Chamber and committees

There have been 1,116 courses delivered since 2018. By the end of October 2024, 92 percent (1,030) were delivered fully or in part online. This does not include non-course events such as workshops, symposia or other types of professional learning.

ScotAccount launched in private beta with Disclosure Scotland in February 2023, and with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service Witness Gateway in February 2024. As at 4 November 2024, there are 95,000 accounts across these services.

Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL) is progressing the Small Vessel Replacement Programme Phase One vessels procurement and has confirmed that six shipyards have been invited to tender for the contract.

Scottish Government Ministers have no role in the procurement process or in assessing the bids.

Tender returns are expected in January 2025 with a view to awarding the contract in March 2025.

The responsibility for development and delivery of flood protection schemes rests with individual local authorities, who are best placed to respond to local resilience needs.

The first set of Flood Risk Management plans covering the period 2015-2021 included 42 prioritised flood protection schemes. Work was expected to start, but construction was not necessarily expected to be completed, on those schemes within this six-year timeframe.

Flood protection schemes have impacts on individuals, communities and the environment, and require careful and thorough planning. Like all infrastructure projects, it can take many years for flood schemes to progress from option appraisal to completion.

The Scottish Government provides funding to local authorities to enable delivery of these important projects. £570million will be invested in flood resilience in the period 2016-2026.

40 of 42 have received funding to support development. 2 were not deemed eligible because they had previously received funding.

16 schemes are complete. The detailed status of those that remain is as follows:

4 are under construction.

Open Government Licences (OGLs) are controlled and administered solely by the Kings Printer for Scotland. The license is freely available to public bodies, and we support public bodies to use OGL where appropriate. Bodies such as the Care Inspectorate, Nature Scot, Food Standards Scotland and the National Records of Scotland are already using OGLs. It should be noted it is a matter for anyone who wants to use material under the OGL to satisfy themselves that the terms of that licence are suitable to cover any intended use.

The Scottish Government welcomes the news that recently released statistics from SEPA show that in 2023 both the amount of household waste generated, and the carbon impact of Scotland’s household waste, were at their lowest levels since records began in 2011.

The small increase in the household recycling rate of 0.15% to 43.5% in 2023 shows there is work to do to increase recycling and to support our sustainable resource and climate goals. This is why our Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 and draft Circular Economy and Waste Route Map set out numerous measures to increase Scotland's reuse and recycling rates.

The Scottish Government works closely with its agencies and partners to explore all viable options to avoid closures and retain jobs in the region. However, despite our best efforts to seek alternative outcomes, this is not always possible to achieve.

The people affected by these announcements are always our immediate priority. The Scottish Government provided support to these individuals through our initiative for responding to redundancy situations, Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE). Through providing skills development and employability support, PACE aims to minimise the time individuals affected by redundancy are out of work.

In Scotland, employability services are delivered through the No One Left Behind approach, which sees Scottish and Local Government work in partnership with public, private, and third sector organisations to deliver support to those who are at risk of long-term unemployment. Employability support is in place in every local authority area, with decisions on the design taken by Local Employability Partnerships. Between April 2019 and June 2024, 1813 people have entered No One Left Behind support in Inverclyde.

The most up to date estimates from the Low Carbon and Renewable Energy Economy (LCREE) survey published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that there were 25,700 direct full time equivalent LCREE jobs in Scotland in 2022.

A seven year time series from 2015 to 2022 is presented in the following table. The results in LCREE are survey-based, the data is gathered from a sample rather than the whole population. The estimates are therefore subject to uncertainty and the level of uncertainty is expressed through confidence intervals. These are presented alongside the estimates below.

The duration of access to psychological support for children and young people with cancer is led by clinical need.

In December 2022 Scottish Government committed to making recurring funding available to the existing specialist psychological support services for young people with cancer across Scotland. This commitment was successfully met in 2023-24 and continues to provide more certainty to these specialist roles.

The psychological support considerations regarding specialist workforce for children and young people with cancer is currently being reviewed by the Managed Service Network for Children and Young People with Cancer (MSN CYPC) as part of a wider workforce review. The Scottish Government is in regular contact with the MSN as their review continues.

The Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 places the statutory responsibility for local roads with the local road authorities, including parking. The provision of parking, the charges levied and how they are collected is therefore at the local authorities discretion and this is not something in which the Scottish Government would become directly involved.

There is a National Parking Platform available across the UK, run at no cost to local authorities by the Department of Transport, which local authorities in Scotland would be free to participate in if they so wish.