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Since 2021 there have been two occasions where Accountable Officers for parts of the Scottish Administration have formally sought written authority (often referred to as ministerial direction). Both were regarding Fergusson Marine (Port Glasgow) and written authority was sought in relation to value for money.

The details of these, and all written authorities since devolution, are published on the Scottish Government website at https://www.gov.scot/collections/written-authorities-from-scottish-ministers/

The Scottish Government is responsible for setting the overall policy direction for neurodevelopmental services, and for working with and funding NHS Health Boards and local authorities to ensure they plan and deliver appropriate local services. It is for local NHS Boards and local authorities to decide how they implement these policies to ensure that their local population have the highest quality of care, support and treatment at the right time and in the right place.

Individual health boards are responsible for the management of their waiting lists. They are expected to ensure that their approaches to service delivery are consistent with national guidance and statutory frameworks, including the National Neurodevelopmental Specification and the Patient Rights (Scotland) Act.

The National Neurodevelopmental Specification sets out the standards for all children’s services to follow in delivering neurodevelopmental support to children and young people. Support should be provided on the basis of need, and at the earliest opportunity, through a multi-agency approach.

The National Neurodevelopmental Specification for Children and Young People sets out the seven standards for all children’s services to support children and young people with neurodevelopmental support needs, including NHS boards and local authorities.

The Specification takes a needs-based approach to providing neurodevelopmental support. It is underpinned by principles of GIRFEC and intended to be delivered by all children’s services partners through a multi-agency approach.

The National Neurodevelopmental Specification should be used by all children’s services, including health boards, local authorities and community partners through a whole system, multi-agency approach. It is vital that the support provided by these children’s services are based on the Getting it Right for Every Child approach.

The Scottish Government is working to support children’s services partners to implement the Specification in full and, in partnership with COSLA, has undertaken a review of implementation. This was informed by engagement with local authorities, health boards and a range of stakeholders – including representatives of parents and lived experience.

The review identified a number of key challenges in implementing the Specification and set out a number of actions to support progress. The Scottish Government and COSLA are working with the newly established Children and Young People’s Neurodevelopment Taskforce to take forward these actions, which will support local authorities and NHS Boards to implement the Specification.

The 2022 independent review of the role of incineration in Scotland states that in the short-term, incineration will have a role to play in managing our waste as we transition to a circular economy.

As we continue to increase our reuse and recycling rates, we will produce even less waste, however we will still need an appropriate way to manage our unavoidable and unrecyclable waste.

That’s why the Scottish Government’s Fourth National Planning Framework (NPF4) makes clear that development proposals for energy-from-waste facilities will not be supported, except under limited circumstances.

Emissions from energy from waste plants are strictly controlled under the Pollution Prevention and Control regulatory regime. Research shows that correctly operated modern energy from waste facilities should have minimal impact on overall local air quality.

While the Scottish Government holds some information in relation to the decommissioning of wind turbines it does not hold or collate an overall dataset for onshore and offshore turbines.

It may be helpful to know, according to the UK Government’s Renewable Energy Planning Database (REPD) there are no Scottish onshore or offshore wind sites in the database recorded as decommissioned since 2021. However, the caveat to this data is that the entire site needs to be decommissioned for the development status to change to ‘decommissioned’ in the database.

The requested information on how many working days have been lost in the NHS in the last five years due to staff stress and other mental health conditions is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government has no powers to hold corporations to account for the use of specific branding to target women to pay higher prices for basic goods. Consumer protection, including provisions to protect consumers from unfair trading practices, is wholly reserved to the UK Government and regulated by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

However, we believe that this practice is unacceptable and have raised the issue with the CMA.

The Renewable Energy Planning Database (REPD) records the progress of renewable electricity projects over 150kW as they move through the planning system. According to this data there are currently 4216 onshore wind turbines in active operation across Scotland.

Please note that there was a minimum installed capacity threshold for inclusion into the REPD of 1MW until 2021, at which point it was lowered to 150kW. This means that projects below 1MW that were going through the planning system before 2021 may not be represented in the REPD database.

The Scottish Government does not hold or collate data on inactive wind turbines.

Historic real terms cuts to our block grant from the UK Government have put pressure on our capital budget and the delay in the UK Government setting the Autumn budget is having a knock-on effect on our planning.

As a result of budget constraints, in December 2023, all NHS Boards were advised to pause development of all projects not already in construction.

We are currently working with all NHS Health Boards to develop a whole system NHS infrastructure plan to inform long-term investment priorities across Scotland – this includes consideration of National Treatment Centres.

NatureScot is leading on this work, and has set up a steering group including Scottish Forestry and Forestry and Land Scotland. This register will allow Scottish agencies to use a single means of condition assessment for these woodlands rather than the multiple competing methodologies previously used. Procurement is currently underway to appoint a technical officer to undertake the work of assembling all available data.