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The Scottish Government is acutely aware that many women are experiencing long waits for gynaecological appointments and procedures, including colposcopy, and this is not good enough.

As the first country in the UK to publish a Women’s Health Plan we are committed to reducing health inequalities and improving health outcomes for women and girls. Timely access to gynaecology services must be addressed and the Scottish Government is committed to including gynaecology as a priority in the next phase of the Plan.

As a starting point, the Government has allocated over £8.8 million to Health Boards to target long waits for gynaecology and the Scottish Government expects this to deliver significant improvements to the backlog in the coming year through waiting list initiatives and recruitment.

The investment is part of the £200 million announced as part of the Programme for Government to build capacity, tackle delayed discharge and improve patient flow through hospitals.

In addition to the £106 million targeted investment announced in May 2025 to address at the longest waits, the Government has now committed a further £4 million to deliver extra dermatology activity, bringing total additional funding for this year to over £110 million.

The additional dermatology funding was allocated to the three NHS Boards with the largest volumes of long waits and is broken down as follows:

The Scottish Government has allocated over £2.5 million to NHS Lothian for dermatology services and is currently working with the Board to develop a plan to support further reductions to the waiting list backlog.

The activity supported by the additional £2.5 million investment will require a lead-in period for full implementation; therefore, it is too early to observe a noticeable difference to waiting times at this stage.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of ensuring equitable access to electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure as we transition to a net zero transport system. Approximately 40% of households in Scotland do not have access to off-street parking, and we are committed to supporting innovative solutions such as cross-pavement charging to address this challenge.

The installation of cross pavement charging is complex, covering road works permissions, neighbourhood relations, pedestrian safety and ongoing maintenance, liabilities and responsibilities for residents and local authorities. This is why we are working closely with the Scottish Collaboration of Transport Specialists (SCOTS) – a strategic collaborative body representing Scotland’s 32 local authorities and seven regional transport partnerships - to develop Scottish specific guidance for local authorities. The draft guidance will be issued to stakeholders for consultation in autumn 2025.

This summer Scottish Ministers will also launch a new ‘cross pavement charging’ pilot scheme that will offer financial support to eligible residents without off-street parking in participating local authority areas. In order to ensure a just transition, it is critical that as many households as possible can access lower-cost home charging. The learning from the pilot scheme will complement the work with SCOTS, to demonstrate safe and legal ways of rolling out cross-pavement charging infrastructure across all of Scotland’s local authorities. More information will be made available on the Energy Savings Trust website later this month.

Ensuring a fair and just transition to sustainable transport is central the Scottish Government’s net zero ambitions; this is reflected in Scottish Ministers’ visionfor the future of public EV charging and the accompanying Draft Implementation Plan, which set out a clear direction for the future of EV infrastructure in Scotland. Through our £30 million EV Infrastructure Fund, we are also continuing to support local authorities to work in partnership with the private sector to expand public EV charging across Scotland.

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The development of a Scottish Government Mobile App is a Digital Public Services commitment within the Government's Public Service Reform Strategy published in June 2025.

One or two services will be available via the proposed App as an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) before 1 April 2026.

The Scottish Government uses existing, publicly available information collated by planning authorities in Housing Land Audits (HLA) that monitor past housing completions and future programming of new homes.

In January 2025, the Scottish Government updated guidance to support preparation of HLAs and improve consistency in data collection. The HLA guidance was published alongside a template spreadsheet, which supports inclusion of information on site planning status and capacity.

The Scottish Government has a subscription to Glenigan, which is also used to inform policy development as appropriate.

The number of flaring events and their cumulative duration over the last three calendar years is shown in the following table

The Scottish Government does not collect any data on the number of homes granted planning permission outside of any statistics that are published, reflecting an open and transparent approach.

Planning authorities monitor information on past housing completions and future programming of new homes through the Housing Land Audit (HLA) process. The Scottish Government uses this existing, publicly available information for the number of homes granted planning permission.

The Scottish Government does hold a licence for the use of Glenigan’s data platform, which is used as supplementary information alongside authority Housing Land Audits and the Scottish Government PAS (Planning Application Statistics).

To the best of our knowledge the Scottish Government does not hold a licence for the use of the BoCreate data collection system.

In January 2025, the Scottish Government provided updated guidance to support preparation of Housing Land Audits (HLAs). HLAs, prepared by planning authorities, monitor information on past housing completions and future programming of new homes.

The HLA guidance includes a template spreadsheet to support consistent implementation. The template includes:

• The planning status: no consent, pre- application, pending decision, refused, under appeal, consented.
• The type of approval issued (to mitigate the risk of double counting): planning permission (PP), planning permission in principle (PPiP), and approval of matters specified in conditions (AMSC).
• Construction status and when commenced.
• Site capacity: total capacity in the local development plan updated to total capacity of the planning permission when available, and then the remaining capacity of sites when under construction.

The HLA should include both completions and programming information for small sites. For consistency, the guidance considers developments of 1-3 homes to be small sites. Given the nature of housing delivery in island and some rural areas, where there is likely to be a significant number of small sites, flexibility in the approach to small sites for the HLA may be appropriate, as determined by the planning authority.

The guidance outlines flexibility for the planning authority to undertake additional data checking, to remove the double counting of replacement houses, to improve robustness of information and corroborate completion calculations.