Seòmar agus comataidhean

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29121 on 2 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.

The Scottish Government has awarded the following amounts to the Scottish Flood Forum in the most recent five financial years.

An additional £10,000 of discretionary funding was awarded to the Scottish Flood Forum in 2023-24 in light of the exceptional nature of the winter storm season and the vital support SFF provides to flood affected communities.

The Flood Resilience Strategy consultation document sought views on a range of flooding related matters, including how best to improve the long term resilience of coastal communities. The results of this consultation will help to inform the Flood Resilience Strategy. Both the Strategy and an analysis of the consultation responses will be published later in the year.

The Flood Resilience Strategy consultation document refers to there being an estimated 284,000 properties across Scotland exposed to flooding. This figure was derived from the most recent version of the National Flood Risk Assessment (NFRA), which was prepared by SEPA. The figures per local authority from the NFRA are as follows:

The Scottish Government has allocated (a) £42m in 2020-21 (b) £52m in 2021-22 (c) £63m in 2022-23 (d) £61m in 2023-24 and (e) £88m in 2024-25 to local authorities through the general capital grant to invest in flood protection and resilience measures.

However, the vast majority of funding available to councils is provided by means of a block grant from the Scottish Government. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on flooding protection, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The funding has been distributed as follows:

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29121 on 2 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.

The Scottish Government’s funded Food for Life Scotland Programme currently operates within 15 local authorities with 19 ‘Food for Life Served Here’ awarded caterers across 1,336 sites in Scotland.

We continue to support the delivery of the Food for Life Programme which has had a primary focus on school meals with over 100,000 daily ‘Food for Life Served Here’ meals served in primaries, secondaries and additional support needs schools. Most recently over the past 12 months, 191 new local authority sites have achieved ‘Food for Life Served Here’.

Throughout financial year 2024-25, the Soil Association will continue to work with local authorities on maintaining accreditation as well as seeking to further embed Food for Life principles across the wider Scottish Public sector.

Since financial year 2021-22, the Scottish Government has awarded £1,860,000 to the Soil Association for the Food for Life Scotland programme.

A breakdown of funding for the last four financial years has been provided in the following table.

Our plans to open an office in Warsaw will be considered as part of the wider review of government spending. It is necessary to ensure resources are used economically, efficiently and effectively, and high levels of scrutiny are applied to expenditure.

I have asked Janet Egdell, Chief Executive of National Records of Scotland to respond. Her response is as follows:

NRS are currently publishing topic data from Scotland’s Census 2022. Later in 2024, we will publish multivariate data. This means we will publish tables which include more than one census topic variable.

An evaluation of Scotland’s Census 2022, with a focus on lessons learned for any future census and other complex programmes, will be laid before the Scottish Parliament by the end of 2024.