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The Al-Mahdi Foundation received £372k of Climate Challenge Fund (CCF) grant funding for 2 projects between 2014-2020 to support awareness raising of climate change issues amongst disadvantaged and ethnic minority communities and to make their community building more energy efficient.

The CCF was delivered by Keep Scotland Beautiful who were responsible for assessing all applications. Grant applications were subject to the relevant due diligence checks. Projects were monitored to ensure they delivered against their objectives and grants were paid out based on incurred expenditure.

National Security is a reserved matter. If there is any evidence of alleged criminality this should be reported to Police Scotland.

The Scottish Fiscal Commission publish estimates and forecasts of the number of people receiving payments for Winter Heating Payment. The Scottish Fiscal Commission do not publish estimates and forecasts for the number of people receiving payments by area within Scotland. In their May 2023 publication it was forecast that a total of 403,000 people will receive payments in the financial year 2023-24.

Social Security Scotland publish statistics for the number of historic payments for Winter Heating Payment by Local Authority. Statistics for 2023-24 are not yet available.

Table 1: Number of payments for Winter Heating Payment made in Winter 2022-23 by Local Authority area

The Scottish Government does not provide funding for residential homeowners to replace existing double glazing. Funding through our domestic Heat in Buildings schemes is prioritised for energy efficiency measures which provide comparatively better energy use and emissions savings, taking into account the cost of the measure; and for which demand would be lower without government support.

Details on loan funding provided through our Home Energy Scotland Grant and Loan scheme for double glazing and insulated doors can be found at: https://www.homeenergyscotland.org/funding/grants-loans/overview/

Housing Associations can apply for grant funding from the Social Housing Net Zero Heat fund for the installation of energy efficiency measures that deliver both carbon savings and reduction in fuel bills for social housing tenants. These measures include double and triple glazing and insulated doors. The fund is making at least £200 million available to registered social landlords (RSLs) to help install zero emission heating systems and improve energy efficiency in social housing during this parliament.

Should a business or commercial landlord be recommended improvements for their windows and doors through the Business Energy Scotland advice service and meet the eligibility criteria for the SME Loan and Cashback scheme, they could be eligible for between £1,000 - £100,000 interest free loan and up to £20,000 in an energy efficiency cashback grant. Making the total amount of Scottish Government funding available for these measures to be £120,000.

Scotland and the EU share a high ambition for nature, and are both putting in place the actions required to meet the targets set out in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed in December 2022. The EU’s provisional agreement on nature restoration seeks to restore 20% of EU’s land and sea.

Ministers responsibilities for recording information are clearly set out in the Ministerial Code Scottish Ministerial Code: 2023 Edition - gov.scot The Scottish Government - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Special advisers are bound by most provisions of the Civil Service Code (apart from those relating to impartiality and objectivity) and are required to exercise care in the use of official information. The First Minister is ultimately responsible for Special Adviser performance and discipline issues but this would be dealt with in the first instance by the Special Adviser Chief of Staff.

Officials: If a civil servant employed by the Scottish Government (an ‘official’) did not comply with the Scottish Government records management policy that would be an issue for their line manager to address through measures such as additional training; through performance management arrangements or through the discipline policy. The circumstances of each case would be considered on an individual basis to determine the appropriate action, with advice and/or support from HR as necessary.

Emergency stroke care is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Anyone who believes they, or someone else, is showing the symptoms of a stroke should call 999 immediately. Work is ongoing to establish the most effective means of further expanding service hours for access to thrombectomy, one emergency treatment option for certain strokes, to maximise the number of patients able to benefit from this treatment.

Scottish Government research shows that an estimated 340,000 single-use period products are incorrectly disposed of every day in Scotland. Sewage treatment facilities will remove a portion of these, however it is known that some will reach the marine environment. Although there is no differential impact specifically caused by period products, plastic pollution in general has a significant, negative impact on the marine environment, and incorrectly disposed of period products are part of that litter problem. In recognition of that, the Scottish Government has actions within the Marine Litter Strategy to tackle the issue of marine litter caused by sanitary items.

As reported by the Deputy First Minister on 21 st November, the £13 million originally allocated for 2023-24 has been announced as part of the savings required to reach a balanced budget. We are now considering all options for the device commitment, including a range of delivery options. Ultimately, local authorities have responsibility for the procurement and management of their own digital assets.

The Scottish Government is taking action to support families with the cost of school uniform and clothing so that every child in Scotland can attend school feeling comfortable, confident, and ready to learn.

In partnership with local authorities, we have delivered on our commitment to increase the level of school clothing grant in Scotland. This vital support for families has increased to at least £120 for eligible primary school pupils and £150 for eligible secondary school pupils. As part of action to further reduce the cost of the school day for families, we have committed through the 2023-24 Programme for Government to increase funding to local authorities for school clothing grant in the next financial year. This is in addition to the increased funding for school clothing grant that was provided in 2023-24 financial year which took the total funding provided to local authorities to £13m.

To further support families, we will also introduce national guidance on school uniform and clothing. This will support schools to work with families to develop and implement affordable and sustainable uniform and clothing policies that recognise the individual needs, circumstances and identities of all pupils and reduce costs of families. It is anticipated that the guidance will be published in spring 2024.

These measures are being taken forward as part of our wider action to tackle child poverty and protect people as much as possible during the ongoing cost of living crisis.

The Scottish Government is in regular contact with the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) about registration waiting times for teachers qualified outside of Scotland (QoS) and I have raised this directly with Pauline Stephen, Chief Executive and Registrar, at the GTCS. We are aware that they receive a high number of applications – approximately 1,300 a year – and that GTCS has been taking steps to improve waiting times for decisions.

In August, GTCS reported that it had recruited additional staff to deal with the QoS workload, which initially had a greater impact on processing times for ‘qualified within the UK’ applications. They are continuing to look for ways to manage the workload as efficiently as possible.