Chamber and committees

Scottish Water has recorded the following number of deaths since 2013 at the reservoirs it manages:

2013 – Mill Glen – 2 deaths

2014 – Torduff – 1 death

2018 – Glenburn – 1 death

Scottish Water takes a proactive role in reducing the risks around its assets, and is urging people to stay safe, behave responsibly and not take risks around watercourses such as reservoirs, rivers and lochs.

Guidance on wild swimming is now available to Public Health Scotland website and provides useful information - Wild swimming: how to swim safely in Scotland's outdoor water (publichealthscotland.scot) .

This is an operational matter for NatureScot. I have asked their Chief Executive to write with the relevant information.

Details are as follows:

The Scottish Government is not a delivery partner on the Learn to Swim programme and as such, we do not hold this data . This programme is a partnership between Scottish Water and Scottish Swimming, to support a new generation of children to become safer, happier, and healthier through the delivery of the Learn to Swim lessons. Information relating to the programme is held by Scottish Swimming.

However, we are working with Scottish Swimming, Education Scotland, sportscotland and Scottish Water to develop interventions and approaches to provide opportunities for children to become confident, safer and competent swimmers. This includes the delivery of 4 small scale school swimming pilots to better understand how to provide opportunities for children across Scotland to experience the water in a fun, safe and inclusive approach.

Our Respiratory Care Action Plan published in March 2021, contains a key commitment to ensure that people living with respiratory conditions have access to the tools, resources, and information that they need to support them to self-manage their own condition.

Work is already established across Scotland to support the remote monitoring of conditions from home through our investment in the Connect Me programme. National pathways for conditions such as asthma and pulmonary disease are in development to be made available for use by Health Boards which will support early intervention and prevention of hospital admissions. All Health Boards in Scotland are expected to be working with the national programme by September 2023 and have been supported with provision of pulse-oximeters where requested.

We continue to assess the evidence for COPD developments which currently demonstrate sufficient potential to continue researching but insufficient evidence to justify a national roll out. While early indications are positive, evidence to support its potential benefits and applicability for national support are still to be demonstrated.

Fixed Penalty Notices are issued to individuals rather than businesses. There were 106 individuals offered a Fixed Penalty Notice between 26 May 2020 and 30 June 2022, a number of these individuals were offered more than one. The total value of fines paid was £224,000.

Bute House has an EPC rating of D.

The EPC is listed on the Scottish EPC register under 6 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh EH2 4DR. Reference Number 6810-1931-5439-2403-6002.

Summer 2022 was the first time that SEPA has imposed suspensions on abstraction licences, imposing both full (a complete suspension on all water abstractions) and partial (allowing for a reduced volume to be abstracted) suspensions.

All abstraction suspension decisions by SEPA were made in August 2022 but the suspensions for two catchments were effective from 1st September 2022. The breakdown of suspensions are as follows: August 2022, 87 full suspensions and 39 partial suspensions; September 2022, 30 full suspensions and 19 partial suspensions. There were no other suspensions.

Local authorities are not required to indicate to the Scottish Government their intentions for kerbside glass recycling collections after the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme. All local authorities will consider and monitor the impact of the scheme on recycling collections after implementation.

In response to your query regarding the Scottish Government’s spend on unconscious bias training, our records show that centrally the Scottish Government has not spent any budget on unconscious bias training using external businesses and organisations. However, Scottish Government staff have been required to complete mandatory diversity and inclusion training since 2021. Unconscious bias is referenced in this training. The training was developed in partnership with Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion (ENEI) and the total cost of development was £33,900.