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Since April 2021, Scottish Opera has undertaken the following number of productions in Scotland and in the Highlands and Islands region:

The Scottish Government estimates that spending on workforce pay, including pensions and employer National Insurance contributions, will be equivalent to 53.4% of the entire Scottish resource budget in 2025-26. That reflects the importance this Government places on having a highly skilled and remunerated workforce. This only includes funding provided to Local Government from the Scottish Government and does not take account of other sources of funding available to Local Government, such as council tax and other forms of income.

Medium-term projections on workforce spending over the next five years will be set out in the forthcoming Medium Term Financial Strategy.

The Scottish Government is a member of the Trading Standards Policy and Coordination Group. This Group is coordinated by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) as the representative organisation for local government in Scotland. The Group seek to provide:

• strategic leadership of the trading standards function across Scotland;
• and effective co-ordination of trading standards priorities between local and national government and recruitment and retention of trading standards staff.

Since 2012-13 the Scottish Government has had a policy position of increasing/maintaining teacher numbers and has made a range of historical financial allocations to local government to support this.

During COVID-19, in the 2020-2021 school year, we provided additional funding to Local Authorities for the recruitment of additional teachers, to aid in education recovery and to compensate for any loss of learning suffered by pupils during lockdown, bringing added resilience to the education system. The £145.5m is part of the £240m referenced in the news release https://www.gov.scot/news/education-recovery/

We have continued to offer Local Authorities £145.5m to maintain teacher numbers. The funding was a continuation of the additional resource provided to ease education recovery. The £145.5m was referenced in the 2022/23 local government budget settlement.

The agreement reached on 10 December 2024 can be found at Education: agreement with COSLA - gov.scot

The Scottish Government remains committed to taking forward work on the three proposed fixed links identified as part of the second Strategic Transport Review (STPR2) under Recommendation 41. Noting that STPR2 is a long term plan, the next step is in determining whether there is a robust enough business case and local support to progress these options for more detailed consideration.

The business cases for a potential Sound of Harris, Sound of Barra fixed links and a fixed link between Mull and Scottish mainland would need to consider the benefits, costs and challenges associated with these interventions and would further consider the feasibility of improving island connectivity through additional fixed links.

The funding allocated in the draft Budget is for Orkney and Shetland Councils to improve inter-island connectivity in the way that best meets local needs, therefore distinct from the STPR2 recommendation.

Since 2021-22, Creative Scotland has distributed £19.1m to organisations registered in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Funding distributed to organisations with a base outside Scotland will either have an office in Scotland and/or the funded activity will be related to work in Scotland. Full breakdown as follows:

Creative Scotland, as the national development body for the arts, currently employ 143 staff across Scotland. This figure includes four Creative Scotland staff members located in the Highlands and Islands region.

Since April 2021, the National Theatre of Scotland has undertaken the following number of productions in Scotland and in the Highlands and Islands region:

Data on collisions which cause injury and take place on the road network, including adjacent pavements and cycle lanes, is collected by Police Scotland as part of the GB-wide dataset known as STATS19.

Within STATS19, vehicles involved in injury road collisions can be recorded as ‘bicycle’ or ‘electric motorcycle’. However, there is currently no systematic way of determining which of these vehicles would be described as illegal e-bikes.

The UK Government’s Department for Transport routinely produces estimates of the values assigned to the cost of road casualties and collisions in Great Britain for use in cost-benefit analysis of the prevention of road casualties and collisions in road schemes. However, as it is not possible to systematically identify collisions involving illegal e-bikes, it is not possible to use these figures to identify the costs of collisions involving illegal e-bikes.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

This information is held by Police Scotland.