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The Scottish Government is not a signatory to Openreach’s Fibre Community Partnership programme. The Fibre Community Partnership is a commercial offering, and has no direct link to the £384 million R100 North contract. As a registered supplier for the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme, Openreach could choose to use the programme to deliver a solution for a community through aggregation of vouchers. However, I understand that they have currently paused registrations for the programme as a result of high demand.

Emissions for incineration with energy recovery are not separately reported in Scottish Greenhouse Gas Statistics: 1990 – 2019 . These emissions are included under “Power stations” in the Greenhouse Gas Dataset, which is published as part of the statistics.

Resilience of the Energy Sector is reserved and therefore the responsibility of the UK Government. Following the severe disruption caused by recent storms across Scotland the Scottish Government has fed in to independent reviews undertaken by BEIS and Ofgem.

Draft National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) is clear that new, and alterations to existing buildings, infrastructure and spaces should be designed to be adaptable to future impacts of climate change. The draft acknowledges risks from climate change including those from extreme weather. Furthermore it supports in principle development proposals for enabling works for transmission and distribution infrastructure and energy storage including battery storage.

The draft NPF4 is currently subject to Scottish Parliamentary scrutiny, alongside a public consultation, prior to a finalised version being presented for Scottish Parliament approval. We are working towards laying a final version of NPF4 in the Parliament for approval this summer, following which it will be adopted by the Scottish Ministers.

Resilience of the Electricity Sector is reserved and therefore the responsibility of the UK Government.

Both BEIS and Ofgem have published their post-incident reviews/interim reports on Storm Arwen. The UK Government interim report on Storm Arwen review considers the issue of underground cables on p.10 and Ofgems Review into the networks’ response to Storm Arwen – Interim Report on page 16.

The Scottish Government contributed to both these reviews and will carefully consider the findings to understand where improvements could be made. We will continue to track progress against these recommendations.

We will also continue to press the UK Government, industry and the regulator for assurance that increased resilience of the electricity networks in Scotland is a priority.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of children on foster home waiting lists.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-06655 on 14 March 2022. 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 .

These assessments will be undertaken as part of work on the Scottish Government's Islands Connectivity Plan (ICP). Community needs assessments establish the level of transport connectivity required by each island and remote mainland community within scope of ICP and will update assessments undertaken for the Ferries Plan 2013-2022. Market assessments consider whether the required level of transport connectivity can be provided without government intervention.

The exact timescales for these assessments is still to be determined. We aim to make significant progress with these assessments during 2022 and conclude any outstanding work during 2023. Priority is currently being given to assessments required to support the business cases for live vessel and port investment projects.

Transport Scotland has not yet invited tenders for work on any of these assessments. It is expected that the work will be undertaken utilising both internal staff resource and external consultancy.

Hybrid working is one of the ongoing behaviours that will help to manage COVID-19 effectively for the long term and may have benefits that go beyond the need to control the virus. We will work with employer and business organisations and trade unions to understand the economic impacts, exploring the opportunities and challenges of hybrid working as evidence and practice develops.

As set out in the recently published Strategic Framework, the Scottish Government encourages employers to engage with employees to consider hybrid working models where feasible and appropriate. However we recognise that employers are best placed to understand how their operations work most effectively and their employees’ and requests for flexible working, based on consultation with staff and unions. We trust organisations to make balanced and risk-assessed decisions in line with their business practices.

We recognise the many challenges faced by businesses throughout the pandemic and have provided businesses with £4.5bn of support since the start of the pandemic. In December we announced a £375m support package for firms impacted by the necessary measures introduced to control the spread of Omicron. We have also confirmed an £80m Covid Economic Recovery Fund for local authorities to support local economies and cities recover from the pandemic.

City centres have been heavily impacted and that is why the Scottish Government has convened a City Centre Recovery Task Force, run in partnership with our seven cities, through the Scottish Cities Alliance. It is working to identify innovative actions aimed at assisting city centres through their economic recovery, and will deliver its report this spring. We have allocated £6 million to the City Centre Recovery Fund this year to deliver the priorities of the Task Force and encourage people to return and enjoy all that our city centres offer. We are also working collaboratively with COSLA and partners on ways to support our town centres and prepare a response to the 2021 independent review of the Town Centre Action Plan and its recommendations with a shared action plan by spring 2022.

The Fair Fares Review is part of a broad package of work being undertaken to ensure that there is a viable and sustainable transport system for the future. As part of this work we are taking forward activities to facilitate a safe and confident return to public transport as more people begin to travel between their home and their place of work, and as demand for leisure travel also increases.

The Fair Fares Review is being taken to forward to address a range of issues for public transport alongside our activities to support Covid Recovery. The recommendations and findings of the Fair Fares Review will be provided as they emerge on an ongoing basis throughout the review.

The CEO of Ferguson Marine is preparing an update, for the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, on the delivery timetable and budget for vessels 801 and 802 which will be submitted before the end of March 2022.