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Any project developer will have to satisfy environmental and planning regulations throughout the project lifecycle.

We remain focused on delivering 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, with at least 70% of these for social rent and 10% in rural and island areas, including new build, rehabilitation and acquisitions.

Backed by £768 million of investment this year, we are continuing to work with partners to increase the delivery of more affordable homes. We will report on all homes delivered through the Affordable Housing Supply Programme via our quarterly official statistics. Official statistics for the Affordable Housing Supply Programme are available on the Scottish Government website at Housing statistics - gov.scot.

Local authorities, as strategic housing and planning authorities, are responsible for assessing affordable housing needs in their area and setting out their investment priorities in their Strategic Housing Investment Plans (SHIPs). These plans set out planned proposals for affordable housing supply over a five year period, and should be available on each local authority’s website.

From 23 March 2022 to 31 December 2024, a total of 26,039 affordable homes have been delivered towards the target of 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, consisting of 19,945 (77%) homes for social rent, 3,644 (14%) for affordable rent, and 2,450 (9%) for affordable home ownership.

We will update parliament in due course on the progress made against the recommendations set out in Project Willow.

Reforms to electricity transmission infrastructure and grid capacity reforms are reserved to the UK Government. We welcome the UK Government’s mission to accelerate development of grid infrastructure to deliver Clean Power by 2030. Actions to increase capacity and facilitate quicker connections to the grid are critical to enabling our just transition to net zero.

A grid that is fit for the demands of the future is vital and long overdue. We need to ensure the power generated from increasingly renewable sources can be transported to where it is needed – to our homes, businesses, and communities across Scotland and Great Britain. The Scottish Government will play its part in ensuring the Energy Consent Unit has the capacity to deal with all future applications regarding transmission and electricity generation development.

Forestry in Scotland is guided by the principles of sustainable forestry management set out in the UK Forestry Standard (UKFS) requirements and guidelines and must also operate within the legal requirements regarding biodiversity and wider environmental impacts. Scottish Forestry is the Scottish Government’s agency tasked with regulation and policy advice for forestry. Any felling must either comply with a felling permission granted by SF or be carried out as part of an approved long term management plan. Techniques, such as whole tree harvesting, are only suitable on certain sites and guidance is available to ensure that it is carried out in a sustainable manner. All new woodland creation projects are assessed against the evidence-based UKFS which represents the governments approach to sustainable forestry.

Our immediate priority is to capitalise on the near term opportunities set out in Project Willow, with a focus on bringing forward new jobs at Grangemouth as quickly as possible. The Grangemouth investment taskforce is delivering on this priority by working with businesses with an interest in developing projects aligned to those suggested in Project Willow.

Resource Planning Assumptions (RPAs) support the delivery of local authority priorities as identified in their Strategic Housing Investment Plan (SHIP). Due to the challenging post-Covid delivery climate, delivery partners were not able to use the £724.268 million available capital allocated through resource planning assumptions in 2021-22, and actual spend was £613.169 million. In 2025-26 we are making available £660.064 million through resource planning assumptions for local authorities. Affordable Housing Supply Programme: resource planning assumptions - gov.scot

Information on actual spend by local authority compared to RPA is available in Table 2 of our 2021-22 annual out-turn report: Affordable Housing Supply Programme: out-turn report 2021-2022 - gov.scot. Whilst the published RPA for Glasgow City in 2021-22 was £120.578 million, in the 2021-22 out-turn report it is recorded as £129.030 million as this included £3.741 million for the Govanhill Acquisition Programme and £4.711 million for the Glasgow Housing Association Wheatley Bond.

The 2025-26 Affordable Housing Supply Programme budget of £768 million represents an increase of more than £211 million (38%) when compared to the 2024-25 original published budget of £556 million. This is an increase of more than £181 million capital (44%) and an increase of more than £30 million (63%) in financial transactions. The 2025-26 budget more than reinstates the affordable housing supply programme to 2023-24 levels, with £15.8 million more being available to invest when compared to 2023-24.

We continue to work with partners to increase the delivery of more affordable homes, the majority of which will be for social rent, including meeting the existing commitment to the targeted use of £40 million for acquisitions.

Project Willow sets out what could be possible at Grangemouth if the public and private sectors work together. Scottish Enterprise is triaging proposals from private sector developers and investors. As set out in their 2025- 2028 operating plan, Scottish Enterprise is driving investment at Grangemouth with a view to creating up to 800 direct jobs in low carbon fuels and sustainable manufacturing across the industrial cluster by 2028.

Local authorities must use the financial resources available to them as efficiently as possible to ensure the best possible value. How this is done is a matter for each council. Local Authority reserve balances in Scotland remain considerably higher than pre-pandemic levels.

The record funding settlement for Local Government in 2025-26 was the result of early and meaningful engagement between Scottish Government, COSLA and Councils. We remain committed to ensuring the sustainability of local services going forward and budget engagement ahead of the 2026-27 Scottish Budget has already commenced.

For the majority of current or concluded Scottish Public Inquiries none have overrun their original timeframe since the Inquiries (Scotland) Rules 2007 came into effect. This is because Ministers have not sought to specify in the Terms of Reference a fixed date by which the inquiry must conclude, to ensure that there is no impediment to the ability of the Chair to follow evidence wherever it may lead, and that their independence from government is manifest to all those with an interest in the inquiry.

However, the exception to this would be the concluded Vale of Leven Inquiry. The Terms of Reference included a provision “to report by 30 September 2010 unless otherwise provided by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing”. The Chair of the Inquiry made an application to the Cabinet Secretary for the deadline for the report to be extended, with the final phase of oral hearing not being completed until June 2012. The Chair confirmed in the inquiry’s report that they “did not consider it possible to report by a specified date” explaining that “until the work of an inquiry is well underway any prediction about a time limit cannot be accurate and may be totally unrealistic”.

The current Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry Terms of Reference provide an example of how an overall expectation in relation to reporting timeframes can be set, whereby they include an expectation of the inquiry “To provide reports to the Scottish Ministers as soon as practicable”. How the Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry fulfils that expectation in practice is, under the legislation, a matter for its independent Chair.

In relation to costs, there is no single record maintained by Scottish Government of cost information relating to current and former inquiries. Costs are determined to a large extent by how each inquiry is run by its independent Chair and, for this reason, the Scottish Government does not set a fixed budget or cost limit for an inquiry. Under section 17 of the Inquiries Act 2005, the Chair is responsible for the procedure and conduct of an inquiry, and has a duty to avoid any unnecessary cost. Publication of information in relation to costs is undertaken independently by inquiries themselves.