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The enhancement delivery plan document is a Network Rail document, not a Transport Scotland document. It is for Network Rail to comment on the status of its Enhancement Delivery Plan milestones.

Transport Scotland actively monitors progress across Network Rail’s Enhancement portfolio, including the Aberdeen – Central Belt 2026 enhancement project.

Earlier this year, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) wrote to the Scottish Government setting out a series of recommendations for the reform on EPCs, noting that the current energy efficiency rating on EPCs is a measure of energy costs, not energy efficiency. Homes with lower EPC ratings are more likely to use expensive heating fuels, and this is often the case for off-gas grid properties. So, they can be relatively well insulated but still receive a low EPC rating. In addition, if fuel costs change in the underlying methodology used to generate EPCs, the energy efficiency rating for a property could change.

In response to this advice from the CCC, the Scottish Government published a consultation on EPC reform on 25 July 2023. Our proposals include the addition of a new metric of fabric efficiency - how well the building retains heat. This proposed metric will be independent of the heating fuel used in a property. This metric, alongside the existing cost based metric and information on the heating source will provide a more a holistic reflection of a dwelling’s energy performance.

There is no proposal within our EPC Reform consultation to penalise any property. Rather, our proposals for reform should ensure that current and prospective building owners and tenants have better information on the energy performance and emissions of their building and how this could be improved.

SW1 was a draft plan option that was considered in the draft Sectoral Marine Plan for Offshore Wind Energy (SMP-OWE) and formed part of the consultation in 2019 and 2020. The option was removed before adoption of the final SMP-OWE.

The INTOG planning process, which considered the output of the adopted SMP-OWE, excluded the Solway Firth for the purpose of this plan. As the SMP-OWE review and INTOG planning processes have been combined to provide a full assessment of offshore wind across Scotland and consideration of cumulative and in-combination impact, that exclusion is still relevant.

The SMP-OWE sets out the work that would need to be carried out that would allow Scottish Ministers to reconsider the option.

Financial Transactions (FTs) are allocated to Scottish Government (SG) portfolios in the annual budget process. The Scottish Government centrally monitors the flow of FTs and records the end of year value. The financial information provided is for FTs that fall within the SG’s accounting boundary and are reported within the SG Consolidated Accounts. The loan values are the net book value, after consideration of any impairment of changes to fair value through multi-year discounted cashflow models or from consideration of the impact of housing prices on the housing equity based loans. All arms-length bodies outside the SG accounting boundary will be responsible for their own reporting.

In total 63 submissions have been closed – 36 were closed during the 2022-23 FY and 27 have been closed during the 2023-24 FY so far. Of those, 45 have been deemed “unsuccessful”; 27 in the 2022-23 FY and 18 in the 2023-24 FY so far.

For the purposes of Scotland Innovates the following defined closure reasons have been considered “unsuccessful”:

The Task Force has been meeting during 2023, most recently in August, to progress this work. Minutes of the Ministerial meetings are published on the Transport Scotland website.

Scottish Government and Orkney Islands Council (OIC) officials have also met regularly to support OIC’s consideration of options for the long term renewal of the Orkney internal ferry fleet. OIC is currently preparing an updated business case to inform future budget discussions.

Working with Transport Scotland, Scottish Futures Trust published a market insights report looking at electric vehicle (EV) tariffs on its website in November 2022. This report highlights significant opportunities to harness private sector investment to support the continued development of Scotland’s EV charging network.

The pace and scale of investment in the public network will increase over the coming years; and our Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund aims to leverage £60 million of public and private investment to increase the size of the network to 6,000 charge points by 2026.

Decisions on where to locate their premises is an operational matter for National Museums Scotland, the National Galleries of Scotland and their Boards of Trustees.

Both collections are committed to the important work that they do with local communities across Scotland, including in Glasgow and wider region. National Galleries of Scotland’s and National Museums Scotland’s connection with Glasgow ranges from the delivery of schools programmes, touring exhibitions, loans and acquisitions, professional skills development opportunities, and research.

Further to my response on 5 July 2023 I can confirm that a further two local authorities have now completed and submitted their road assessments.

Six local authorities are still assessing their networks and Transport Scotland officials remain in contact with each to ensure a completed assessment of their network is received.

The Task Force has been meeting during 2023, most recently in August, to progress this work. Minutes of the Ministerial meetings are published on the Transport Scotland website.

Scottish Government and Orkney Islands Council (OIC) officials have also met regularly to support OIC’s consideration of options for the long term renewal of the Orkney internal ferry fleet. OIC is currently preparing an updated business case to inform future budget discussions.

It is envisaged that the Task Force will continue to meet beyond September 2023 to support of OIC’s work on this important matter.