FUTURESCOT

Plans for a £16.5 billion datacentre campus on the site of the former Chapelcross nuclear power station have been lodged with Dumfries and Galloway Council. Annan-based CX Tech Limited has applied for planning permission in principle for the ‘CX Technology Campus’, which would bring eight datacentres and a dedicated training centre to the brownfield site. The application covers up to 162,000 square metres of datacentre floorspace.

The former boss of Arnold Clark has said a cyberattack which hit the car retailer four years ago had a ‘significant and long-lasting impact’ on the business. Eddie Hawthorne was speaking at an event at the Scottish Parliament where he called for the ‘right support’ for businesses when an attack happens and to address the ‘gaps’ that allow criminals to continue exploiting stolen data afterwards.

Scotland needs to ‘act quickly’ on a digital assets opportunity that could be worth up to £5 billion to its economy, according to a new report. Policymakers and industry leaders are being urged to adopt eight measures to help Scotland’s financial sector benefit from ‘tokenisation’, the growing move to hold and trade assets in digital form.

Scotland’s biometrics commissioner has renewed his call for new legislation to govern the use of live facial recognition technology in policing. Dr Brian Plastow, who has occupied the post since it was created by statute in 2021, says the technology has an ‘important’ future role to play in the fight against serious and violent crimes in Scotland.

Across Scotland’s public sector, there is a growing recognition that technology is no longer simply something that supports public services. It is becoming fundamental to how those services are designed, delivered and improved. Whether you’re working in policing, justice, health, local government or central government, the challenges are remarkably similar. Demand continues to rise. Budgets remain under pressure. Teams are stretched. Cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated.

Social housing represents 23% of Scotland’s total housing, a much higher proportion than in the rest of the UK. Given how many Scottish residents rely on social housing, it is incredibly important that their homes should be both built and maintained to the highest standards. Upcoming legislation aims to address this demand: Awaab’s Law is set to come into force in Scotland on the 6th of October 2026, via the Investigation and Commencement of Repair (Scotland) Regulations 2026.

The national rollout of body-worn video cameras is now complete in Scotland – with 16,000 officers backed up by digital recordings as part of their ‘kit’. Police Scotland announced that the programme has concluded with uniform mounted video footage providing ‘extra eyes and ears when keeping our communities safe’. The final set of cameras and technology went live to specialist officers in Edinburgh, the Lothians and Scottish Borders, Forth Valley and Fife divisions last week.

Civil servants are to conduct an ‘open market review’ to determine where connectivity funding is best deployed in Scotland to close broadband coverage gaps. The Scottish Government has published details of a request for information from major telecoms providers – to check on planned superfast, ultrafast and gigabit capable broadband infrastructure.

AI will be one of the major focuses at the Scottish Government’s forthcoming national procurement conference in Glasgow. The technology will be one of three ‘key themes’ alongside collaboration and capability, as delegates gather on October 29th for the annual Procurex event. Procurex Scotland is Scotland’s biggest public procurement event, held each autumn at the SEC in Glasgow.

A former NHS Scotland technology boss has questioned whether ‘our institutions are ready’ for autonomous AI after an Australian government website was breached by rogue OpenAI agents. Deryck Mitchelson, who helped build critical NHS systems during the Covid pandemic, said the cyber incident affecting the national Medicare system in Australia should serve as a warning to all healthcare organisations.