Seòmar agus comataidhean

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-39481 on 7 August 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The Scottish Government aims to raise around £30 million per annum from the Scottish Building Safety Levy. This is in proportion to the revenue that the equivalent UK Government Levy for England is intended to generate and in line with the Barnett consequentials that the Scottish Government might have received had the UK Government Levy been extended UK-wide.

The Bill Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill includes provision for a regular review of the Levy, which will be an opportunity to consider the revenue target in light of the prevailing housing market and wider economic conditions, as well as the emerging position on the scale and profile of spending on cladding remediation work.

The Bill also sets out that proceeds from the Levy must be used for the purposes of improving the safety of persons in or about buildings in Scotland. This is intended to mirror, as closely as possible, the provisions for the use of funds for the UK Government’s Building Safety Levy, as set out in the Building Safety Act 2022 and reflected in the Scotland Act 1998 (Specification of Devolved Tax) (Building Safety) Order 2024 which devolved the powers necessary to introduce legislation for a devolved Levy.

NHS 24 is working to ensure calls to its 111 service are answered quickly and safely. Some calls may go unanswered due to callers disengaging after automated messaging, being signposted to other services, or opting for a callback during peak times.

While data on abandoned calls is collected, the specific reasons for call termination are not identifiable.

The Scottish Government continues to support NHS 24 in reducing unanswered calls, including revising performance indicators to better reflect demand and improve service delivery.

Over the past two financial years, NHS 24 has received £28.3 million in additional funding, enabling the recruitment of 22 extra clinicians and achieving its highest-ever treatment capacity.

The overall staffing of planning services is a matter for local authorities and it is up to them to decide how their resources are allocated based on their priorities. The Scottish Government does not dictate to authorities how much money should be allocated to planning services.

We have taken action to improve the financial resources available to planning authorities, introducing an annual inflation linked increase to planning fees with the fees increasing in line with inflation in December 2024 and most recently in June 2025, extended discretionary charging and introduced fees for appealing planning decisions to local review bodies and Scottish Ministers.

The National Planning Hub offers support to planning authorities when requested, including capacity and access to expertise. A priority area for the Hub’s assistance is on housing, to support authorities address the Housing Emergency.

Recognising the pressures in planning authorities, the planning actions in the Housing Emergency Action Plan are limited in their demands on them. They will be undertaken by Scottish Government and the National Planning Improvement Champion to support improvements to the planning system.

To support longer-term growth of the planning profession and reversing the decline in professional planners working in public authorities, we have recently appointed 17 new future planners to support their development and are providing 30 bursaries for post-graduate planning this year.

We have taken action to improve the financial resources available to planning authorities, introducing an annual inflation linked increase to planning fees with those changes increasing fees in line with inflation in December 2024 and most recently in June 2025. We have extended the range of services for which an authority can introduce charges, to include the preparation of processing agreements and the preparation and delivery of Masterplan Consent Areas. In June 2025 we also introduced fees for appealing planning decisions to Local Review Bodies and Scottish Ministers, ensuring that these services can meet customers’ expectations.

In addition, the National Planning Hub is providing targeted support to planning authorities, including capacity and access to expertise, to help them to determine applications for housing projects and to progress their local development plans.

Every planning application must be determined on its own merits. When applying planning judgement all relevant policies and material considerations need to be weighed, following the requirements set by section 25 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act, 1997. As such, it would not be appropriate to set a target number for approval of individual applications. Nevertheless, the planning application approval rate has stayed consistently high for a number of years, with over 92% of applications approved in 2023-24.

A range of planning improvements have and are being progressed to support the housing emergency, including those in the Planning and the Housing Emergency Delivery Plan (November 2024), the Programme for Government (May 2025) and Housing Emergency Action Plan (September 2025). These build on the substantial reforms to legislation and national policy in recent years.

For example, and as committed in the Housing Emergency Action Plan, the Scottish Government issued a notification direction on 2 September to enable close monitoring of the implementation of national planning policy on housing, where a planning application is for 10 or more proposed new homes on land not allocated for housing. This activity will enable Ministerial intervention where required and inform whether further policy action is required.

We regularly engage with stakeholders, including planning authorities and industry representatives to monitor feedback on the impact of changes made through planning reforms.

I most recently met with the Scottish Trades Union Congress, and relevant member trade union representatives, to discuss a range of matters relating to the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill and skills reform programme on 24 July 2025.

The Education, Children and Young People Committee took evidence from trade union representatives on the Bill on 21 May 2025. The Scottish Government will carefully consider the Stage 1 report from the Committee and points made in the Stage 1 debate, as well as the views of unions and other stakeholders, before considering what, if any, amendments to lodge for consideration by the Committee or the Parliament.

The Minister, alongside the public bodies impacted by the changes set out in the Bill, remain committed to continued and meaningful engagement with trade unions as the Bill progresses.

Our position is unchanged on waiting times – by March 2026 no one will wait more than 12 months for a new outpatient appointment or inpatient/daycase treatment.

We are investing more than £110 million this year to cut waits, and we expect to see the full impact of our targeted funding in the coming months. This targeted funding is expected to deliver more than 213,000 additional procedures and appointments this year.

Our plan is clearly working with a record number of hip and knee operations last year and the highest level of operations performed in July since February 2020.

Specific data on school-based family income advisors, is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government has invested £1.75 billion in the Scottish Attainment Challenge over the past decade, including over £1billion in Pupil Equity Funding, empowering headteachers to take the best approaches that suit the needs of their pupils and families. This funding is supporting significant numbers of additional staff, like family income advisors, to help close the poverty-related attainment gap.

Across the country we continue to trust and empower Scotland's headteachers to use this extra funding to support their pupils - whether through extra support staff, family link workers or family income advisors. As highlighted in the pupil_equity_funding_report_2025_.pdf, published in May 2025, we know that the majority of the funding supports staff with roles specifically designed to help children and young people impacted by poverty. This includes up to 3,000 additional staff - almost 700 of whom are teachers - with the remainder in roles such as family link workers, pupil support assistants, education psychologists, speech and language therapists and family income advisors.

The Scottish Government also continues to support free income maximisation, welfare and debt advice services with £16.9 million invested in 2025-26, a significant increase on the £12.3 million invested in 2022-23, helping support families get the support they are entitled to.

Work is underway to support health boards to share learning from SAERs locally and nationally, to make them more accessible to healthcare professionals. In February this year Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) published an updated version of A national framework for reviewing and learning from adverse events in NHS Scotland: February 2025 – Healthcare Improvement Scotland. The revised framework includes an updated shareable learning template, which NHS Health Boards should complete following a Significant Adverse Event Review (SAER). These summaries, which will support local and national learning, will be published on an online community of practice for NHS staff which HIS will launch soon. It is the responsibility of health boards to share learning within their organisations and to ensure that relevant staff groups are aware of changes to policies and processes as a result of learning and improvement actions.