Seòmar agus comataidhean

This question relates to operational matters that are the responsibility of the Scottish Court and Tribunals Service (SCTS) corporate body. The question has been passed to the Chief Executive of the SCTS who will reply in writing within 20 days.

Scottish Government gives very serious consideration to the maintenance of plant and animal health and welfare through a range of biosecurity measures that aim to prevent the introduction and spread of harmful organisms.

On Plant health Scotland’s Chief Plant Officer for Scotland provides advice to Scottish Ministers and ensures strategic and tactical leadership, across forestry, crops and the natural environment, to minimise the risk and impact of plant health biosecurity threats in Scotland. The CPHOS works closely with UK Plant Health service colleagues to co-ordinate the Scottish Government’s plant health response in terms of policy, inspections and surveillance activities. Scotland’s Plant Health Centre of Expertise provides rapid call down evidence to inform policy and SG invests £50 million a year into a portfolio of strategic research.

On animal health and welfare, in both wild and farmed populations, SG funds ongoing disease surveillance and risk communication work through the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) and SRUC, as well as working with the other UK Administrations to collate data on current threats through International Disease Monitoring and Veterinary Risk Groups. Outputs from these groups inform policy decision making, both with regards to our borders and within Scotland. In addition the EPIC Centre of Expertise on Animal Disease Outbreaks is funded to provide epidemiological advice which informs actions to protect health and welfare.

On the specific examples, ash dieback is present across Scotland and management efforts are now focused on mitigating safety risks from diseased trees. Scottish forestry recently published advice for forest managers, Scottish Forestry - Ash dieback in Scotland . The Scottish Government provides funding through its Forestry Grant Scheme to control grey squirrels, Sustainable Management of Forests – Species Conservation – Grey Squirrel Control (ruralpayments.org) where they are a threat to the red squirrel population. The Forestry Grant Scheme also grant aids removal of regeneration, Seedling Tree Removal (Mechanical) (ruralpayments.org) where it will affect the hydrology of a raised bog or blanket bog, and hinder the recovery of the open bog habitat.

In December 2021 the Animal Disease Policy Group (ADPG), which includes a range of avian influenza experts and representatives from UK administrations, agreed to collect and store samples from non-avian wildlife through the existing Diseases of Wildlife Surveillance (DoWS) scheme for retrospective testing. This would allow a better understanding of the epidemiological situation regarding influenza viruses in non-avian wildlife species while limiting the pressure on veterinary resource or the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) Weybridge allowing the prioritisation of testing of wild birds and poultry. ADPG took the decision in July 2022 to commence the retrospective testing of stored samples of mammal carcasses at the NRL. The samples had been collected as part of routine wildlife surveillance in 2021 and 2022. In February 2023 it was reported to Scottish Government that four seals from Scotland have returned positive findings of HPAI H5N1 from this retrospective testing programme.

Despite these findings, the risk of the H5N1 strain to non-avian species, including humans, remains low. The positive identification of HPAI in mammals remains an unusual event and available genomic surveillance data, reported by APHA in the UK, indicates that there is no widespread mammalian adaption of the virus.

Scottish Government continues to monitor the UK and international situation regarding HPAI in avian and non-avian wildlife. Since the beginning of 2023, APHA have moved to a system of real-time testing through the GB wildlife surveillance scheme of mammalian samples collected including seals.

The Scottish Government expects health care professionals to deliver high quality person-centred care in line with best practice guidance. The NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guideline on management of rheumatoid arthritis in adults (NG100) is available on its website: www.nice.org.uk. The Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) guideline on management of psoriatic arthritis in adults (SIGN 121) is available on its website: www.sign.ac.uk.

To support public authorities compliance with the duty created under Section 2 Forestry and Land Management (Scotland) Act 2018, the Scottish Government and its forestry agencies have consulted on and published Scotland’s Forestry Strategy 2019-2029, which provides an overarching framework for sustainable forest management.

We have maintained and promoted the UK Forestry Standard, the technical standard supporting the delivery of sustainable forestry in Scotland. To ensure this framework remains relevant we are working with the other UK Governments to update the Standard including inputs from public bodies in Scotland such as NatureScot and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.

The Scottish Government has put in place planning policy and legislation that supports the delivery of this duty through the National Planning Framework 4, the implementation of the Control of Woodland Removal Policy and the requirement under the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 for planning authorities to prepare Forestry and Woodland Strategies. These strategies should include setting out how planning authorities will protect, develop and expand forestry and woodlands in their area. Scottish Forestry will shortly be working with partners to review the guidance to support the preparation of these local strategies.

The Scottish Government is also working directly with public authorities including statutory consultees and local authorities to actively support sustainable forestry management through partnership initiatives such as the Clyde Climate Forest, Rainforest Alliance, Edinburgh and Lothians Greenspace Trust and Cairngorms Connect.

The average repairs and maintenance expenditure per council house by local authority from 1998-99 to 2021-22 is set out in a document that has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, Bib number 64022.

It should be noted that the vast majority of funding available to councils is provided by means of a block grant from the Scottish Government. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on maintenance of council housing, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

Work on the Easy Read version of the third paper in the Building a New Scotland series is nearing completion and we expect the document will be published in due course.

There will be no Scottish House Condition Survey 2020 annual report. Following the suspension of face-to-face interviewing in March 2020, due to COVID-19, there was no further Scottish House Condition Survey data collection in 2020. The 2021 results will be published in May 2023, and the 2022 results in early 2024.

The Scottish Household Survey results for 2021 will be published in April 2023, and the 2022 results will be published in late 2023 / early 2024.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) does not have a wildfire investigation capability as it is an extremely rare discipline in UK Fire and Rescue Services. As such, no official investigations were carried out into the large fires in Flow Country or Ballindalloch in 2019.

As the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) does not have a wildfire investigation capability it has not officially investigated any wildfires in the last 5 years beyond the information gathered by its Incident Recording System.