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In recognition of importance of reducing flood risk the Scottish Government has, since 2007, provided £42 million each year to local authorities through the general capital grant to invest in flood protection measures. In September 2020, the Programme for Government also committed an additional £150 million over five years from 2021-22 to support flood risk management actions. Reducing flood risk is a priority for this Government and we will continue to support authorities to deliver actions that protect our communities.

The Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009 (“the Act”) encourages a co-ordinated, plan-led approach to flood risk management, which runs in six year cycles. As part of the first cycle under the Act, 14 Flood Risk Management Strategies were published in 2015 by SEPA and 14 Local Flood Risk Management Plans (LFRMP) were published in 2016 by local authorities. Actions prioritised to reduce flood risk in Newcastleton are included within the 2016-22 Solway LFRMP; this included a flood study for Newcastleton, which has now been completed by Scottish Borders Council. It is for the Council and other responsible authorities such as Scottish Water to take forward and deliver the actions set out in the Strategies and LFRMPs.

SEPA and local authorities are currently in the process of reviewing and updating the Strategies and LFRMPs for the 2022-28 cycle. Once finalised, the Strategies will be submitted to Scottish Ministers for approval.

We also work closely with key partners to promote community resilience and flood preparedness. We have increased our funding to £195,000 for the Scottish Flood Forum, which provides vital support to communities such as Newcastleton. The Scottish Flood Forum offers advice and information to individuals to help them protect their homes from flooding or to recover from flooding.

Following the announcement from the First Minister of the £500 'thank you' payment for health and social care staff in November 2020, a short-life stakeholder focus group was assembled. This group, including stakeholders from social care provider representative bodies, CoSLA, trade unions, local authorities, Office of the Chief Social Work Adviser and Scottish Government legal officials, met regularly in December 2020 to agree on the eligibility criteria for social care staff to receive the payment. Social care workforce policy officials engaged with stakeholders, remotely due to restrictions, on the complexity of the guidance and sought to ensure that no processes involved would present unreasonable difficulty for stakeholders involved in the process.

For staff in NHS Scotland, it was important to set out clear qualification criteria for the payment, which were agreed in partnership with NHS employer and Trade Union colleagues, and which could be applied fairly and consistently across NHS Scotland Health Boards. The payment applies to staff directly employed by NHS payment and remuneration arrangements, and has also been extended to certain facilities management staff working in Public Finance Initiative and Public Private Partnership Hospitals who work exclusively for NHS Scotland. The Scottish Government does not hold information on all of the contractors working in the Health sector, however, those employed by a private employer and not covered by the specific provisions of PCS(COV)2021/3 are not eligible for the payment.

Scottish Ministers are incredibly grateful for the hard work and dedication of staff working for non-registered support organisations, and for the undoubtedly vital support they provide to people. However, following extensive consultation, it was determined by the stakeholder groups that only those services which were required to register with the Care Inspectorate as delivering adult social care can be considered as frontline social care. Non-registered services were considered to be support services, not delivering frontline social care and therefore not within scope to receive the payment.

There is no single dataset of all flytipping incidents in Scotland, as there is no legal requirement for duty bodies or landowners to report on flytipping externally. The figures provided below represent incidents reported via the Litter Monitoring System and FlyMapper.

It is clear that the data varies significantly from year to year but it is not possible to deduce whether this relates to variations in incidents or variations in reporting by relevant bodies.

The Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrel project has been running since 2008. The Developing Community Action phase of the project is due to run until April 2022.

Partners have agreed that that essential elements of the community action phase will need to continue and hence partners have also agreed to develop an interim phase to bridge the gap to develop a longer term model for continuing to support these activities. NatureScot is working with partners to assess the key outcomes and costs for this interim phase, and will look to provide a funding contribution once these costs and priorities are clear.

NatureScott considers that securing the legacy of this project is a priority given the importance of red squirrels in Scotland’s native wildlife.

Scotland has always played its part in welcoming refugees, and as people from Afghanistan start to settle in Scotland, we are seeing the same.

Between June and 12 September, around 180 people in 53 families arrived in Scotland across nine local authority areas under the relocation scheme for locally employed staff. A further 16 families of approximately 65 people are expected to arrive over the next two weeks and we expect more to follow.

To date, 23 local authorities have confirmed their commitment to receiving people and others are going through internal processes to confirm their position. The Scottish Government commends all those local authorities welcoming people and other bodies which play their part in supporting people to rebuild their lives.

We met our commitment to start the programme to assess buildings within our first 100 days of government.

Our Single Building Assessments will identify issues around fire safety including cladding and the scale and scope of remediation needed to make buildings safe. This will support home owners and offer reassurance to those affected.

We are committed to fully funding Single Building Assessments with the £97.1 million consequentials we have received. We continue to urge other parties, such as developers, to continue to play their part where construction is found to be unsafe just as we continue to press the UK Government for the detail on further consequentials.

Scotland’s Mental Health First Aid programme is delivered as a face-to-face training event. In order to comply with the Scottish Government’s COVID-19 guidance and to protect public health, the delivery of these training courses was paused by Public Health Scotland (PHS), which holds the licence for this training to operate in Scotland. A range of online resources was made available by PHS and NHS Education for Scotland throughout the pandemic. In recognition of the changing context, PHS is working to ensure that the delivery of the Mental Health First Aid programme can resume safely. These courses will restart in November 2021.

The Scottish Government has worked with Community Leisure UK, local authorities, NHS Scotland and retailers to restrict the sale of energy drinks to under-16s in publically funded leisure centres and across all NHS retail sites. Energy drinks are also not permitted in schools under the Nutritional Requirements for Food and Drink in Schools (Scotland) Regulations 2020.

We have consulted on Ending the sale of energy drinks to children and young people and will publish a report of the responses we received in due course.

The criteria for the fund is currently being developed by the Scotland on Tour steering group, which is made up of representatives from the music industry, the Scottish Government and Creative Scotland. Detailed guidance will be published shortly, with artists, venues and festivals able to apply to the fund in October 2021.

The music industry is a key part of Scotland’s culture sector and makes a significant contribution to our economy. It is vital that we support Scottish artists as they continue to recover from the pandemic, and we want to ensure that this fund is as widely accessible as possible.

As per the Scottish Government's response to question S5W-35177 on 19 February 2021 , the Kickstart Scheme is a programme of work reserved to the UK Government and it is for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to report on the allocation of opportunities.

Data relating to the Kickstart Scheme is collated by the UK Government and is not currently shared with the Scottish Government.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers