Chamber and committees

Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) has responsibility for the development of the national forest estate and it would not have been appropriate to directly involve communities in the commercial process. However, FCS did discuss with representative community bodies such as Community Energy Scotland, the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, Scottish Community Woodlands and others during the process and endeavoured to obtain a good outcome for communities.

Forestry Commission Scotland estimate having 2GW of capacity installed (wind and hydro, excluding large-scale pumped storage) on the national forest estate by 2020.

No banks were involved in drawing up the contracts but financial advice was provided by Grant Thornton''s Edinburgh office. However, prior to the tendering exercise FCS received advice on renewable energy developments from Fortis Bank.

In March 2010 I announced £100,000 in support of the Community Wellbeing Champions Initiative. So far the Initiative has been piloted in five areas across Scotland: Fife; Shetland; North Lanarkshire; South Lanarkshire, and Stirling.

Evaluation of these pilots is currently taking place, and a full report of the Initiative will be included in the second annual report to Parliament.

Bursary payments to Scottish students are paid out by Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) for full-time higher education (HE) students, and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) allocates further funds for further education (FE) students. The most recent year where data collection for bursary payments is complete is 2009-10, so this answer contains data for academic sessions 2005-06 to 2009-10.

In these academic sessions, full-time Scottish students studying at HE level in Scotland are eligible to apply for Young Students'' Bursary (YSB). The bursary is income assessed, and is paid out to students who were under 25 before the first day of the first academic year of your course and have not been supporting themselves through earnings for at least three years. YSB is paid out instead of part of the maintenance loan, so it reduces the amount of loan that these students will be entitled to. Table 1 therefore shows the average YSB payments to full-time students for each institution in Edinburgh and Lothians, for 2005-06 to 2009-10.

Table 1: Average Bursary Payments to Full-Time Higher Education Students Studying at Institutions in Edinburgh and Lothians, 2005-06 to 2009-10 (£)

Edinburgh Institutions	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10
Queen Margaret University	1,910	1,916	1,954	1,985	2,136
Edinburgh''s Telford College	1,863	1,970	1,935	2,014	2,079
Edinburgh College of Art	1,913	1,894	1,963	1,910	2,040
Stevenson College	1,957	1,908	1,986	2,109	2,105
Edinburgh University	1,775	1,814	1,854	1,885	1,923
Napier University	1,880	1,939	1,983	2,008	2,088
Heriot-Watt University	1,790	1,865	1,930	1,965	2,049
Lothians institutions
Oatridge Agricultural College	1,842	1,821	1,856	1,773	1,912
West Lothian College	1,901	2,068	2,074	1,914	2,036
Jewel and Esk Valley College	2,008	2,001	2,075	2,021	2,077

Source: SAAS Management Information.

The Scottish Funding Council allocate money to college institutions in respect of students who are studying at further education level. These funds can be accessed by full-time students or part-time students on the basis of study, travel, or special educational needs. However, because institutions distribute the money as they see fit, the total number of students that benefited from these allocations of money was not available so it was not possible to calculate an average payment. Therefore, table 2 shows the total amounts allocated to each college in the Edinburgh and Lothians regions.

Table 2: Total Bursary Amounts Allocated by Scottish Funding Council to Colleges in Edinburgh and Lothians, 2005-06 to 2009-10

Edinburgh Colleges	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10
Edinburgh''s Telford College	£2,441,659	£2,746,050	£2,687,411	£2,961,324	£3,552,944
Stevenson College	£1,864,943	£2,097,509	£2,164,474	£2,638,576	£2,911,232
Lothians Colleges
Jewel and Esk College	£1,043,917	£1,389,652	£1,165,197	£1,450,441	£1,773,488
West Lothian College	£977,562	£1,079,000	£1,139,508	£1,231,406	£1,302,431
Oatridge College	£356,698	£414,281	£413,188	£512,470	£572,242

Source: Scottish Funding Council.

Yes, and the deals announced provide for Forestry Commission Scotland to become a joint venture partner in specific schemes should they chose to do so.

It will only be possible to say which communities will benefit once the developers have identified potential sites on the national forest estate. It is expected that this process will take up to eight month to complete.

The project Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) undertook with Atkins Consultants had the main objective to build a GIS based analytical model to enable FCS to assess potential wind resource on the national forest estate. This objective was achieved and FCS routinely uses this to assess the potential of various forest blocks for different reasons. Atkins also ran the model as a part of the exercise and produced a report covering the NFE as part of the deliverables of the project. This, along with the analytical model was handed over to FCS in September 2008. Any report like this has its limitations and the main project output was the working model however, the report did provide the necessary confidence that there remained a reasonably significant wind energy resource on the NFE and that therefore it would be worth pursuing its development strategically. FCS has had no requests to release the report but would be happy to publish it on their website if required.

It will only be possible to say which communities will benefit once the developers have identified potential sites on the national forest estate. It is expected that this process will take up to eight month to complete.

Forestry Commission Scotland split the geographical areas of the national forest estate into five lots.

In four of the five lots there are two companies given exclusivity for the eight month period, one dealing with schemes under 5MW site potential and the other over 5MW. In the fifth lot both development segments are dealt with by the same company. It is not intended that exclusive options will be granted on all of the forest estate in each lot at the end of the exclusivity period, instead a select list of potential sites will be taken forward and the rest of the land can be open to communities or others to take forward if possible.