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The National Out-of-Hours Review Report, Pulling together, was published in November 2015. As part of the implementation of the Review, we are currently considering bids from Health and Social Care Partnerships that explore all aspects of the Review’s recommendations including palliative care.

Sir Lewis Ritchie will be undertaking a further national engagement programme, building on the initial engagement programme to all board areas in Scotland, carried out as part of the original Primary Care Out of Hours Review process where he will discuss these bids in more detail.

This work has been carried out by existing members of staff as part of their normal duties. No-one is dedicated exclusively to this work and no additional staff have been employed or redeployed to take forward the work at this stage. In line with usual practice, the number of hours staff have spent on individual tasks has not been recorded.

The forthcoming review of the Strategic Transport Projects Review will assess recommendations for strategic transport infrastructure priorities in Dumfries and Galloway and the rest of Scotland. Within the review options for the A75 corridor between Gretna and Stranraer will be considered. As this work is at an early scoping stage it is not currently possible to estimate the cost.

A draft report on the proceedings of the summit was published on the Transport Scotland website on the 19 September. Contained within it were a number of action points that the Scottish Government will take forward.

This confirms that Transport Scotland will further assess recommendations for strategic transport infrastructure priorities in Dumfries and Galloway and the rest of Scotland as part of an update to the Strategic Transport Projects Review. This will follow the review of the National Transport Strategy and allow us to consider how to better connect Dumfries and Galloway with its links north and south through a variety of road and rail interventions, ensuring that we strike the right balance of transport investments in the region.

The Scottish Government is taking decisive action to stimulate new forestry planting to meet our ambitious annual planting target of 10,000 hectares. This includes delivering our new Forestry Grant Scheme and commissioning an independent review of the forestry planting approvals process to identify improvements which will help achieve, over the next few years, a step change in the pace and scale of new planting to ensure the long-term availability of timber and to meet our climate change targets. I will be discussing progress with the forestry sector at summits being held in the autumn.

This information is not held by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government expects all public bodies to work towards returning balanced accounts.

Scotland has delivered over 70% of all new forestry plantings in the UK since 2012 when the new planting target of 100,000 hectares by 2022 was introduced. The Scottish Government is taking decisive action to stimulate new forestry planting to meet this ambitious annual planting target of 10,000 hectares which is still to be achieved.

Legacy police forces ceased to exist from on 1 April 2013 following the commencement of the new single service and therefore the information requested is not available.

The Scottish Government maintains regular contact with the Scottish Police Authority on a range of financial matters. This includes regular reporting and review of expected outturn for the financial year.