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I met with the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Use and Islands on 27 June to discuss a number of issues which are of mutual interest. We have agreed to take forward further work with officials over the summer.

The amount of funding allocated by the Scottish Government in each year of the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund, will be informed by Strategies and Infrastructure Expansion Plans currently being developed and delivered by Scotland’s local authorities and to be agreed with Transport Scotland.

A total of £4,480,000 of public funding has been allocated so far by Transport Scotland through the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund. This is an allocation of £140,000 to each Scottish local authority to enable the development and delivery of public electric vehicle charge point strategies and infrastructure expansion plans. The development of strategies and infrastructure expansion plans will precede capital projects which are expected to commence in 2024, that will seek to draw in private investment from Charge Point Operators as part of the overall £60m funding of the programme.

The judicial review decision about the City of Edinburgh Council's short-term lets licensing policy does not affect the timeframes for the implementation of short-term lets licensing as set out in legislation.

Since 1 October 2022, new short-term let hosts must obtain a licence, from the licensing authority where their accommodation is located, before they accept bookings and receive guests.

Transitional arrangements are in place for existing hosts, those operating their accommodation as short-term lets prior to 1 October 2022, enabling them to continue operating provided that they apply for a licence by 1 October 2023. Existing hosts will then be able to continue operating while their licence application is being processed and until it is determined.

Under the legislation, licensing authorities have up to 12 months to process applications from existing hosts and this can be extended by the courts for individual cases where there are good reasons to do so. If a licensing authority does not determine a licensing application within 12 months or apply to a court for an extension to continue its consideration, the application will be deemed to be granted for the period of one year. These provisions should provide assurance to the sector that they can continue to accept bookings and receive guests during this transitional period for existing hosts.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-19106 on 29 June 2023. 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 .

The Scottish MPA Monitoring Strategy sets out our approach to monitoring and ensures that the necessary evidence continues to be collected from the MPA network. A risk-based approach is used to provide a logical framework for planning and prioritising monitoring activities, as not all sites can be monitored every year.

Details of MPAs which have been surveyed and upcoming plans for monitoring can be found in the MPA Monitoring Strategy annexes available here: Scottish MPA Monitoring Strategy (webarchive.org.uk) .

Since the Scottish MPA Monitoring Strategy was published in 2017, The Scottish Government has been working with NatureScot and Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) surveying sites from 2018 to present day. Details of most recent surveys can be found in the following table:

As required by Section 103 of the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010, the next report to the Scottish Parliament on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) will be published in 2024. Reporting occurs in a 6-year cycle. The last report was published in 2018, and is available here: Marine Protected Area Network - 2018 Report to the Scottish Parliament - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

SPS now anticipate the publication of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy to be completed by end of October 2023.

Competing priorities impacted stakeholder capacity to contribute within the planned timeframe, and a need to divert SPS resources to support several acute cases of mentally unwell people in SPS care have contributed to a delay in publication. The revised date now reflects the impact of those delays, whilst ensuring sufficient time is allocated in order to analyse the critical evidence gleaned from mental health experts and those in our care with lived experiences.

The Scottish Government has undertaken an Island Communities Impact Assessment for the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill. The findings from our assessment are published in the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill: island communities impact assessment on 25 May 2023.

ChargePlace Scotland’s charging assets are owned by over 400 separate organisations across the public, private and third sectors and therefore are not all in public ownership. These organisations are responsible for procurement, maintenance and commercial decisions relating to their own charge point assets.

ChargePlace Scotland is a charge point management service paid for by the Scottish Government under a Framework Agreement to provide back-office, frontline call-handling and fault management functions on behalf of the charge point owners. The current contract to operate the back-office service runs until at least 2025.

On 20 June 2023 the Scottish Government’s vision for the future of Scotland’s electric vehicle charging network was published. This new vision places people and businesses first and outlines the accessible, affordable and reliable public network required for the future.

Our vision emphasises the need to attract greater private investment to deliver infrastructure at scale and pace across the whole of Scotland, as the public sector cannot deliver this alone. That’s why our Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund aims to draw in £60 million of public and private investment to double the size of the public charging network to 6,000 charge points by 2026, including areas of the network where private investment may be less viable, such as in our rural and island areas.

Through our Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund we are supporting Local Authorities to develop public electric vehicle charging strategies and expansion plans, encompassing their urban, rural and island areas.