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The National Flood Resilience Strategy commits to review available flooding budgets to assess how a proportion of flood funding can be directed to support a broader range of flood actions - including smaller flood protection schemes and property level flood resilience.

The Strategy recognises that in order to balance flood resilience actions across a range of locations, communities and situations it will be necessary to understand in more depth relative benefits. The Scottish Government is working with COSLA and local authorities to reform flood resilience funding and governance to maximise benefit to communities.

The majority of the budget for each office in the international network is staffing costs. This comprises both Scottish Government civil servants posted on diplomatic assignment, and country-based staff employed by FCDO on terms appropriate for the local labour market. The small component for programme delivery is considered through annual budgeting procedures taking into account priorities in each country and elsewhere in the portfolio.

The increase in budget for our international network of 2.0% overall is primarily to fulfil the pay agreement applied across the Scottish Government. In most cases, programme budgets to deliver events and undertake outreach work were static or slightly reduced.

There is a range of factors which have had an effect on the net cost of running passenger rail services over the last 10 years. These include the number of services delivered, passenger revenue, Network Rail access charges, inflation, energy and fuel costs, and variations introduced during the Covid period.

Changes to legislation came into force in November 2021 which allow for local authorities to put experimental projects on the ground with 7 days’ notice and a minimum 6 month consultation period which begins on the day the project is put in place. There is also a streamlined process to follow if the authority then wish to make the Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (ETRO) a permanent Traffic Road Order (TRO).

No full review of this process has been undertaken since 2021 but officials have had a number of discussions with local authorities to provide further information on the change in process and to assist in putting the new measures in place. No concerns regarding the new procedures have been raised during these discussions.

Local authorities can use Experimental Traffic Regulation Orders (ETROs) as set out in The Local Authorities' Traffic Orders (Procedure) (Scotland) Regulations 1999. As with all other Traffic Regulation Orders, local authorities are under no obligation to inform the Scottish Government when they use these measures and as such, we do not hold an accurate record of how many have been deployed during this time period.

Details of Traffic Regulation Orders published by local authorities, including ETROs, can be found on Tell Me Scotland's website at: Public Information Notices for Scotland | Tellmescotland.

The Scottish Government currently own 10 Tesla’s. We do not have any leased vehicles.

The Scottish Government fleet is made up of 187 vehicles, all vehicles are outright purchased and we don’t currently lease any vehicles.

The total cost of operating the fleet from 1 April 2024 to 31 December 2024 was £334,706.

The Scottish Government vehicle fleet, broken down by vehicle and fuel type, is provided in the following table.

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 reply in writing within 20 days.