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The Convention of the Highlands and Islands is a public meeting and anyone is welcome to attend. However, only Members and invited speakers are able to contribute to discussions on the day.

While the Scottish Government is the Secretariat for the Convention, it is for the collective membership to decide where non-members should be invited to contribute to the discussion of a meeting of the Convention.

Constituency and regional ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ for the host area will be made aware of Convention meetings in advance and in accordance with the Ministerial Code (2023).

The next meeting of the Convention of the Highlands and Islands will take place on 7 October and will be hosted by Shetland Islands Council in Lerwick.

The Scottish Government has had no recent engagement with (a) NHS Highland and (b) Argyll and Bute Health and Social Care Partnership regarding the provision of dialysis services in Lorn and Islands Hospital.

It is the responsibility of NHS Boards, working with their local partners, to plan service delivery and treatment in accordance with the needs of patients undergoing dialysis in their area.

The Scottish Government has allocated (a) 1.6m in 2022-23 (b) 2.4m in 2023-24 and (c) 2.7m in 2024-25 to local authorities through the general capital grant to invest in managing coastal change and resilience measures.

However, the vast majority of funding available to councils is provided by means of a block grant from the Scottish Government. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on coastal change adaptation, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The funding has been distributed as follows:

Capital Funding

The Scottish Government has awarded the following amounts to the Scottish Flood Forum in the most recent five financial years.

An additional £10,000 of discretionary funding was awarded to the Scottish Flood Forum in 2023-24 in light of the exceptional nature of the winter storm season and the vital support SFF provides to flood affected communities.

The Scottish Government’s funded Food for Life Scotland Programme currently operates within 15 local authorities with 19 ‘Food for Life Served Here’ awarded caterers across 1,336 sites in Scotland.

We continue to support the delivery of the Food for Life Programme which has had a primary focus on school meals with over 100,000 daily ‘Food for Life Served Here’ meals served in primaries, secondaries and additional support needs schools. Most recently over the past 12 months, 191 new local authority sites have achieved ‘Food for Life Served Here’.

Throughout financial year 2024-25, the Soil Association will continue to work with local authorities on maintaining accreditation as well as seeking to further embed Food for Life principles across the wider Scottish Public sector.

Since financial year 2021-22, the Scottish Government has awarded £1,860,000 to the Soil Association for the Food for Life Scotland programme.

A breakdown of funding for the last four financial years has been provided in the following table.

The Scottish Government has allocated (a) £42m in 2020-21 (b) £52m in 2021-22 (c) £63m in 2022-23 (d) £61m in 2023-24 and (e) £88m in 2024-25 to local authorities through the general capital grant to invest in flood protection and resilience measures.

However, the vast majority of funding available to councils is provided by means of a block grant from the Scottish Government. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on flooding protection, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The funding has been distributed as follows:

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-29121 on 2 September 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The Flood Resilience Strategy consultation document refers to there being an estimated 284,000 properties across Scotland exposed to flooding. This figure was derived from the most recent version of the National Flood Risk Assessment (NFRA), which was prepared by SEPA. The figures per local authority from the NFRA are as follows: