Scottish Futures Trust: Five Year Review 2023/24


The start of 2023/24 was hampered with ongoing cost pressures and a fragile economy which led to an even greater focus on prioritising funding for essential infrastructure projects.


Reflecting our own approach to changing work patterns, in October we moved to a smaller office and took over part of the fourth floor of Haymarket House in Edinburgh, a building wholly owned by the public sector and home to a number of public and third sector organisations.


Since 2018 we have been working with Scottish Government and delivery partner WHP Telecoms to deliver the £28m 4G infill programme aimed at providing mobile coverage in areas that previously had no signal. During the year, the 55th and last mast in the programme became operational.


During the year, we and our partners (Scottish Government, Zero Waste Scotland and NHS National Services Scotland) updated the existing Net Zero Public Sector Buildings Standard to include the retrofitting of existing


buildings and launched a dedicated website where a suite of free-to-use documents and third-party resources can be accessed.


To support the delivery of heat networks, we were asked by Scottish Government to review delivery models and assess their potential for increasing their pace and scale. Our published report made several recommendations, highlighting some new models that could deliver more heat networks quicker.


Our infrastructure expertise has led us to explore new areas where we can bring thought leadership to add value. During 2023, we commissioned The Energy Landscape to prepare a report on Scotland’s position relative to UK's on electricity markets and produced the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements: A Vision for Scotland.


We also recently launched a new workstream to support Scottish Government in understanding the potential role for hydrogen in Scotland.


Some other notable highlights include:


• We worked with the three emergency services, leading on an Emergency Services Co-location Programme with the goal of increasing the number of stations at which more than one service is based


• Working closely with the Construction Innovation Hub, we published a strategy paper on the implementation of a National Metrics Library for the Built Environment, making it easier to measure how well buildings perform


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