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The Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme team works closely with stroke services in all NHS boards to use learning from the Scottish Stroke Care Audit to support improvement across the whole stroke pathway, including timely access to thrombolysis.

We have established a National Stroke Engagement Forum, with representation from every NHS Board, with the aim of tackling common challenges in the delivery of stroke care and sharing best practice and novel approaches to care delivery. Improving thrombolysis times will be a focus of the National Stroke Engagement Forum.

Officials met with the Cabinet Secretary for Transport on 26 June, where Places for Everyone was included as part of the discussion.

Transport Scotland has already provided £46.7 million of funding to Sustrans for Places for Everyone for 2024-25 which will deliver a range of active travel infrastructure this year. More broadly in 2024-25 more than £145 million has been provided for Active Travel.

The utmost importance is placed on balancing the Scottish Government’s budget each financial year. The Scottish Government and the whole of the public sector faces a financial position that is extremely challenging. It is always necessary to ensure resources are used economically, efficiently and effectively, and increased scrutiny and spending controls are in place across all expenditure. As with all programmes across Scottish Government, further funding for Places for Everyone will need to be considered in this context for 2024-25. This consideration is currently on-going and once concluded will enable further decisions to be made.

The Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme Board review process allows for an evaluation of stroke service performance, identification of areas for improvement and agreement of steps to implement local action plans to improve the delivery of stroke care in every Board.

Many of the areas on the RAG chart, especially those around rehabilitation pathways, were new requirements in the last reporting year to reflect the commitments in the Stroke Improvement Plan. The expectation is that boards will progress and improve in their status as they implement the guidance.

Where areas of stroke care have been identified as not fully meeting criteria, Boards are asked to agree action plans to drive service improvement.

A) Armed forces personnel receive dental care through the Defence Dental Service – a tri-service dental services to the UK Armed Forces - and is therefore not within the locus of the Scottish Government.

A funded stroke bed is a bed which has established funding for the provision of stroke nurse and therapist staffing. There are currently 531 stroke beds available in Scotland, including hyperacute, acute and integrated stroke beds. However, stroke services may adjust the number of beds available to meet service demands.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29165 on 5 September 2024. 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.

Sustrans are funded to manage and administer the Places for Everyone fund and meet with the applicants as appropriate. As Sustrans manage the fund on behalf of Transport Scotland neither Ministers nor Transport Scotland meet regularly to discuss specific projects that are funded through the programme. Transport Scotland does however receive regular updates through our oversight of the programme and management of the grant to Sustrans for the programme.

The Supply Chain Development Statements (SCDS) process has been carefully designed and is managed by Crown Estate Scotland. It requires developers to outline their initial commitments to the Scottish supply chain across four project phases - development, manufacturing and fabrication, installation and operations & maintenance.

We welcome developers’ commitments to invest an average projection of £1.5bn per project on the 20 ScotWind projects.

We are kick-starting our commitment to invest up to £500m to anchor our offshore wind supply chain in Scotland with investment of £67 million in the sector this financial year. This investment will support market certainty, helping to create a highly productive, competitive offshore wind economy that provides thousands of new jobs, embeds innovation and boosts skills. We are working across public sector delivery partners to ensure that the funding is delivered to projects as quickly as possible subject to rigorous due diligence and value for money assurance processes.