Seòmar agus comataidhean

a)The Scottish Government is currently undertaking an evaluation of the Special Constable Pilot Project in conjunction with Police Scotland and the Cairngorms National Park Authority. We will announce a decision on the future direction of the project in due course.

b) There were five special constables in the project, employed on a part-time basis.

c) and d) From the information gathered in the review conducted by Police Scotland, there were no recorded crimes reported by the Special Constables during their patrols in the 12 month trial period. However, Special Constables were involved in meeting stakeholders and partners operating within the Cairngorms National Park to build relationships and understand the needs and demands of National Park users which will aid future intelligence gathering.

The Scottish Government agreed to contribute £18,000 and the Cairngorms National Park Authority agreed to provide £10,000 for the Wildlife Special Constables pilot project.

The Scottish Government, through Transport Scotland (TS), is a partner in the CAV Forth autonomous bus trial. The project is forecast to cost £6.09m.

The Scottish Government encourages membership of the Amenity Forum. The Amenity Forum is a UK voluntary initiative, recognised by the Scottish Government, which promotes best practice in all forms of weed management to ensure approaches that provide safe and healthy amenity spaces. We are working with the Amenity Forum to improve communications with Scottish local authorities and disseminate information on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to the amenity sector. Included in this work to improve best practice by local authorities will be an event in early 2020 on IPM hosted jointly by the Scottish Government and the Amenity Forum, to which, all local authorities will be invited.

The Scottish Government promotes the use of IPM, which aims to help land managers optimise and target pesticide use and make the most suitable use of all methods for controlling insect pests, weeds and disease.

Officials met with representatives from the Health and Safety Executive to discuss the operations at Mossmorran on 14 November 2019. There have previously been telephone discussions with representatives from the Health and Safety Executive on 3 July, 17 September and 29 October 2019 in relation to Mossmorran. The purpose of these contacts was to gain a fuller understanding of the action that HSE is taking in relation to the plant.

There is extensive contact between SEPA and HSE on matters related to Mossmorran as a result of their respective regulatory functions.

The Scottish Government considers that the effect of the act on the protected feature in question could not have been reasonably avoided where the act of sea fishing complied with all current regulations in place. If, for example, damage is caused while fishing is carried out in a way that does not comply with current laws and regulations, it may be the case that the damage could have been reasonably avoided.

Potential trawl marks were seen on a number of video tows from a survey carried out in August/September 2019. Analyses of the survey data are ongoing.

Previous advice from the Joint Nature Conservation Committee helped inform the voluntary restrictions. The advice states that "The offshore subtidal sands and gravels feature is broadly distributed across the site; we have no extra information available on the sensitivity of the feature which could inform where zones restricting demersal otter trawls and seines should be located".

The Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 does not apply in the Scottish Offshore Region. Details of the voluntary restrictions were made publicly available in Fishing News on 20 August 2019.

Section 125 of the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 applies to functions of public authorities, not to the authorisation of others to undertake certain activities. Therefore Section 125 does not apply to fishing.

The Health and Safety Executive is an Executive Non-Departmental Public Body of the UK Department for Work and Pensions. It operates with staff based across the UK who liaise with the Scottish Government as and when appropriate on devolved matters.