Chamber and committees

The delivery of split payments to joint Universal Credit households is reliant on the ability of the DWP to adapt the UC system to facilitate the policy. The Scottish Government continues to work with the DWP to consider the steps required to deliver the policy.

The eight schemes highlighted in answer S6W-30798 on 7 November 2024 as withdrawn from the cycle one flood protection scheme funding programme, and the one scheme highlighted as no longer required, were not included in the list of 16 schemes complete at that time.

18 schemes are now complete.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency monitors the water quality of Scotland’s rivers and designated bathing beaches and publishes its classification results annually.

87% of Scotland’s entire water environment is assessed by SEPA as having a high or good classification for water quality, up from 82% in 2014, and for rivers the figure is 85%.

SEPA’s most recent Bathing Waters classification shows that 97% of Scotland’s bathing waters currently achieve the bathing water quality standards with 87% being rated good or excellent, up from 84% in 2023.

Scotland is renowned worldwide for the quality of our rivers, lochs and seas, supporting our tourism economy with our natural environment attracting millions of visitors every year with a total of 109 million tourism visits to Scotland in 2023.

Rather than deploying permanent monitoring, which is the common approach for water companies in England, Scottish Water has taken an outcomes focussed approach by carrying out comprehensive Scotland-wide environmental modelling (in partnership with SEPA) to assess the impacts of its assets on water quality during the 2015 to 2021 investment period.

The models which Scottish Water developed allowed it to understand when CSOs will spill, under what rainfall conditions these spills occur and the impact these will have on the environment. This work has allowed Scottish Water and SEPA to prioritise environmental focus and Scottish Water to target its investments accordingly. Adopting this approach has seen consistent improvement in Scotland’s water quality with 87% of all waterbodies meeting Good Status or beyond and 97% of bathing waters meeting or exceeding minimum standards as assessed by SEPA.

In addition to the progress made in improving water quality, Scottish Water recognised the need for more transparency in overflow operation and set out the commitment to install more monitors and to publish the data from these in its Improving Urban Waters routemap.

As this is an operational matter for Scottish Water I have asked them to respond. Their reply is as follows:

Scottish Water has already published this data at https://www.scottishwater.co.uk/Your-Home/Your-Waste-Water/Overflows/Live-Overflow-Map.

Currently, data from around 1,100 overflow monitor locations is included on the overflow map. As additional monitors are installed and data from these is checked, more monitor locations are added to the overflow map.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) is responsible for monitoring the water quality of Scotland’s rivers and designated bathing beaches and publishes its classification results annually.

87% of Scotland’s entire water environment is currently assessed by SEPA as having a high or good classification for water quality, up from 82% in 2014.

SEPA’s most recent Bathing Waters classification shows that 97% of Scotland’s bathing waters currently achieve the bathing water quality standards with 87% being rated good or excellent, up from 84% in 2023.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) currently licences and regulates 345 sewer networks operated by Scottish Water, carrying out inspections on a rolling basis under the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2011 (CAR).

SEPA is currently consulting on its proposals for a new Environmental Performance Assessment Scheme to improve overall levels of compliance, which is available at https://consultation.sepa.org.uk/compliance-and-beyond/epas/.

In 2025, the Scottish Government is incorporating CAR, along with the authorising regimes for industrial emissions, radioactive substances, and waste, into an integrated authorisation framework called the Environmental Authorisation (Scotland) Regulations 2018. One of the main benefits of an integrated authorisation framework for SEPA is more effective enforcement tools to better deal with non-compliant sites and protect the environment. Other benefits are improved efficiency and a more risk based, targeted approach to enforcement.

This is an operational matter for Skills Development Scotland. I have asked the Chief Executive of SDS, Damien Yeates to write to you with details on current budget allocated for the Green Jobs Workforce Academy.

This is an operational matter for Skills Development Scotland. I have asked the Chief Executive of SDS, Damien Yeates to write to you with details on whether the Green Jobs Workforce Academy website is still updated and maintained, and when it was last updated.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on the number of people presenting as homeless to (a) A&E and (b) GP surgeries.