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Local authorities have the statutory responsibility to manage their school estate, including assessing the impact of all housing developments on school capacity.

The Scottish Government’s Determining Primary School Capacity guidance provides a consistent framework for assessing planning and working capacity, supporting local authorities to respond to pressures arising from windfall sites. Decisions on mitigating capacity pressures, including infrastructure timing, are matters for each local authority.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) publishes statistics as part of the Stage of Treatment (SoT) publication for consultant-led waits under the individual specialties of community child health and paediatrics.

Data for these two specialties are grouped under the broader specialty of paediatrics because some NHS boards utilise the community child health specialty to record these waits, while others use the paediatrics specialty.

Table 1 has been derived from the SoT open data, presenting statistics for both individual specialties.

Table 2 provides statistics for the grouped specialty of paediatrics. These figures therefore reflect waits for both community child health and paediatrics combined.

The Scottish Government recognises that social isolation and loneliness is a public health issue. Our social isolation and loneliness strategy, A Connected Scotland, outlines a number of actions we are taking to tackle this issue and is underpinned by a delivery plan, entitled ‘Recovering Our Connections’, that we published in 2023. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) as the key representative organisation for local government in Scotland, was a key partner in developing this plan. We continue to work with the Social Isolation and Loneliness Advisory Group to drive forward the actions in the plan and are providing £3.8m over three years to 53 community projects across Scotland through the Social Isolation and Loneliness Fund that is providing opportunities for people to connect.

As with the responses to PQs S6W-44458 & S6W-44459 on 24 March 2026, pavement maintenance is the responsibility of councils, as entirely separate entities from the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government has committed to respecting local government’s democratic mandate as part of the Verity House Agreement and believes that locally elected representatives are best placed to make decisions at a local level. We would therefore not provide guidance to councils on what footway routes they should prioritise.

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.

Audit Scotland has highlighted a persistent gap between national workforce ambitions and delivery, including the need for improved workforce data and clearer implementation plans. The Scottish Government is working with NHS boards to address these issues through strengthened workforce planning and improved modelling.

The information requested on how many obstetrics and gynaecology consultant vacancies there are in each NHS board is available on the TURAS NHS Education for Scotland workforce statistics site at: NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence (Vacancy tab).

Data on locum-filled roles is not centrally held.

On 20 January 2026 the Scottish Government published the Women’s Health Plan: Phase Two (2026 - 2029). Phase Two sets out the actions that we will take over the next three years to improve the health of women and girls in Scotland and commits to ensuring women and girls have timely access to gynaecological care.

The development of this plan is in the early stages; therefore, it is not yet possible to provide any specific actions around the gynaecological workforce.

The Scottish Government continues to focus on reducing long waits for all patients, including those awaiting gynaecology appointments and treatment, while a longer-term plan is developed.

Local authorities, as the employers of teachers, are responsible for their own recruitment and hiring processes. Local authorities have a duty to ensure they advertise teaching vacancies through open and fair recruitment processes, in line with all public sector employers.

The Scottish Government does not monitor or interfere with the recruitment practices of local authorities, however we are working with COSLA on medium and long-term joint workforce planning, which will take into account the importance of responding to issues such as the consistency of teacher recruitment and advertising of posts.

Teaching posts are advertised throughout the year and details of current vacancies can be found at: myjobscotland.gov.uk.

Any changes to existing funded early learning and childcare arrangements will be a matter for an incoming government to address.

There has been no specific modelling carried out on how this proposal would support the retention of multiple-birth parents in the workforce.

In 2025-26. the Scottish Government allocated £3m to deliver a Test of Change for those in receipt of Scottish Child Payment in secondary 1 to 3. The Test of Change has been providing nutritious meals for up to 6100 newly eligible pupils across 60 schools in 8 local authorities since August 2025 and will run until the end of June 2026.

Following an open tender Ipsos have been appointed to carry out an independent evaluation of the Test of Change. This work involves researchers seeking the views on a variety of subjects linked to the creation and delivery of the Test of Change from stakeholders, including pupils, parents and staff across all 8 partner local authorities.

The research also considers the uptake of free school meals during the Test of Change, including any factors that may have encouraged or been a barrier to eligible pupils taking a meal.

A full report is expected to be published during autumn 2026. The research findings will help inform future phases of the Free School Meals Programme.

Individual Local Authorities, as employers, are responsible for managing teaching vacancies and providing job opportunities across Scotland. Teaching vacancies are advertised across Scotland, throughout the year, through a process of fair and open recruitment. Local authorities must balance the teaching jobs they advertise with their local needs and contexts, including the type of contracts and posts they make available.

The Scottish Government collects and publishes annual data on the number of teachers employed across Scotland’s 32 Local Authorities through the Annual Teacher Census. This data can be accessed at: https://www.gov.scot/collections/school-education-statistics/

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of teacher permanence, and the stability and assurance this brings to teachers. That is why we continue to invest £186.5 million to help restore teacher numbers. We continue to work closely with COSLA on medium and long-term joint workforce planning, which will take into account the importance of responding to issues such as teacher permanence.

While the recruitment and deployment of teachers is the responsibility of local authorities, the Scottish government takes concerns about the recruitment and retention of teachers very seriously.

The Scottish Government conducts an annual teacher workforce planning exercise, at a national level, to forecast the need for newly registered teachers, consulting key stakeholders through the Teacher Workforce Planning Advisory Group (TWPAG). TWPAG, which includes representatives from local authorities, universities, GTCS, teacher unions, COSLA and SFC, recommends intake targets to Ministers.

This process is informed by a statistical model incorporating factors such as pupil projections, teacher turnover, post-probation employment rates, and ITE retention, supplemented by stakeholder input.

Local authorities have the statutory responsibility to manage their school estate, and determining appropriate Pupil Product Ratios (PPR). The Scottish Government does not hold national data comparing pupil yields with PPR assumptions, however, the Determining Primary School Capacity guidance supports local authorities in using locally derived evidence within their planning models. Any review of PPRs in light of future census data remains a matter for each authority.