Chamber and committees

Scotland was the first UK nation to introduce a ban on landfilling biodegradable municipal waste, which comes into force on 31 December 2025.

The increase in waste incinerated reflects preparations for the upcoming ban which have already supported a decrease in the total amount of waste going to landfill in Scotland by half over the past decade.

As we continue to increase our reuse and recycling rates, we will produce even less waste, however we will still need an appropriate way to manage our unavoidable and unrecyclable waste – and continue to reduce the amount going to landfill. The development of the Waste Route Map with partners now the Circular Economy Act is in place will be critical in accelerating action in this area.

The findings of the WWF Living Planet Report provide further evidence, if any were needed, that the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss represent the existential threat of our times. We know we must take urgent action to address them now.

We can only provide information relating to the Scottish Government funded ChargePlace Scotland (CPS) public electric vehicle (EV) charging network. The commercial sector does not make their own charge point fault information readily available to third parties.

The following tables provides a monthly breakdown of the total number of charge points on the CPS network by month and the recorded uptime and downtime across the entire CPS network as served to the public for the last three years

CPS have published a Network Performance page on the CPS website which provides a breakdown by local authority from November 2021. This will continuously be updated with ready access to detailed information on the performance of the public charging network. Prior to November 2021 this information was not collated by the Scottish Government.

Please note that the new CPS contractor took over responsibility of the contract from the end of July 2021, therefore the figures provided are from the first full month of delivery.

The reply to the 2024 PQ S6W-30359 was interpreted as seeking cost information for the Digital Waste Tracking project. The Electronic Duty of Care (edoc) system was a wholly separate project to the ongoing “Digital Waste Tracking” project. As such, edoc was not referred to in the response to PQ S6W-30359 on 16 October 2024.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

There are no Scottish Government vehicles purchased through loan or credit agreements.

The landfill ban and infrastructure capacity report was published by Zero Waste Scotland on 11 October 2024. At the time of the Environmental Information Regulations request (EIR), 19 June 2024, the report was still being reviewed by ZWS. Scottish Government considered outputs and considerations of various draft versions of the report prior to its final publication.

The Scottish Government is committed to aligning with a four-nation approach towards banning the sale and supply of single-use vapes.

In order to align with timescales recently announced by the Welsh and UK governments and provide consistency across the four nations, the Scottish Government will lay legislation to amend the coming into force date in the Scottish regulations banning the sale and supply of these vapes recently passed by the Scottish Parliament from 1 April 2025 to 1 June 2025.

Officials operate flexibly across a range of policies and programmes according to the specific requirements of their work at any given time. They do not, as a matter of course, record the proportion of their time spent working on particular project. It is therefore not possible to provide an expenditure figure regarding how much the Scottish Government has spent on work by officials involved with the development of Digital Waste Tracking.

As a four nations programme, staff resource contributing toward the development of Digital Waste Tracking is shared across UK Government and the devolved nations, with the UK Government, through Defra, providing the majority of resource and funding.

Zero Waste Scotland

We are not aware of any money spent specifically on Digital Waste Tracking within Zero Waste Scotland. A Zero Waste Scotland employee provided a response to the consultation on Digital Waste Tracking on behalf of the organisation in 2022. Some preparatory research went into the preparation of this response. Zero Waste Scotland does not have a record of any further staff allocation to the development of Digital Waste Tracking.

SEPA

SEPA staff work also flexibly across a range of priority projects and work areas, and do not, as a matter of course, record the proportion of their time spent working on different activities. Due to the cyber-attack SEPA experienced in December 2020, data is not available on resourcing of digital waste tracking work prior to December 2020. It is therefore not possible to provide a complete and detailed expenditure figure regarding how much existing SEPA resource has worked on Digital Waste Tracking.

Since December 2020 SEPA has used existing staff resources to provide:

• 1 Principal Scientist working on the project until June 2022
• 1 Senior Scientist working on the project until August 2024

Additional funding was secured from the Scottish Government to employ a User Researcher in 2022 at a cost of approximately £80k. The focus of the above-noted posts was on supporting the establishment of the UK Digital Waste Tracking project, engaging with industry and SEPA teams to define user requirements for the system

Since March 2022, additional funding from the Scottish Government has supported the recruitment of two fixed-term Senior Policy Officers to work on the project at a cost in the region of £530k. They are supporting both the UK Digital Waste Tracking project, further refining the detail of SEPA’s operational requirements, and preparing for agency readiness.

Management oversight for the project has been provided from existing resources, taking on average no more than the equivalent of 1 day per week. Given the complexity of SEPA’s interaction with the UK project and requirement for a robust governance framework for SEPA’s Digital Waste Tracking implementation project, a Senior Project Manager has also been provided to support Digital Waste Tracking from existing SEPA staff resource since May 2024.

The Scottish Government fully supports the work being undertaken by the Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels (SSRS) partnership project. The project has been working in strategic areas to protect, maintain and promote existing red squirrel populations, and to defend these populations from the spread of squirrelpox. With support from project staff, professional Grey Squirrel Officers have been working with volunteers and landowners to deliver strategic grey squirrel control in four priority areas: Argyll, the Trossachs and Stirling; Tayside (collectively the Central Lowlands); North East Scotland; and South Scotland.

The SSRS Project has recently been awarded just over £1m by the Scottish Government’s Nature Restoration Fund. Over two years, this funding is enabling the creation of new community-focused rapid response monitoring and control networks across the northern Central Lowlands, made possible by increased year-round professional grey squirrel control activities in the area. This will pave the way for a long-term southward shift of the current “Highland Line Control Zone” – the 10km zone stretching from Balloch to Montrose and buffering the diagonal Highland Boundary Fault Line, where Scotland’s Highland red-only squirrel population intersects with the most northly reaches of grey squirrels incurring from the Lowlands.

This funding has enabled a concentrated effort to eradicate the last remaining isolated population of grey squirrels in the North East of Scotland. The project also aims to eradicate grey squirrels from the islands of Loch Lomond with the support of partners and landowners and additional funding from the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority.

Funding for land managers for grey squirrel control is also available through the Sustainable Management of Forests under the Scottish Government’s Forestry Grant Scheme.

The Scottish Government and partners will continue to be involved in discussions on taking forward the work currently being undertaken by SSRS.The Scottish Strategy for Red Squirrel Conservation was published in 2015 and we are currently reviewing this with a view to publishing a revised strategy in 2025.