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Scottish Enterprise are continuing to make significant progress to triage and identify credible options to secure investment in Grangemouth’s future. Ministers are receiving regular updates from the Investor Taskforce and the Scottish Government will report on this work in due course.

Transport Scotland, through its four Trunk Road Operating Companies and five Design Build Finance Operate (DBFO) Concessionaires, is responsible for the management and maintenance of the strategic trunk road network, including motorways. The repair of potholes on all other roads is the responsibility of the local authorities.

Category 1 potholes are defined within the term maintenance contract as those that present, or could present, an immediate hazard to trunk road users. Operating Companies are required to carry out temporary repairs by 6am the following morning and permanent repairs within 28 days. For DBFO concessionaires, road surface Category 1 requirements generally require temporary repairs within 24 hours and permanent repairs also within 28 days. Category 2 defects are those with a lesser severity, which do not warrant a safety-led immediate response. These are considered for maintenance along with information from the annual condition assessments to determine future maintenance schemes within the three-year maintenance programme.

The tables below list the number of Category 1 and Category 2 potholes that were either recorded or repaired in each of the full years between 2021-22 and 2024-25. The data is not available broken down by Local Authority.

The Scottish Government is supporting local authorities to address vacant retail spaces in our high streets and town centres through a range of measures and we remain committed to supporting the broader retail sector where possible, using the levers available to us.

This is why Scotland has a competitive non-domestic rates regime, with the Basic Property Rate frozen for 2025-26 and £733 million in reliefs. Additionally, we are supporting the use or repurposing of vacant units through the Fresh Start Relief and Business Growth Accelerator Relief to support the reuse and improvement of long term empty properties. Further significant funding support is available through programmes such as the Place Based Investment Programme and Regeneration Capital Grant Fund is helping deliver community led regeneration. The Scottish Government’s National Planning Framework 4 also promotes the reuse of empty buildings and town centre living to boost local economic activity.

Work is on-going to align the governance and delivery of thrombectomy with similar national programmes. This alignment with wider health service planning aims to support oversight of thrombectomy planning and encourage greater collaboration between NHS Boards in delivering this vital service.

Whilst the Scottish Government cannot currently provide a timeline for expanding the service, Scottish Government officials and NHS planners have been asked to work at pace on developing a plan for the next steps for service expansion.

The Scottish Government remains committed to implementing a high quality, clinically safe and equitable thrombectomy service.

We have invested over £51 million to date on expanding access to thrombectomy and remain committed to further expanding the service, ensuring access is as equitable as possible.

In April 2025, the Centre of Expertise for Waters published research into the feasibility of wastewater monitoring for psychoactive substances in Scotland. The research publication is available here: https://www.crew.ac.uk/publications/review-psychoactive-substances-wastewater-monitoring-approaches-and-recommendations

While the research found that there were potential benefits of wastewater monitoring, and recommended piloting this in Scotland, there is further consideration required to understand how this would inform our future policy and enhance existing public health surveillance systems. The Scottish Government is working with Public Health Scotland to consider these issues as part of our wider work to extend our surveillance abilities.

The information requested on how many consultants have been appointed to NHS Scotland in each year since 2020 can be found on the TURAS NHS Education for Scotland workforce statistics site at:

NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence.

Since 2020, we have increased the Medical & Dental Consultant workforce by 10.9% (from 5,606.4 WTE as at March 2020 to 6,217.5 WTE as at March 2025).

The Scottish Government works with a stakeholder group to undertake annual reviews of the number of specialty training places (for resident doctors) needed across all specialties in order to meet anticipated future service demand and consultant need.

In response to the recommendations from these reviews, the Scottish Government has funded the creation of hundreds of additional specialty training places in Scotland across multiple different specialties since 2014.

Ensuring the sustainability of NHS dental services is a priority for Scottish Government, which is why we introduced dental payment reform in November 2023 to make it more attractive for dentists to provide NHS services, by paying fees that better reflect the current market rates of providing dental services to patients. The 2025/26 Scottish Budget further reinforces our commitment to NHS dentistry, with an increase of almost 15% in funding for primary care dental services agreed. This takes total funding to over half a billion pounds for the first time and means that over the course of this Parliament, we will have increased investment in primary care dental services by 33%.

Scottish Government has also made provision in the 2025-26 budget for grant awards, such as the Scottish Dental Access Initiative (SDAI) grant, which pays out up to £100,000 for establishing, relocating or extending NHS dental practices in eligible areas; and the Recruitment and Retention allowance, which allows new trainee dentists to qualify for ‘golden hello’ payments of up to £37,500 in the first three years of practice.

The Scottish Government Urban Rural Classification will be updated following the release of the next Population Estimates for Settlements and Localities in Scotland publication by National Records of Scotland. This is currently planned to be released in 2028, based on the 2026 mid-year population estimates. A revised version of the Scottish Government Urban Rural Classification will then be produced using the new settlement population figures.

The Scottish Government Urban Rural Classification 2022, based on the 2022 Census settlement population figures, was published in December 2024:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-government-urban-rural-classification-2022/

Scotland’s approach to supporting the integration of refugees and people seeking asylum within our communities is set out in the New Scots refugee integration strategy. The strategy is led jointly by the Scottish Government, COSLA (representing Scottish local authorities) and Scottish Refugee Council.

In 2025-2026 the Scottish Government is providing £3.4m funding to local authorities from the Refugees, Resettlement and Asylum Division budget. This funding is intended to support the integration of people displaced from Ukraine and the full closure of welcome accommodation except to new arrivals in 2025-26.

In addition to this direct funding, wider support is provided to local authorities across Scotland through various routes, including:

• Funding to support COSLA as a joint partner in delivering the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy, and progressing New Scots Delivery Plan actions.
• Funding for the Refugee Support Service (RSS), delivered by Scottish Refugee Council. The RSS supports refugees and people seeking asylum to settle into communities across Scotland through providing advice, information and resources, improving access to support services and facilitating social connections.
• Funding for British Red Cross to deliver a project aimed at increasing the support available to people who arrive in Scotland under Family Reunion visas. This project includes capacity building work to support local authorities to understand family reunion processes and empower them to support people who have recently arrived under family reunion routes.