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Serco Northlink Ferries took the decision to remove their shared cabin offer option due to the health and safety of passengers, however NorthLink are aware that Shetlanders often use local knowledge to share cabins with people they know. Customers can use their concessionary ferry vouchers for free passenger travel and on overnight sailings to partially offset the cost of a cabin for sole use if not travelling with others.

The Scottish Government unequivocally condemns the abuse experienced by children and young people at the Ladyfield psychiatric unit for children. We offer our full and unreserved apology and recognise the courage of survivors in coming forward to share their experiences. Ladyfield was examined during Phase 9 of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry’s public hearings, and the Inquiry’s findings are awaited. The Scottish Government continues to fully participate in the Inquiry process.

In reaching their decision, Scottish Ministers determine applications made under Sections 36 and 37 of the Electricity Act 1989 in accordance with legislative requirements and relevant policy. Potential impacts on communities are important considerations in the decision-making process and the decision whether to grant consent is taken only after careful consideration of environmental information, consultee responses and public representations.

Scottish Ministers and their officials take great care to comply with all relevant obligations in the administration and determination of applications for energy consents.

As answered in the response to S6W-42239 on 9 December 2025, applications made under sections 36 or 37 of the Electricity Act 1989 do not legally require a Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment, which is the principal method to ensure compliance with United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child requirements.

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.

Due to the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the privacy policy agreed by applicants to the LEZ Support Fund, we are unable to disclose personal details of the funds recipients.

However, I can advise that in the Aberdeen area 210 households received grants with a total value of £551,427, 73 microbusinesses in the area received a further £156,500 for the disposal of a non-compliant vehicle and 2 microbusinesses received grants totalling £14,066 to retrofit vehicles to meet LEZ standards.

In the Dundee area 261 households received grants with a total value of £646,293, 49 microbusinesses in the area received a total of £107,500 for the disposal of a non-compliant vehicle and 1 microbusiness received a grant of £7,033 to retrofit a vehicle to meet LEZ standards.

In the Edinburgh area 847 households received grants with a total value of £2,203,593, 443 microbusinesses in the area received a total of £1,023,631 for the disposal of a non-compliant vehicle and 146 microbusinesses received grants totalling £1,118,852 to retrofit vehicles to meet LEZ standards.

In the Glasgow area 2241 households received grants with a total value of £5,734,691, 762 microbusinesses in the area received a further £1,723,350 for the disposal of a non-compliant vehicle and 415 microbusinesses received grants totalling £3,345,089 to retrofit vehicles to meet LEZ standards.

To date, capital funding through the Just Transition Fund has been awarded through competitive processes, including open bidding rounds in 2022 and 2025. We have actively engaged with regional stakeholders, including Moray Council and local partners, throughout these bidding rounds.

The Scottish Government is investing £32.5m into Moray through the 10-year Moray Growth Deal. We welcome the council’s recent successful bid for an additional £40k from the Just Transition Fund to deliver a Strategic Outline Case for a refocussed skills and innovation project under the Moray Growth Deal.

The following table provides a breakdown of the local authority areas that Just Transition Fund projects are located in – including projects from Financial Years 2022-23 to 2025-26. Some of the projects further distribute the funding to project partners, and where this is the case, this is indicated in the table:

The JTF has funded projects based on competitive bidding rounds, focused on delivering jobs and growth for the whole region. As part of the assessment process, we examine each bid against the criteria for the scheme. The full criteria for the competitive rounds of the Just Transition Fund have been published on the Scottish Government website. They are available to view at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/just-transition-fund/pages/overview/

We have funded work on two coordinated projects within the region – our funding of the Moray Net Zero Bottlenecks project has led to the development of a separate funded project to develop a Strategic Outline Case for the proposed Moray Engineering and Energy Innovation Centre.

A breakdown of funding provided to local authorities from the Just Transition Fund is given in the following table. This provides details of each project that has been awarded funding:

The JTF is primarily a capital fund, and to date we have run capital funding rounds in 2022 and 2025. We do have a smaller resource budget, and we have made much of this available to the Just Transition Participatory Budgeting fund, as detailed in the following table . In year two of this scheme, an additional capacity building fund of £100k revenue was split between the three areas. In addition, we have also provided £324,192 resource funding for capacity support to North East Scotland Climate Action Network (NESCAN) Hub between 2022 – 2025 to fund staff resource costs to support delivery of the Just Transition Communities Project. We have also provided up to £40,000 to Moray Council to develop a Strategic Outline Case for the proposed Moray Engineering and Energy Innovation Centre in 2025-26.