Seòmar agus comataidhean

As this is an operational matter for Scottish Water I have asked them to respond. Their answer is:

The number of sewage discharge points for each river, including its tributaries, is:

• River Don - 42 Wastewater Treatment Works and 99 discharge points
• River Dee - 26 Wastewater Treatment Works and 69 discharge points

SEPA's licencing conditions do not currently require Scottish Water to report discharge data at these locations.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) publishes river water quality data on their website at: www.sepa.org.uk/data-visualisation/water-classification-hub. SEPA currently classifies waterbodies in the River Dee catchment as 92% at good or better water quality and the River Don catchment as 84% at good or better water quality.

Marine Scotland has referred a total of 148 cases of breaches of marine and fisheries offences between 2010 and June 2023. We do not have data for 2019 due to a system change.

The following table details the number of referrals by year.

The Scottish Government and COSLA agreed a joint funding model in 2018 to support the training of new Educational Psychologists. This model was agreed and developed by the National Scottish Steering Group for Educational Psychologists (NSSGEP). The NSSGEP is chaired by the Scottish Government and includes representation from professional bodies, ADES, COSLA and EIS.

The training programme is evaluated by Dundee University in several ways. A six-yearly cycle of periodic programme review is undertaken and was last completed in September 2021. This review concluded with a very positive evaluation of the training programme. The British Psychological Society re-accredits the programme every three years, and provided a positive evaluation in September 2021. The University also conducts an annual programme evaluation to ensure the training programme is meeting the needs of students and to make small improvements as required.

The Scottish Government and COSLA engage and work closely with our training and delivery partners to ensure that the training programme remains robust and sustainable.

Due to the impact of COVID-19, there is currently a delay of up to four months in allocating some complaints to a complaints reviewer at the Scottish Public Service Ombudsman (SPSO). The SPSO have put in place and are applying a number of measures to reduce the age and number of unallocated cases, and ensure urgent cases are identified and actioned. The SPSO has also received funding from the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body to recruit extra temporary staff in order to assist with the backlog. This delay has reduced from 11 months in 2022 and will continue to drop thanks to extra capacity and positive improvements in how the SPSO deliver their service which should mitigate any impact this may have on public services.

During the creation of the Scottish AI Strategy, the Scottish Government worked closely with colleagues across the SG and further afield, to ensure that we move forward in a joined up manner. We have continued to offer input to the development of related strategies both internally and nationally.

For example, as part of the development of the Digital strategy we specifically focused on the ethical considerations key to delivery of an ethical digital nation, and we worked more widely to consider how the emerging use of AI could help us deliver more focused and effective public services and economic benefit as part of the Scottish National Strategy for Economic Transformation. We have also both contributed to and taken direction from the Scottish Innovation Strategy. We have considered the types of support required by innovative and new businesses, whilst also supporting training and upskilling opportunities for those working in the technology sector.

In terms of UK wide developments we have engaged closely with UK Government colleagues around the creation of their draft white paper and we will continue to input to this discussion as the regulation of AI technologies continue.

The number of full-time equivalent primary and secondary school teachers employed in publicly funded schools in Scotland in each of the last 10 years is available from Table 1.1d in the published Teacher census supplementary statistics, Teacher census supplementary statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

The Scottish Government do not hold any information on domestic chargepoints that are (a) currently reported as faulty and (b) no longer in use.

Domestic chargepoints for private use, are not publicly available and are the sole responsibility of the home owner.

We committed to support the recruitment of at least 3,500 teachers, in addition to the 1,400 recruited during the pandemic, over the course of this Parliament. The 2022 teacher census total was 54,193 teachers, which indicates an increase of 1,946 from the baseline, as measured by the 2019 census.

We are also providing £145.5m to local authorities in the 2023/24 budget to protect increased teacher numbers.

The Marine Directorate - Licensing Operations Team of the Scottish Government has not granted any seal licences for imperative reasons of overriding public interest, including those of a social or economic nature under the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010. No seals have been killed or taken under this licensable purpose.

The cost for the Scottish AI Playbook build to date has been £17,820 including VAT.