Chamber and committees

Scottish Government officials engage regularly with the three approved tenancy deposit schemes on a range of policy and operational matters, including formal engagement as part of monitoring each scheme for compliance with the Tenancy Deposit Scheme (Scotland) Regulations 2011.

As recommended in the second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2), Transport Scotland continues to work with Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT), Glasgow City Council and other regional partners in the development of Clyde Metro. Transport Scotland is undertaking a project assurance role on the Clyde Metro, which is led by SPT, working alongside Glasgow City Council.

The ongoing stage of development, known as the Case for Investment, includes consideration of access to Glasgow Airport and will inform decisions around network and mode selection. This work is well underway and is currently anticipated to be complete in 2027.

SPT are undertaking on-going engagement with Renfrewshire Council throughout the on-going design development stage and it is anticipated that future engagement will include discussion on the AMIDS South transport links project.

There is currently no firm date for the return of MV Caledonian Isles. Transport Scotland officials continue to engage with CalMac weekly, and although complex, works are progressing well.

The charter of MV Alfred is an operational matter for CalMac Ferries Ltd as the network service operator. The Scottish Government has no role in reviewing the charter agreed with Pentland Ferries.

Organisational hierarchies are in operation for performance management, pay and finance purposes. Since October 2024 when the Scottish Government’s new HR and Finance system, Oracle Cloud, went live, the practice of Position Management is being utilised within the organisation. This is a common practice in large public and private sector organisations and means all employees operate within an overarching hierarchy, thus their reporting line follows this hierarchy.

A Professions Strategy is in operation within Scottish Government. This enhances workforce management by adopting a classification system that links all jobs to a profession and a related job family and job type, within the Positions hierarchy. Although there are occasional instances in system reporting when a small number of people may appear not to have a reporting line on a system report, in practice they will be managed in line with Scottish Government’s line management practices.

I have yet to meet with Rail Action Group, East of Scotland, who have recently shown particular interest in transport connectivity in and around Haddington.

The total number of children and young people that have accessed school counselling services in the last three years can be found in the following table:

Since the start of the Baby Box Programme in 2017 up to 22 August 2025, 352,165 Baby Boxes have been delivered to families across Scotland. The Baby Box Managing agent, APS Group (Scotland), have received 190 reports of faulty or damaged items, below is the breakdown of this figure:

The Scottish Government is committed to supporting communities across Scotland to access land for growing food. While there is no dedicated national funding stream specifically for community established allotments, given the cross-cutting benefits delivered by community growing projects, communities may be able to access support through broader programmes that promote community-led regeneration and increased access to nutritious food.

We continue to work with partners to promote good practice and facilitate access to resources that support community growing. Communities are encouraged to engage with their local authority and explore opportunities through existing regeneration and community development programmes.

In addition to this, since 2021 we have awarded over £491,000 to enable Green Action Trust to deliver the Growing Food Together Fund. The fund is hugely popular and enables community groups to expand their growing area and season with new and improved infrastructure including new raised beds, polytunnels etc. This year a further 14 eligible community groups across Scotland were successful and have been awarded a share of £100,000. This brings the total number of community organisations and projects supported over the last five rounds to 55.

Part 9 of the Community Empowerment Act (Scotland) 2015, which updated and simplified allotment legislation, placed a number of duties on local authorities in relation to allotments including a duty to prepare a Food Growing Strategy and annual allotment reports. Part 9 came into force on 1 April 2018.

To date, the Scottish Government has not collated the data contained from the published annual allotment reports as there is neither a statutory obligation for local authorities to update Scottish Ministers on the publication of their annual allotment plans or for the Scottish Government to collect these data. The data is not held in a consistent format to allow for monitoring at a national level.

Therefore, the Scottish Government does not hold historic data on allotment provision or waiting lists.