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Scottish Audiology Heads of Service have recently initiated an in house peer review process and are continuing to see positive results from this. As part of Improving Quality in Physiological Services (IQIPS) benchmarking, a mapping exercise is currently underway which includes the consideration of national peer review for audiology services.

An executive lead group for audiology has been reestablished, with representation from each NHS Territorial Health Board to consider the outputs and next steps of this work, which will conclude within the current financial year.

The Scottish Ministers make decisions on applications in accordance with legislative requirements and relevant policy. Energy consent applications are assessed on a case-by-case basis, with all relevant information considered to ensure balanced decision-making. This includes environmental information, consultee responses from public bodies and representations from the public.

All information related to determinations made by the Scottish Ministers in respect of onshore wind farm developments, including any conditions to mitigate biodiversity impacts, is publicly available on our Energy Consents portal: https://www.energyconsents.scot/ApplicationSearch.aspx

Scottish Government sets the strategic policy direction for the NHS in Scotland, operational matters – including the recruitment and training of staff – are in the first instance the responsibility of the relevant NHS Board.

We continue to work closely with Health Boards and clinical professionals across Scotland to understand any specific challenges they are facing in the recruitment and training of specialist staff needed to support people with ADHD.

We continue to fund NHS Education for Scotland (NES) and the National Autism Implementation Team (NAIT) to deliver professional learning to improve the Scottish workforce’s knowledge and skills about Neurodivergence, including Autism and ADHD.

To address specific challenges in the recruitment and retention of psychiatrists in Scotland we established a Working Group which recently reported to Ministers, 23 June 2025. Funding also continues to be provided to Boards for the additional roles to help mental health pharmacy services including within community mental health pharmacy support to improve medication use and prescribing practices.

We work closely with the Society of Chief Officers of Trading Standards in Scotland (SCOTSS) to support enforcement of existing legislation, including checks on sales of tobacco and vapes to under 18s, and advice to business.

In 2025-26 this includes providing funding of £46k to support a National Coordinator post and specific enforcement projects that vary year on year. SCOTSS manages the Enhanced Tobacco Sales Enforcement Programme (ETSEP) in Scotland, which is a key component in the Scottish Government’s Tobacco and Vaping Framework, and helps ensure that young people’s access to harmful age-restricted products is minimised.

In addition in 2025-26, the Scottish Government has made £300k available for transitional costs associated with the ban on SUVs, and to support recycling and responsible disposal of SUV’s seized by local authorities.

The 2025-26 budget delivered record funding of over £15.1 billion for Local Government, a real terms increase of 5.5 per cent. Local Government have responsibility for working to ensure local budget decisions deliver local and national priorities, including those on the enforcement of existing legislation, including on underage sales and illicit tobacco and vapes and the single use vape ban.

Further to my answer to question S6W-38874 on 11 July 2025, in which I recognised the recent Court judgement reflecting the potential for animal welfare to be a material consideration, in determining any application or appeal, it is for the planning authority, or as the case may be the Scottish Ministers (or reporters on their behalf), who are considering the proposed development to decide what matters are material to their consideration on a case by case basis. Furthermore, the weight to be attached to any specific matter raised in any individual case rests with the decision-maker.

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.

Scottish Ministers must take into account all the views presented when considering applications for onshore wind projects. The merits of each proposal are considered on a case-by-case basis. A careful balance must be struck between the potential impacts of the development and the associated environmental, economic, renewable energy and climate change benefits.

Where new development proposals come forward, our Fourth National Planning Framework (NPF4) ensures the impacts of proposals on communities and nature, including cumulative impacts, are important considerations in the decision-making process. All applications are subject to site specific assessments.

Supporting cyber resilience in local authorities is a priority for the Scottish Government. We provide a range of measures to support both immediate incidents as well as helping strengthen local authorities’ cyber resilience in the longer term.

The Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre’s (SC3) core function is to work with the Scottish public sector to help them improve their preparedness, reduce vulnerabilities and learn from best practice. SC3 has 24/7 on-call arrangements to immediately engage multi-agency response, where necessary, for any public sector organisation who is subject to a cyber attack. When the cyber incidents occurred in Glasgow City and West Lothian councils, the SC3 quickly stood up a multi-agency response to support the councils.

SC3 provides several important services including:

• sharing of relevant threat intelligence and early warnings,
• liaising with partners such as NCSC and Police Scotland,
• advising on consequence and data leak management, and
• guiding on Cyber Incident Response support options.

Specific post-incident lessons learned are shared in appropriate channels. These continue to feed into scenario-based exercising through the Exercising Workstream to improve organisational preparedness. The SC3 has worked with the Digital Office CISO to deliver strategic level cyber exercising to several local authorities with more planned for later this year. Under the Standards & Insights Workstream, SC3 has also initiated two pieces of research targeted at the most common lessons from ransomware incidents, to provide additional guidance for organisations on legacy technology and multi-factor authentication.

We recognise the crucial role that councils and their employees play in communities across Scotland. That’s why the Scottish Government has made a record £15.1 billion available for local authorities for 2025-26, a real terms increase of 5.5% compared with last year.

It should be noted that local authorities are entirely separate entities from the Scottish Government. Their powers are set out in statute, and it is up to each local authority to manage its day-to-day business, including the management of its IT systems. The Verity House Agreement reinforces this principle of local autonomy, while also encouraging collaboration and shared learning across the sector.

The public sector provides a range of digital public services and it is critical that these are secure and resilient.

The Scottish Government has been encouraging public sector organisations to adopt a proactive, risk based governance approach, with board-level accountability to build their cyber resilience.

To support the sector’s ability to prevent, detect and manage cyber threats, the Scottish Government has set out a framework that provides an approach for public bodies to follow. It includes guidance on how to:

Assess their cyber resilience maturity

Align with minimum security standards

Benchmark performance, and

Prioritise investment based on risk.

It is supported by practical tools such as self-assessment templates and critical systems mapping resources which enables organisations to identify needs, engage leadership and prioritise budget and support.

The Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre (the SC3) provides:

24/7 national incident response coordination

Daily threat intelligence and early warning notifications

Cyber exercising and preparedness programmes, and

Guidance on standards and best practice.

This national support is helping to equip our public bodies with the tools, intelligence and skills needed to build and maintain strong cyber resilience.

The Scottish Government has commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to develop a set of maternity standards designed to drive improvements in care at a local level, expected to publish in Spring 2026. Further to this, HIS introduced its Safe Delivery of Care in acute settings maternity inspection programme in January 2025. These inspections provide independent assessments of maternity services and can provide reassurance to all parents and families, as well as identifying opportunities for improvement and learning for NHS Boards.

In parallel, our Scottish Patient Safety Perinatal Improvement Programme continues to work with maternity services across Scotland to drive improvements in care for mothers and babies. The Programme supports NHS Boards to improve outcomes in a number of ways, including a focus on reducing stillbirth, neonatal mortality and morbidity.

In the last 20 years, our infant mortality rate has fallen by 28%, our neonatal death rate by 22% and our stillbirth rate by nearly 40%. We recognise that there is always more we can do, however, and the Scottish Government remains committed to continuous improvement in maternity services and to learning from adverse events and outcomes. We expect all NHS Boards in Scotland to use the Perinatal Mortality Review Tool (PMRT) to review all stillbirths and neonatal deaths. Undertaking robust, high quality reviews in a timely manner, in line with the standardised approach laid out in the Maternity and Neonatal (Perinatal) Adverse Event Review Process for Scotland will improve understanding at a local and national level of where improvements in care need to be made.