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The Scottish Government established the Psychiatry Recruitment and Retention Working Group as committed in the Mental Health Workforce Action Plan (November 2023) to address recruitment and retention challenges facing psychiatry in NHS Scotland.

The working group is actively considering the pipeline of trainee doctors as well as issues such as the use of locum staff and how we can encourage and support applications to permanent positions within NHS Health Boards. We also continue to invest heavily in our future consultant workforce and have created additional training places in psychiatry.

Representatives from the Royal College of Psychiatry in Scotland and the Senior Medical Managers in Psychiatry Group are critical partners in this work.

The working group is due to report to Ministers with recommendations in Spring 2025.

The Scottish Government remains committed to delivering the changes that are required for people with Learning Disabilities as detailed in the Coming Home report and subsequent implementation report in 2022.

We remain committed to delivery of the 10% and 1% spending targets, for mental health services and CAMHS respectively.

Latest data published by Public Health Scotland on 25 February 2025 shows total spend on mental health in Scotland has increased by £179.6 million to £1.486 billion in 2023-24. That is 9.03% of total net NHS expenditure, up from 8.53% in 2022-23. Spend on child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) has increased by nearly £19.4 million to over £134 million. This is 0.82% of total spend, up from 0.75% in 2022-23.

The latest data shows good progress is being made towards delivering the targets, however, as we all know, there are continued and unprecedented challenge to the public finances. That means that achieving the targets in practice will depend on the outcome of future budgets.

NHS Boards will allocate funding for local mental health services from the overall funds provided to them by the Scottish Government. Boards have responsibility for working with their partners to ensure local budget decisions deliver local and national priorities, including for mental health.

We will continue to closely monitor our progress towards both the 10% and 1% over the remainder of the Parliamentary term.

The Joint Working Group on Sources of Local Government Funding and Council Tax Reform continues to consider the analysis pertaining to all aspects of the Consultation on the Council Tax Treatment of Second and long-term Empty Homes, and whether there could be further increases to the Council Tax premium, which would require primary legislation. I will keep Parliament updated on those considerations.

The Group also intends to review the data collected on second and & long term empty homes. The Council Tax premium on second homes was introduced on 1 April 2024, and therefore has only been in effect for 10 months. Information on second homes and empty properties (as at September 2025) will be collected and published later in the year.

Social Security Scotland routinely publishes information on Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods applications and payments. Information on the number of awards made to people with no recourse to public funds is not held within the system used to process applications and therefore not available for publication.

This year, we allocated £123 million to NHS Boards to improve the quality and delivery of mental health and psychological services, including neurodevelopmental services, for both adults and children and young people.

Baselining this funding within NHS Board’s core budgets from 2025-26 will allow NHS Boards and IJBs greater stability and improved longer term financial planning, increasing their ability to support longer-term sustainable improvements and reform.

The Scottish Government is also providing more than £16.2 billion in financial year 2025-26 for Health Boards to deliver front line and other key services.

We are continuing to work closely with NHS Boards and other partners, including local authorities and the third sector, to develop and redesign services to improve access to diagnosis and support.

For example, we know that 78% of autistic adults supported have reported improved wellbeing as a result of accessing community support services funded through our £1 million Autistic Adult Support Fund. The £15 million we have invested annually in local authority community-based mental health supports has also benefitted many neurodiverse children and young people.

The following data shows the expenditure on Contingent Workers, of which Contractor would be a subset, but in conjunction with other categories of contingent workers. It is not possible to isolate Contractor expenditure within this data set.

The Scottish Government moved to Oracle Cloud in October 2024 and further data reconciliation is required. YTD data is therefore provided until September 2024.

The Freight Facilities Grant (FFG) is intended to bring about a number of benefits from the removal of freight from roads to other modes of transport. These include environmental and social effects including improved public health through reduced local air pollution; increased road safety through reduced volumes of heavy vehicle traffic; improved traffic flows through reduced congestion; and lower overall emissions from moving freight from heavy goods vehicles to lower-emitting forms of transport.

There is no maximum time period on when a deposit can be returned to a tenant following the end of a tenancy agreement and unclaimed deposit funds will continue to be protected by the relevant scheme administrators indefinitely. A tenant is able to request the return of their deposit from the date that their tenancy ends onwards.

The Housing (Scotland) Bill will, if passed, introduce timescales in which a deposit will be considered unclaimed and therefore available for transfer to Scottish Ministers or appointed third parties. However, former tenants will still be able to reclaim their tenancy deposit after the reclaim period has past where they can demonstrate reasonable excuse for not doing so within the relevant period.

The figures provided are based on the proportion of the deposit that is to be returned to the tenant following a landlord starting the deposit return process.