Here are the business stories making the headlines across Scotland and the UK this morning.
£100,000 spent on derelict Denburn Medical Centre to remove Raac
NHS Grampian has been forced to carry out costly repairs to buildings affected by Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (Raac) – including one that has been abandoned for more than a year.
Figures released through a Freedom of Information request has revealed the scale of repairs required to fix many of the health board’s facilities, including Aberdeen Royal Infirmary (ARI) and several North-east health centres.
For NHS Grampian, this has included Denburn Medical Centre on Rosemount Viaduct, where £106,080.20 has been spent on repairs since January 2023.
Read the full story in the P&J.
Human trafficking charges against Gloag are dropped
Human trafficking charges against Scottish transport tycoon Dame Ann Gloag have been dropped, the Crown Office has said.
The 81-year-old Stagecoach co-founder was charged alongside three other people by Police Scotland last year. All four strongly denied the charges.
The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal (COPFS) said it would take no further proceedings against any of the accused, unless further evidence became available.
Decision due over early release for Scotland's long-term prisoners
Hundreds of long-term prisoners will find out later whether they could be released early to ease an overcrowding crisis in Scotland’s jails.
Around 500 inmates serving short sentences have been freed in recent months, but the prison population is once again heading towards record levels.
The Scottish government will announce this afternoon whether it is pressing ahead with proposals to release long-term prisoners after they've completed two-thirds of their sentence.
Click here to read the full story.
Post Office CEO says he doesn't need to clear his name
The outgoing boss of the Post Office has said he does not need to clear his name following criticism of his leadership over the Horizon IT scandal.
Nick Read made the comments as he arrived for the first of three days of evidence to the inquiry into the scandal, in which more than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted for stealing cash because of faulty computer software.
The chief executive, who took over from former boss Paula Vennells in 2019, has been accused of prioritising his own pay over compensation for victims, and of failing to tackle the organisation's culture.
UK productivity is ‘dire’ as it falls far behind EU and US
Britain’s productivity record over the past two decades has been “dire”, seriously lagging both the United States and Europe, according to a new analysis in the latest assessment of the chancellor’s fiscal options.
Growth in output per UK worker has slowed to the lowest pace since at least 1850, the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign, according to Citi, in research published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies as part of its annual green budget.
Output in the UK was 36% lower than it would have been had Britain continued to grow at the trend pace of the years from 1997 to 2008.