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The Scottish Government expects communities to gain from green ports. The joint bidding prospectus , delivered in partnership by the Scottish Government and the UK government, provides details on Planning requirements and advises on place-based tools to inform the delivery of appropriate development in green port areas. It also required applicants to outline how their proposal would ensure compliance with all applicable environmental regulations and standards, as well as submitting an outline decarbonisation plan for the green port. These elements form part of the assessment of proposals.

The Scottish Government wants green ports to promote regeneration in local economies and communities by driving inclusive and sustainable growth locally, regionally and nationally, unlocking the potential of our regions for the benefit of the national economy, businesses, workers, and local communities.

The joint bidding prospectus , delivered in partnership by the Scottish Government and the UK government, confirmed successful applicants should explain the steps taken or planned to engage with local communities to consider how proposals will maintain and, where possible, enhance the quality of the locality.

Green ports have great potential to contribute towards the Scottish government’s decarbonisation agenda and net zero ambition.

Applicants were required to outline how their proposals will ensure compliance with all applicable environmental regulations and standards and any additional assessment of impacts on protected sites and species including mitigation.

Following designation, the requirement for a robust, action-focused decarbonisation plan will ensure that the port operators and businesses in the green ports will make a significant practical contribution to reducing emissions and facilitating decarbonisation of the green port.

The UK Government advise that current measures in place against Russian products should prevent any such steel entering the UK from Russia. They further advise that they have not been made aware of any issues on this matter.

The Tenant Grant Fund was a £10 million fund with each local authority receiving a share. The latest set of full available data, provides an overview of Tenant Grant Fund spend as of 31 December 2021, by local authority area. This was published in March 2022 and is available here - Tenant Grant Fund monitoring report: January 2022 .

The next set of data will cover the three month period up to 31 March 2022 and will be published once all 32 local authorities have provided the relevant information and analysis has been carried out.

To date, data up to 31 March 2022 detailing expenditure, grant and refusal figures have been obtained for 28 local authorities. This shows £5,143,119.56 expenditure, 4,430 grants and 1,326 refusals.

As the fund has been expanded and local authorities will continue to use any remaining allocation in 2022-23 until fully spent, a final review will be carried out once all LAs have closed their funds.

The Scottish Government is deeply shocked and saddened by what is happening in Ukraine and the impact that this is having on the Ukrainian people.  

Whilst trade sanctions are a reserved matter we welcome UK Government’s progressive strengthening of the sanctions regime against Russia. My officials have raised this specific issue with the UK Government.

This information does not fall within the scope of data gathered through the National Improvement Framework. The 11 key NIF measures assess progress towards closing the attainment gap using indicators from pre-school to school leavers. These are supplemented by 15 sub-measures that reflect the key stages of the learner journey and the breadth of issues that can impact on attainment. Together these provide a wide range of measures covering school leaver attainment and literacy and numeracy but also other, broader, measures such as health and wellbeing, school attendance rates and school leaver destinations.

As of 16 August 2022, 16,478 cards have been purchased. In addition, in week commencing 15 August, Glasgow City Council issued 85,000 pre-paid Scotland Loves Local cards to eligible households within the local authority in receipt of Council Tax Reduction as at 1 June 2022. Five other local authorities, which have indicated they will also issue pre-paid cards, have yet to confirm their proposals for distribution.

To ask the Scottish Government how much of the Scotland Loves Local Fund has been (a) allocated and (b) spent to date, on the Scotland Loves Local gift card scheme.In 2021-22, more than £2m of funding was allocated to the Scotland Loves Local programme including £1.5m to the Scotland Loves Local fund. The fund was available for a range of initiatives including local support for the Scotland Loves Local gift card scheme. A full list of grants awarded from the Scotland Loves Local Fund, including details of what that funding has been used for, is available on the Scotland Loves Local website, Media - SLL Fund 2021 (lovelocal.scot) .

All businesses with a bricks and mortar presence in their community are eligible to sign up, except for gambling and betting businesses. As of 16 August 2022, 3,839 businesses have signed up to the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card scheme. The table below details the number of businesses that have signed up to the scheme by local authority area.