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The Scottish Government is committed to supporting people living with dementia. We worked with a wide range of partners and people with lived experience, including those with dementia with Lewy bodies, to inform our new national strategy published last year. The first two year Delivery Plan (published February 2024) sets out the agreed deliverables and improvements, including improving access to a timely diagnosis for all dementias. We know that receiving a timely diagnosis helps people to access the support and services right for them and to plan for their future.

We are working with Public Health Scotland, local and academic partners to add to the data we collect and publish on diagnosis and post-diagnostic support as well as the quality of experience of dementia support and services.

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to review pathways for patients to help improve earlier diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB).The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring everyone living with dementia receives the person centred support and care they need, regardless of which form of dementia they have. Our Dementia Strategy highlights that each individual person's experience of their dementia will be different and care and support needs to reflect that.

The current diagnostic pathway of dementia with Lewy bodies is through an individual’s GP. Clinical guidance on diagnosing suspected dementia with Lewy bodies is contained in the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) which covers assessment, diagnosis, care and support for people with dementia and their care partners. The SIGN Guideline was developed by Healthcare Improvement Scotland and partners in 2023.

The Scottish Government has also established a cross-governmental; cross sectoral steering group to help shape the Scottish Government’s role in contributing to the research and development of greater understanding around dementia risk, earlier dementia identification, diagnosis, and treatment, including the trialling of new treatments which can slow the progression of some dementias.

Funding was allocated to the Scottish Government by the European Commission at the beginning of the programme in 2014 and is not allocated on a yearly basis.

Information is not held centrally on the number of abandoned vehicles reported to local authorities. Management information is available from Police Scotland on the number of police recorded incidents of abandoned vehicles. This is provided below, split by the local authority within which the incident occurred.

It should be noted that not all abandoned vehicles will relate to cars and an incident may relate to more than one abandoned vehicle. This information was consistently recorded across all police divisions from the calendar year of 2019 onwards and therefore the figures provided below relate to the period 01 January 2019 to 18 June 2024. As such the 2024 figures relate to only a partial year.

Recorded incidents of abandoned vehicles, 01 January 2019 to 18 June 2024.

Local authorities have a duty under the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 to manage and maintain local roads in their area and duties under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 to secure the expeditious, convenient and safe movement of traffic.

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.

In 2024-25, Glasgow City Council will receive over £1.6 billion to fund local services, which equates to an extra £74.9 million to support vital day to day services or an additional 4.9% compared to the 2023-24 budget.

Ultimately, it is for locally elected representatives to make local decisions on how best to deliver services to their local communities.

The development work delivered at Anniesland Station is led by Network Rail. Network Rail advises that painting of the adjacent bridge is not included in the scope for the current station accessibility improvements. Accessibility is a matter reserved to the UK Government.

I will be shortly providing Parliament with an update on the implementation of short-term let licensing, which will highlight the difficulties with the accuracy and completeness of different datasets about short-term let numbers. Prior to licensing there has not been a single robust data source about the number of short-term lets in Scotland and while we recently started publishing data on short term lets licensing applications, this is still provisional and partial data that is subject to upward revision in future releases. The Scottish Government therefore does not hold the information requested.

The Scottish Government continues to provide £16 million per year to ensure that all secondary schools have access to school counselling services.

Local authorities have confirmed that all secondary schools in Scotland have access to counselling services. All school pupils aged 10 and above have access to the service.

It is up to local authorities to decide how to deliver the service in their area to best suit the needs of their children and young people.

School counselling is just one of a range of services that schools and authorities have in place to support the mental health of children and young people.

In 2024-2025 we are making available £12.113 million for the provision of more social and affordable homes in the Scottish Borders Council area. We will invest almost £600 million in affordable homes across Scotland in 2024-2025 and will continue to work with partners – including in the Scottish Borders – to increase the delivery of more affordable homes, the majority of which will be for social rent, including supporting acquisitions of existing properties.

It is for individual local authorities to decide whether they wish to declare a Housing emergency and to outline their reasons for doing so. The Scottish Government has asked individual local authorities who have declared housing emergencies to share specific actions that they are taking in response.