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I met with the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Use and Islands on 27 June to discuss a number of issues which are of mutual interest. We have agreed to take forward further work with officials over the summer.

The amount of funding allocated by the Scottish Government in each year of the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund, will be informed by Strategies and Infrastructure Expansion Plans currently being developed and delivered by Scotland’s local authorities and to be agreed with Transport Scotland.

A total of £4,480,000 of public funding has been allocated so far by Transport Scotland through the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund. This is an allocation of £140,000 to each Scottish local authority to enable the development and delivery of public electric vehicle charge point strategies and infrastructure expansion plans. The development of strategies and infrastructure expansion plans will precede capital projects which are expected to commence in 2024, that will seek to draw in private investment from Charge Point Operators as part of the overall £60m funding of the programme.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-19106 on 29 June 2023. 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 judicial review decision about the City of Edinburgh Council's short-term lets licensing policy does not affect the timeframes for the implementation of short-term lets licensing as set out in legislation.

Since 1 October 2022, new short-term let hosts must obtain a licence, from the licensing authority where their accommodation is located, before they accept bookings and receive guests.

Transitional arrangements are in place for existing hosts, those operating their accommodation as short-term lets prior to 1 October 2022, enabling them to continue operating provided that they apply for a licence by 1 October 2023. Existing hosts will then be able to continue operating while their licence application is being processed and until it is determined.

Under the legislation, licensing authorities have up to 12 months to process applications from existing hosts and this can be extended by the courts for individual cases where there are good reasons to do so. If a licensing authority does not determine a licensing application within 12 months or apply to a court for an extension to continue its consideration, the application will be deemed to be granted for the period of one year. These provisions should provide assurance to the sector that they can continue to accept bookings and receive guests during this transitional period for existing hosts.

The Scottish MPA Monitoring Strategy sets out our approach to monitoring and ensures that the necessary evidence continues to be collected from the MPA network. A risk-based approach is used to provide a logical framework for planning and prioritising monitoring activities, as not all sites can be monitored every year.

Details of MPAs which have been surveyed and upcoming plans for monitoring can be found in the MPA Monitoring Strategy annexes available here: Scottish MPA Monitoring Strategy (webarchive.org.uk) .

Since the Scottish MPA Monitoring Strategy was published in 2017, The Scottish Government has been working with NatureScot and Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) surveying sites from 2018 to present day. Details of most recent surveys can be found in the following table:

As required by Section 103 of the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010, the next report to the Scottish Parliament on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) will be published in 2024. Reporting occurs in a 6-year cycle. The last report was published in 2018, and is available here: Marine Protected Area Network - 2018 Report to the Scottish Parliament - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

SPS now anticipate the publication of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy to be completed by end of October 2023.

Competing priorities impacted stakeholder capacity to contribute within the planned timeframe, and a need to divert SPS resources to support several acute cases of mentally unwell people in SPS care have contributed to a delay in publication. The revised date now reflects the impact of those delays, whilst ensuring sufficient time is allocated in order to analyse the critical evidence gleaned from mental health experts and those in our care with lived experiences.

Since 2011, the Scottish Government has invested over £65m to develop the ChargePlace Scotland network of publicly available charge points, which is now the fifth largest network in the UK with over 2500 charge points.

A total of 299 charge points were commissioned on to the ChargePlace Scotland network between June 2022 and May 2023.

Transport Scotland’s joint report with Scottish Futures Trust published in July 2021 highlighted the opportunities to leverage the investment, skills and resources of the private sector to grow Scotland’s public electric vehicle charging network at the scale and pace required. This report also recognised the opportunities for partnership working between Scotland’s local authorities and private charge point operators, as well as the potential for existing ChargePlace Scotland assets to form part of future partnering arrangements.

Through the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund, Transport Scotland is supporting local authorities to develop public electric vehicle charge point strategies and infrastructure expansion plans, to identify and take forward the opportunities to work with the private sector to grow Scotland’s public charging network.

There is an established and growing number of well-capitalised private charge point operators across the UK. Transport Scotland’s joint report published with Scottish Futures Trust in July 2021 indicated that investment costs in growing Scotland’s public charging network could reach £100 million per annum by 2030. It is encouraging, therefore, to hear the recent pledge from industry body Charge UK that its members will invest £6 billion in public charging infrastructure across the UK by 2030. Our focus is on encouraging that investment to spread across all of Scotland. That’s why our Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund aims to draw in £60 million of public and private investment to double the size of the public charging network to 6,000 charge points by 2026, including areas of the network where private investment is less viable.