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The National Flood Resilience Strategy sets out our vision for working with partners to deliver shared outcomes for people and places and supporting a broader range of flood actions where evidence suggests they can provide a positive contribution to improving flood resilience.

This aligns with our National Planning Framework 4 whereby blue and green infrastructure are supported as an integral part of early design and development processes; designed to deliver multiple functions including climate mitigation, flood prevention and water management.

Scottish Government consulted on policy proposals regarding water, wastewater and drainage in early 2024, with respondents broadly agreeing with the proposals that Scotland’s drainage system should be a combination of grey and blue/green infrastructure, with significant support for blue/green infrastructure. Sustainable drainage systems (SUDS) are already required in new developments, aligned with NPF4, and along with retrofitting blue/green infrastructure into urban spaces, can help make a positive contribution to flood resilient places.

The works referred to in your question is part of an existing project to upgrade the Parliament’s Building and Energy Management System (BEMS). The BEMS is a business-critical tool which provides visibility and control of building services, principally the heating, ventilation, air conditioning and domestic hot water systems in all areas of the Holyrood site.  The new BEMS replaces an existing system which was installed 20 years ago and at end of life.  

The estimated total value for the BEMS project is £3,900,000. This information is published on the Scottish Parliaments Contracts Register under the contract reference NIC-SER-486 at the following link - Contract register | Scottish Parliament Website.

The total cost of maintaining the Parliament’s bees on-site for the last five years in total is £20,219.68. This includes the installation and maintenance of 15 beehives since March 2020.

The costs per year are given in the table below:

Building maintenance of the site is carried out through two separate contracts. Noted below is both the planned and reactive/repair maintenance costs for the last 5 years for each contract. Overall total for both contracts being £8,117,010.95 excluding VAT.

Building Maintenance

Planned                                                                                                                           Reactive/Repair

High Level Maintenance

Planned                                                                                                                           Reactive/Repair

In the last 5 years, from January 2020 – January 2025, 144 jars of honey have been received and sold in the Parliament shop, each weighing 227g. The shop was completely closed from March 2020 – April 2022 and no honey was received or sold in that period. No honey was received in 2023.

The beeswax isn’t harvested by the Parliament, it remains the property of our beekeepers, and therefore, we do not have the cost information.  The beeswax is harvested by the beekeepers who provide the wax for the Great Seal of Scotland under a separate contract.

In line with data protection legislation the personal data processed by the SPCB is minimised to only that which is necessary, and there is no business reason to hold spousal information of those who work for MSPs in an unpaid capacity.  The average annual licencing cost to provide email and productivity applications to Parliament network users is approximately £280 per user.

The general maintenance of hand driers is included within the Building Maintenance Contract and the only spend is on replacement parts or replacement hand driers if they fail. Below is spend for last 3 financial years and note on current year.

·        21/22 – No Spend

·        22/23 – No Spend

·        23/24 – £1560.87 – Spend is on parts & machines only as labour is included within planned maintenance.

·        24/25 – No spend to date.

Developing a National Flood Advisory Service to improve Scotland’s flood resilience and embed best practice on a nationwide scale is one of the actions in Scotland’s first National Flood Resilience Strategy. The Service will provide support and advice on building flood resilience to delivery partners and communities and provide the governance framework for progressing high value flood actions such as flood protection schemes.

The implementation plan for the Strategy will focus on the six priority action areas, starting with the establishment of the Flood Advisory Service. That plan will be developed with partners over the coming months.

In addition to existing Scottish Government funding commitments to support Local Authorities with flood resilience, £15 million has been provided in the draft 2025-2026 Scottish Budget to support the delivery of the Strategy’s actions, wider flooding resilience and coastal adaptation work.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-32614 on 14 January 2025. 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.