The Schools (Health Promotion and Nutrition( (Scotland) Act 2007 makes health promotion a central purpose of schooling and places duties on all education authority and grant aided schools including those in rural communities. A school is health promoting if it provides activities and an environment which promote the physical, social, mental and emotional health and wellbeing of pupils in attendance at the school.

It is up to local authorities and schools to choose which policies, initiatives and programmes they put in place to meet these duties recognising they are best placed to decide what will best serve local needs, priorities and circumstances.

Guidance was developed to support schools as they take action to meet their duties under the 2007 Act.

Health and wellbeing is an integral part of Curriculum for Excellence, helping to ensure that children and young people are provide with the skills, knowledge and experience they need to take responsibility for their health and wellbeing as they grow into adulthood. Children and young people should know where to go to get relevant support and help them make informed decisions about their health.

The Scottish Government has invested over £29m of Community Led Local Development (CLLD) funding in our rural communities since the closure of the LEADER programme in December 2021, delivering over 1000 grassroots community-led projects across rural and island Scotland in partnership with rural organisations. A place-based approach is the foundation of CLLD. Communities are empowered and supported to design and implement the solutions to the challenges and opportunities they identify in their local area, which may include community led health and social care provision. We have invested £11.4m so far in our rural and island communities to support CLLD and similar initiatives in 2024-25. A further £9m for CLLD was announced in the indicative 2025-26 budget, subject to the passing of the Budget Bill.

The Scottish Government provides funding to NHS Education Scotland (NES) to develop and run the National Digital Platform (NDP). The NDP supports storage, integration and interoperability of data making it easier for staff to record and share data across health and care systems.

Additionally, we provide funding to all territorial Boards to support the required investment for the six priority areas set out in our Digital Health and Care Delivery Plan: Digital Access, Digital Services, Digital Foundations, Digital Skills and Leadership, Digital Futures and Data-Driven services and Insights.

Further information on each of the six priority areas can be found here: Care in the Digital Age: delivery plan 2024 to 2025 - gov.scot

The Scottish Government works closely with the legally categorised emergency responder organisations who are responsible for assessing, planning, responding to and recovering from the consequences of emergency risks as identified in the National Risk Assessments and Community Risk Registers, including for severe storms and wildfires.

Representatives of all responder agencies are also required, by the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, to meet regionally in Scotland’s 3 Regional Resilience Partnership (RRP) areas, in the North, West and East . Below that structure, 12 Local Resilience Partnerships (LRPs) are in place which apply the co-ordinated response at a local level.

The Resilience Partnerships meet to ensure there is a shared awareness of responder agency capabilities and capacities to co-ordinate a multi-agency response to any kind of emergency event. Existing plans are regularly tested in joint exercises and during real emergencies.

After any event, responder agencies, LRPs and RRPs routinely hold structured debriefs which identify lessons to be fed back into the system and improve future response. These debriefs are the responsibility of the agencies and partnerships and therefore not overseen by Scottish Government.

Wildfires are specifically an operational responsibility of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. As such, they are responsible for the initial response and for developing and deploying plans which enable them to respond as a national service with the ability to move and deploy staff and equipment as necessary. Their arrangements will link into generic police, NHS and local authority major incident plans as necessary, within the resilience partnership structures.

The Scottish Government supports this partnership activity in many ways including supporting multi-agency partnership meetings, and organising on line multi-agency learning facilities on the Resilience Learning Hub.

The Scottish Government supports local authorities to deliver infrastructure and behaviour change projects that deliver on modal shift outcomes and a range of benefits for physical and mental wellbeing.

In 2024-25, £35 million has been allocated for the Active Travel Infrastructure Fund (ATIF) Tier 1 funding. This investment, delivered by block grant, gives local authorities the autonomy to support the design, development, and delivery of active travel infrastructure measures across all 32 Local Authorities in Scotland, including in rural locations. £10 million has been allocated for ATIF Tier 2 fund for construction ready projects delivered by Local Authorities and Regional Transport Partnerships.

Also in 2024-25, £46.7 million of funding has been allocated for the Sustrans Places for Everyone programme, delivering high quality infrastructure across Scotland, and £15.85 million for the continued development of the National Cycle Network in both rural and urban areas.

In terms of support provided to local authorities for behaviour change measures that improve the uptake of walking, wheeling, and cycling, £4.5 million has been allocated to the Local Authority Direct Award (LADA) in 2024-25, and £1.7 million for the Bikeability programme.

The Regional Transport Partnership-led People and Place programme is £19m for 2024-25 is designed to build on the partnership working of RTPs and local authorities to work together and identify key priorities for improving the opportunities for more people to make more of their everyday journeys by walking, wheeling or cycling.

The efforts of these programmes and infrastructure delivery will lead to positive health outcomes through increasing the number of people choosing walking, cycling and wheeling in Scotland for everyday journeys. This is why active travel is a key Strategic Delivery Outcome in the Physical Activity for Health Framework published on 4 October 2024. The outcome aims to see multiple sectors working collaboratively on action that prioritises active travel infrastructure and supports and encourages active travel behaviour.

My officials continue to engage with local authorities, Public Health Scotland and Active Scotland to identify synergies and opportunities to strengthen the links between active and sustainable interventons and health outcomes.

Ministers regularly meet with their counterparts in the UK Government, other devolved governments, and the Government of Ireland on a bilateral and multilateral basis to discuss matters of common interest.

The focus of our engagement is to work together to deliver on the First Minister’s four priorities as announced when he came into office in May: Eradicating Child Poverty; Growing the Economy; Tackling the Climate Emergency; and Ensuring High Quality and Sustainable Public Services.

A list of ministerial engagements, including meetings, are published on a regular basis on the Scottish Government website: https://www.gov.scot/collections/ministerial-engagements-travel-and-gifts/#2024

A key way in which Scottish Government is looking to expand home healthcare services in rural areas is through the expansion of Hospital at Home.

Hospital at Home is a short-term, targeted intervention that provides a level of acute hospital care in an individual’s own home that is equivalent to that provided within a hospital.

There is strong clinical evidence for Hospital at Home, which has improved patient outcomes such as being able to manage their own care, being more independent and being able to keep their care package whilst receiving care. The service also reduces admissions to nursing homes and reduces the likelihood that patients will be living in residential care in the months after being in hospital.

All hospital at home services capture patient feedback via Care Opinion (www.careopinion.org.uk) as well as locally developed feedback forms. That information is used to understand the impact of their service and inform improvement.

Every Health Board in Scotland operates a Hospital at Home service for adults, including some of the most remote and rural areas of the country. Between April 2023 and March 2024 Hospital at Home Older People’s services treated 14479 patients. Specifically, services in Western Isles treated 383 patients and Oban treated 91.

Further expansion of the service was set out in the 2025-26 draft budget statement where set out plans to expand the number of Hospital at Home beds to at least 2,000 by December 2026.

There are a wide range of existing legal protections that may be relevant in the context of unlawful activities by protestors. For example, criminal offences of acting in a disorderly manner, malicious mischief, threatening or abusive behaviour and breach of the peace may be relevant depending on the specific facts and circumstances arising. Application of any relevant laws is within the context of the general right to lawful protest. It is for Police Scotland to investigate any relevant conduct and for Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to decide whether to prosecute in any given case.

Police Scotland's develop and management of protocols for discovery of unexploded wartime military ordnance near critical infrastructure is a operational matter for the service which is scrutinised by the Scottish Police Authority. It is for Police Scotland, working with key stakeholder organisations across the UK to ensure that such protocols align with national security strategies.

This is a matter for individual Agencies. The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.