding is drawn down or spent by organisations.

The National Care Home Contract sets the rate for publicly funded care home placements and is negotiated annually between COSLA, Scottish Care and Scotland Excel. The Scottish Government is not a contractual party to it. We are pleased Scottish Care members voted to accept the 6% uplift offer from COSLA to agree the contract for 2023-4.

The Scottish Budget for 2023-4 provides record funding of over £19bn for health and social care, providing new investment of over £1bn and supporting recovery and reform to secure sustainable public services.

However, we recognise the challenges facing social care services such as energy costs, the costs of living and Brexit which has impacted the recruitment and retention of staff.

We continue to engage with the sector and other partners regularly to build a more sustainable workforce that feels truly valued and properly rewarded for their work.

Glasgow City Council were awarded funding from the low carbon Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme (VDLIP) to support its project at Govan Graving Docks in February 2023.

The low carbon VDLIP is a capital programme which aims to tackle persistent vacant and derelict land and support place based approaches to delivering regeneration and sustainable inclusive growth, as part of a just transition to net-zero. It is available on a competitive basis to all Scottish local authorities and Clyde Gateway Urban Regeneration Company.

The VDLIP Independent Panel assess project proposals and make recommendations to Scottish Government on which projects should be funded, based on the aims and objectives of the fund.

A full list of projects warded funding from VDLIP is available at Low Carbon Fund: Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme projects - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) 

The fund will reopen for projects seeking funding for 2025-26 in April 2024.

Local authorities are responsible for the development and delivery of flood protection schemes. The 2015-2021 Flood Risk Management Strategies included 42 formal flood protection schemes. Local authorities were expected to start work on development of these schemes by 2021.

Flood protection schemes can have significant impacts on individuals, communities and the environment, and so require careful and detailed planning and consultation, it was recognised that construction work may not be completed within the 2015-2021 timeframe.

15 of the flood schemes have now been completed.

Schemes (a) under construction are as follows:

The Scottish Government remains committed to medium and long term solutions to address landslip risks at the A83 Rest and Be Thankful.

Improvements to the existing Old Military Road through the Glen Croe corridor are being made to make it a more resilient diversion route until the long term solution to the problems at the Rest and Be Thankful is in place.

The current cost estimate for carrying out all phases of the medium term solution is £24million to £32million. Spending as set out in the Scottish Budget 2023-24, as approved by the Scottish Parliament, is confirmed and includes funding to commence the delivery of the medium-term improvements, which are expected to start later this year.

Funding to take forward the construction stages of Phases 2 and 3 of the medium term solution will be determined as part of the annual Scottish Budget setting process and subsequent capital spending reviews.