This is a matter for individual public bodies. This information is not held centrally.

As announced by the First Minister of 3 November 2025, Health Boards have been allocated an additional £25.5 million this year to allow them to deliver more planned activity for the longest waiting patients.

This funding is focused on Health Boards in the most populated areas and targeted at specialties where it can most effectively reduce the longest waiting times, ensuring the greatest benefit for patients.

This brings total additional funding to £135.5 million for Planned Care in 2025-26.

The following table set out the allocation of the £25.5 million funding by Health Board.

Table 1

This is a matter for individual public bodies. This information is not held centrally.

This is a matter for individual public bodies. This information is not held centrally.

Public safety remains a foremost priority for the Scottish Government. To strengthen fire safety standards following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, an independent panel of fire safety experts was convened to assess the risks associated with combustible cladding materials and to review the role of the BS 8414 fire performance test.

The use of BS 8414 test data and BR 135 classification reports is now only permitted for buildings outside the scope of the combustible cladding ban. Where such evidence is submitted in support of a building warrant application, local authority verifiers must notify the Building Standards Division. In these cases, rigorous compliance checks must be carried out throughout the design and construction phases, with all supporting evidence thoroughly documented.

In addition, the Scottish Government will extend the ban from April 2026 on combustible external wall cladding systems to include hotels, boarding houses, and hostels, further reducing fire risk in buildings where occupants may be especially vulnerable.

Following the publication of the final Grenfell Tower Inquiry report and the Scottish Government’s formal response, a comprehensive review of fire safety standards will be undertaken. This will include a call for evidence later this year to ensure that future policy is informed by a broad range of expertise and stakeholder input.

The notional study leave allocation for each resident doctors in training is £600 annually but this is not a limit and, as requirements vary from year to year, where necessary doctors are provided additional study leave funding depending on curricular demands and availability. Resident doctors in training receive 30 days per year in study leave time, not including any study leave which is utilised to provide courses for all doctors including Leadership and Management training and simulation training. Foundation doctors have less access to study leave but are able to apply for taster experiences where they can shadow a resident doctor in a specific specialty. More information is available at https://www.scotlanddeanery.nhs.scot/resident-doctor-information/study-leave/.

The Scottish Government is delivering a transformation programme to reform the post-school education and skills system, which aims at making the system more responsive to Scotland’s strategic skills needs at national and regional levels.

Alongside reform, we are also taking targeted action to meet urgent skills needs in specific sectors. For example, we are investing up to £2 million to develop engineering skills in the Glasgow City Region through a programme led by Clyde Maritime Cluster, and the defence sector, with Skills Development Scotland. Member authorities, led by Inverclyde Council, are leading on engagement with local employability partnerships to identify individuals who would benefit; and offer training opportunities through interventions including Skills Academies, paid work experience and guaranteed interviews. Companies are also working innovatively with regional colleges and other partners to look at specific interventions that would support candidates with particular upskilling or reskilling needs or with additional barriers.

Operational decisions such as curriculum delivery are the responsibility of individual colleges.

Through the Colleges Tripartite Alignment Group, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), along with Colleges Scotland, regularly discuss issues in the sector, such as the college funding model.

The changes implemented by the SFC aim to deliver a fair and flexible distribution model, and as advised by the SFC at the Education, Children and Young People Committee on 1 October, they are engaging with Colleges Scotland and the wider college sector on the fundamental review of the funding allocation model.

Individual colleges are responsible for their own operational decisions, including course provision, as they are best placed to respond flexibly to emerging trends at local and regional level.

It is appropriate that course provision is reviewed by colleges on a regular basis, and there are many factors that can cause changes beyond the requirement to make savings. For example, this could include to refresh and update course content or to retire courses that no longer have student demand or support employer needs.

In response to a challenging fiscal environment, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) are seeing colleges take a variety of approaches. These include reviewing teaching provision, with a view to consolidating or rationalising curriculum, and the closure of courses that are not core to their strategic plan and are no longer financially sustainable.

Analysis of data from 2021-22 to 2022-23 by SFC showed, in the majority of cases, courses that are withdrawn tended to have low levels of uptake.

The SFC engages with institutions and other stakeholders, including employers, in line with their Outcomes Framework and Assurance Model - Scottish Funding Council (OF&AM). If any common themes are identified across the sector that suggest course provision is being negatively impacted, this will be further investigated.

The Scottish Government commissioned the report: Pupil projections and implications for teacher resourcing needs: education workforce modelling and research - gov.scot, which was published on 7 May 2024.

This independent research has informed our engagement with partners on the commitment to reduce class contact time for teachers. The modelling allowed for a range of scenarios based on various assumptions which indicates that phased implementation could begin provided teacher numbers were restored to 2023 levels.

The budget agreement reached with COSLA will therefore provided funding to Local Government to restore teacher numbers to 2023 levels, to allow meaningful progress on reducing class contact time for teachers to be made. We remain committed to working with the teacher unions, and COSLA, through the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers, to agree our approach to delivering a reduction in class contact time.