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The launch of our National Mission on Drugs in January 2021 has meant that some of the commitments set out in the Rights, Respect, Recovery Strategy and the action plan for it, refreshed in December 2020, are being delivered in a different way.

In July 2022 the Scottish Drugs Deaths Taskforce ‘Changing Lives’ Report, was published. This report recommended that The Scottish Government should develop a workforce action plan. In response to this recommendation, Scottish Government’s Drugs and Alcohol Workforce Action Plan will shortly be published, setting out the steps we will take to address prevailing challenges.

In line with the National Standard for providers of funded Early Learning and Childcare (ELC), it is a requirement that “children have daily access to outdoor play and they regularly experience outdoor play in a natural environment as part of their funded ELC offer ” .

Prior to establishing the framework for delivering counselling services, officials engaged with professional counselling bodies who advised that therapeutic counselling is not appropriate for younger pupils. In light of this advice, our commitment is specifically to make counselling available to secondary, primary and special school pupils aged 10 and over.

School counselling is just one of a range of services that schools may have in place to support the health and wellbeing of children and young people. We provide local authorities with £15 million per annum to fund community-based mental health and wellbeing supports for children, young people and their families.

We have also supported school staff to understand and recognise the range of mental health and wellbeing concerns that young people may experience in a new professional learning resource introduced in June 2021.

The Scottish Government continues to keep Preference Waiver Payments (PWP) under review through the Teacher Induction Scheme Ongoing Review Group, and the Strategic Board for Teacher Education will also consider this issue as part of its wider work on teacher recruitment and retention.

However, it is worth highlighting the original intent of the scheme, which is to incentivise teachers to undertake their probation in those parts of Scotland where recruitment and retention is the greatest challenge. We know that those pressures are generally felt more in secondary schools than they are in primary schools.

The Home Energy Scotland (HES) Grant and Loan Scheme was launched in December 2022 and offers homeowners in Scotland a grant, interest free loan or a combination of both to support the installation of zero direct emission heating systems and energy efficiency measures.

The scheme is open to all domestic homeowners in Scotland who live in the property they own.

Further information regarding scheme requirements is available on the Home Energy Scotland website: https://www.homeenergyscotland.org/funding/grants-loans/detail/

Transport Scotland are working with support from external specialist commercial and technical advisors Turner and Townsend, to progress development of the next CHFS contract. Work is underway to the develop the next CHFS3 contract including stakeholder engagement to support this process.

The Scottish Government last met with representatives of the Society of Chief Officers of Environmental Health as part of the ETC (Environmental Health and Trading Standards Officers Group) on 25 August 2023. Officials from the Scottish Government provided an update on the New Deal for Business Group (NDBG) recommendation report published on 29 June 2023, its acceptance by Scottish Ministers and work planned to consider the cumulative impact of regulations.

There was specific discussion of the Subgroup for Regulation recommendations, including the role that Local Authority regulators will play in the re-established Regulatory Review Group (RRG) and in the development of the policy cycle and Business Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) processes.

In Scotland we have 7.9 (June-23) qualified Nurses per 1,000 population, compared to 5.9 (May-23) in England and 7.5 (Sept-22) in Wales.

The Scottish Government is currently developing proposals on bovine EID and aims to consult on this issue in late 2023/early 2024. Scottish Ministers will consider the findings of the consultation and alongside wider implications, such as the UKIMA before reaching a preferred position on bovine EID.

The Scottish Government is actively engaged with a number of industry groups on electronic identification in livestock, including the Bovine EID Industry Working Group. The Scottish Government has also supported a pilot on bovine EID, looking into the effectiveness of different technologies. The findings were published in a report by ScotEID on 15 September 2023.