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Transport Scotland has recently attended a meeting with Glasgow City Council on 26 May to discuss the maintenance and financing of the repairs for the Clyde Tunnel. At this meeting, the structural integrity and planned strengthening works to the A739 Shieldhall overpass were discussed. My officials are willing to continue to engage with the Council on this matter in order to aid them in trying to find a solution, however maintenance of the local road network is the responsibility of local authorities.

The vast majority of funding to local authorities from the Scottish Government is provided via a block grant and we do not stipulate how local authorities should utilise their individual allocations. It is therefore the responsibility of each local authority to manage their own budget and to allocate the financial resources available to them on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

Glasgow City Council will receive a total funding package of almost £1.5 billion in 2021-22 to support local services, which includes an extra £29.8 million to support vital day to day services, equivalent to an increase of 2.2 per cent compared to 2020-21.

To date, the council has been allocated an additional £221.7 million to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, through the local government settlement - over and above their regular grant payments.

Housing to 2040 is Scotland’s first ever long-term national housing strategy and makes clear our ambition to deliver 100,000 affordable homes by
‎ 2031-32, 70% of which will be for social rent.

Local authorities have a statutory function to assess local housing requirements and to set out in their Local Housing Strategy (LHS) how this will be met.

Priorities and outcomes identified in the LHS inform local authority Strategic Housing Investment Plans (SHIPs) which are prepared annually and which set out affordable housing investment priorities over a five year period. These are expected to be publicly available.

On 2 July 2021 Scottish Government officials met with two representatives of the Society of Independent Brewers to discuss Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS). We will consider their views alongside the findings of the Gateway Review into DRS.

The seafarers on both MV Helliar and MV Hildasay have worked their usual 6 week on/6 week off rotation since March 2020.

The Scottish Government accepts in full the Air Quality Expert Group's (AQEG) conclusions and recommendations in this report. The AQEG report concludes that the most effective approaches for reducing NEE are to reduce the overall volume of traffic, lower speeds on trunk roads and motorways, and promote driving behaviours which reduce braking and high speed cornering.

The Government's new air quality strategy 'Cleaner Air for Scotland 2 - Towards a Better Place for Everyone', which was published on 15 July 2021, sets out how we intend to address non-exhaust emissions (NEE) from road traffic. Actions include exploring opportunities across traffic management, behaviours and legislation/standards to reduce NEE, and contributing to research into developing a consistent method for measuring NEE.

Other actions in the new air quality strategy, which links closely to the National Transport Strategy, for example further investment in and promotion of active travel and reducing motor vehicle kilometres by 20% by 2030, will also contribute to NEE reductions.

Keep Scotland Beautiful has delivered a range of initiatives on the Scottish Government's behalf and has been allocated the following funding since 2016 to enable it to do so:

2016-17 £11,147,463

2017-18 £11,152,455

2018-19 £11,131,472

2019-20 £8,642,939

2020-21 £10,054,598

To date £1,555,145 has been awarded to KSB for initiatives to be delivered in this financial year

The Housing First Pathfinder programme started in August 2018 across six local authority areas with Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire working in partnership. Up until the 30 June 2021, a total of 531 people have received Housing First support through the pathfinder programme, which has been funded by the Scottish Government, The Merchants House of Glasgow and Social Bite. The following table provides a breakdown of tenancies commenced and the number of tenancies sustained across each local authority area:

One of the three overarching objectives within Scotland’s Forestry Strategy 2019-29 is to Increase the contribution of forests and woodlands to Scotland’s sustainable and inclusive economic growth , with Improving efficiency and productivity, and developing markets identified as one of the six priority areas for action.

Scotland’s Forestry Strategy Implementation Plan 2022-22 includes a commitment to: Support the Scottish Forest and Timber Technologies Industry Leadership Group to deliver its strategy “Roots for Further Growthand increase the sector’s contribution to inclusive economic growth ; and a further commitment to: Work with construction industry professionals and others to identify opportunities to increase the use of wood products in construction .

As part of the current Programme for Government, we are committed to increasing the annual volume of Scottish timber going into construction from 2.2 million cubic meters in 2018 to 2.6 million cubic meters by 2022. We are working in partnership with the forestry sector to deliver this target by supporting research into timber engineering, increasing the understanding of timber as a building material among architects and supporting efforts to increase demand for home grown wood products through the Wood for Good initiative.

The following data was collected via energy performance certificates (EPCs) submitted for all new build completions in Scotland since 2016. This indicative data is based on analysis of new build EPC records lodged on the EPC register between Q1 2016 and Q4 2020. A total of 92,900 EPC records were analysed.

Numbers in the tables have been rounded to the nearest ten. This is the best currently available data:

As of 20 July 2021, the First Minister had 3 meetings arranged in the run up to COP26 (31 October 2021), and the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport had 15 meetings planned. It is not currently possible to specify the exact number of meetings all ministers have arranged to take place in the lead up to and during the course of COP26. This is because the number of meetings is continuously rising, as an increasing volume of requests for ministerial involvement are received. Scottish Ministers are committed to maximising the opportunities of COP26, before, during and after the conference.