Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government have previously published in an FOI response that £519,842.13 inc VAT was spent on investigating the creation of a Scottish public energy company. This information is available in detail at Public money spent on state run energy company: FOI release - gov.scot.

The following table shows the percentage of criminal cases reported to COPFS by Police Scotland.

The following table sets out the number of requests where there has been no disclosure of any information (fully exempted):

COPFS uses a live, operational database to manage the processing of reports submitted to Procurators Fiscal by the police and other reporting agencies throughout Scotland. It is designed to meet business needs in the processing of criminal cases, rather than for statistical analysis. This question as currently framed cannot be readily answered by COPFS.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-32136 on 18 December 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found athttps://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The Scottish Public Finance Manual (SPFM) is issued by the Scottish Ministers to provide guidance on the proper handling and reporting of public funds.

Under the terms of SPFM, the Scottish Government and SEPA operate a joint Framework agreement. Sections 25-26 and Sections 32-34 of that agreement details SEPA’s duties to develop Corporate and annual business plans, which include reporting on key performance targets.

This is readily accessible on the SEPA website here: SEPA Framework | Beta | SEPA | Scottish Environment Protection Agency.

SEPA, as Scotland’s hydrometric and flood warning authority, and a civil contingency category one responder, provides a range of real time data including Floodline flood alerts and warnings; rainfall data at over 250 locations and water level data at over 400 locations in Scotland. Through an on-going technology improvement programme, SEPA has increased the timeliness of rainfall and water level real time data.

SEPA continues to develop its data and explore how its use may be expanded including sharing data through Application Programming Interfaces for organisations to ingest into their own websites or systems; prioritising data by internet searches during major flood incidents; and exploring how to better integrate flood warning and water levels information and to simplify real time access to the information.

The National Flood Resilience Strategy demonstrates our commitment to improving flood resilience through the use of data. It sets out that we will work with partners to review how we can improve the presentation and use of data to drive flood resilient activity. We will also look how to best use data to raise community awareness of current and future flood exposure to inform decision making and support communities on their climate adaptation journeys and explore how developing new datasets may help improve decision making.

SEPA is responsible for producing national flood risk maps and operating Scotland’s flood warning system. Both actions are important to communicate flood risk and rely heavily on the use of data and presenting it for greatest impact; both in terms of knowing which places are at risk of flooding and what is the immediate risk during unsettled weather. SEPA keep these processes under review through engagement with stakeholders and customers and are committed to continuous improvement. Recent improvements include work on the Scottish Flood Forecast to deliver a mobile-friendly overview of the flood risk for the next 3 days, an upgraded Floodline messaging system, and improved and more accessible real time water levels webpage.

As operator, CalMac have estimated 44tonnes (this equates to two HGV tankers) of LNG per week during vessel operation. However this is being reviewed as part of the network trials which are currently being undertaken.