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I continue to regularly discuss the Properties in Care, and their management, with Historic Environment Scotland. I have held no discussions about the permanent closure of sites.

No such payments have been made since the establishment of Historic Environment Scotland in 2015. Scottish Government pay policy for public bodies has not permitted performance-related payments for Chief Executives or for staff at director/executive level over this period.

The statistics recently released show that last year Scotland created around 63% of all new woodland within the UK. Scotland has by far the most ambitious woodland creation targets in the UK and despite the challenges of Brexit, Covid and winter storms, landowners have created around 51,000 hectares of new woodland in the past five years or around 102 million trees.

To help meet future woodland creation targets the Scottish Government announced an action plan in June designed to speed up the woodland creation application process and encourage more landowners to get trees in the ground.

A Scottish Forestry Summit, with industry leaders and land management bodies, will be held later in the year to secure agreement on getting planting levels back on track.

As part of the package of new measures, Scottish Forestry will invest £1 million into training Scottish Forestry staff over the next two years to speed up the woodland creation application process. It will work closely with industry bodies and groups so that the training on developing and implementing woodland creation projects is expanded.

Scottish Forestry will also increase the level of support for smaller scale woodland projects, to help counter recent inflationary pressures and implement technical improvements and process enhancements to speed up applications.

As committed to in the National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care, we undertook a data collection exercise to inform future decisions about workforce investment in 2022. This has informed actions in the new Cancer Action Plan for Scotland 2023-2026 including establishing and delivering the Oncology Transformation Programme. It also includes and action to ‘Complete a workforce review of key professions in cancer services, including modelling, to inform recruitment, training and allocation’.

The Scottish Shape of Training Transition Group (SSoTTG) is currently undertaking its annual review of medical training numbers and will be making recommendations to Scottish Minsters later this year for expansion taking place in 2024.

The CHFS3 Project Team is a recently formed team which sits alongside the Ferries Unit within the recently restructured Ferries Directorate at Transport Scotland. Staffing for the CHFS3 Project Team was formalised in April 2023.

(a) The team consists of permanent staff members tasked with developing and procuring the next CHFS contract.

(b) The CHFS3 Project Team currently consists of 11 FTE members, with 2 FTE posts still to be recruited.

(c) Staffing costs for the team are included within the wider staffing budget of Transport Scotland and are not identified separately.

Decarbonisation of Fife rail services was not planned to complete by 2024. Development work for future electrification in Fife is currently underway. Some advance work is being carried out between Haymarket to Dalmeny to facilitate the future electrification of Fife.

The timescale for decarbonisation of the Fife Circle route will be considered through the Final Business Case submission of the project and as part of the Rail Services Decarbonisation Action Plan refresh scheduled for later in 2023.

The Scottish Government has authorised the investment of c.£30m for a new feeder station at Thornton in Fife. This will provide power to the planned electrification. This feeder station is scheduled to be operational in 2026.

Transport Scotland publishes the results of all regulated procurements through contract award notices on the Public Contracts Scotland website. The call-off contract awarded to Turner and Townsend for work associated with the provision of the Clyde and Hebrides ferry services, was awarded under the Scotland Excel, Engineering and Technical Consultancy Framework, Lot 9, Project and Commercial Management. This can be viewed via the Scotland Excel website through the contract register, ref 0820.

Questions regarding day-to-day operational matters of Historic Environment Scotland, including how much it spends on promoting its sites, are best answered directly by Historic Environment Scotland.

I have asked Historic Environment Scotland to respond directly to the member with a reply to his question in writing.

Questions regarding day-to-day operational matters of Historic Environment Scotland, including how much it spends on advertising its sites, are best answered directly by Historic Environment Scotland.

I have asked Historic Environment Scotland to respond directly to the member with a reply to his question in writing.

A total of £4,480,000 of public funding has been allocated so far by Transport Scotland through the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund. This is an allocation of £140,000 to each Scottish local authority to enable the development and delivery of public electric vehicle charge point strategies and infrastructure expansion plans. The development of strategies and infrastructure expansion plans will precede capital projects which are expected to commence in 2024, that will seek to draw in private investment from Charge Point Operators as part of the overall £60m funding of the programme.