Chamber and committees

The training costs for an average nursing or midwifery student is in the region of £60,000 and a full breakdown of these costs including teaching grants, tuition fees, bursary and the various allowances was reported in S6W-28706 on 6 August 2024.

In the academic year of 2021-22, there were 190 entrants to first degree courses at a Scottish university on midwifery courses. Training costs for the 190 Scots Domiciled students for 3 years would be in the region of £11.4 million.

However combined with student attrition / withdrawal, pauses in education due to academic failure, ill health or maternity leave taken into account, the full cohort of students would not be expected to graduate in 3 years. Of those delayed students, many will go on to complete their programmes after 4 or even 5 years.

Vacancies fluctuate across NHS Scotland Boards and by specialism but vacancies will continue to be advertised across all Boards as they arise over coming months allowing graduates additional opportunities to apply. Health Boards are autonomous institutions, separate from the Scottish Government, and as such are responsible for recruitment. The Scottish Government’s role is to set policies and frameworks at a national level, and Health Boards, as employers, are responsible in recruiting graduates through fair and consistent recruitment practices. In some specialist areas the workforce profile means that turnover is lower and so anticipatory recruitment is more challenging than in higher volume / higher turnover roles.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

There is currently no projected underspend in the 2024-25 Affordable Housing Supply Programme.

The creation of a Safer Drug Consumption Facility in Glasgow is progressing well - construction work is nearing completion to convert the existing facilities and make them fit for purpose and necessary staff recruitment and training is well underway. A provisional opening date of 21 has been announced by Glasgow Council.

We are committed to help deliver drug checking facilities across Scotland. The three pilot areas (Dundee, Aberdeen and Glasgow) have now submitted their licence applications to the Home Office and we are providing support as they are being progressed. We expect the application for the National Testing Laboratory, which will provide additional analysis of drug samples, to be submitted shortly. Edinburgh have also recently joined the national project group and they are at the early stages of considering the establishment of a similar facility.

Over £38 million has been made available through two rounds of the Residential Rehabilitation Rapid Capacity Programme (RRRCP) to increase residential rehab capacity across Scotland. This fund supports eight capacity projects – of which four are new projects and four are expansions to existing services. This will provide 140 more bed by 2025-26.

36 of these beds are already operational and additional projects will be completed over the coming year to add a further 34 beds across Ayrshire, Aberdeenshire and Highlands and Islands. Collectively, these not only substantially increase the number of bed spaces available but also importantly widen access to specific groups and addresses geographic barriers to accessing rehab.

Work is continuing through a range of projects and initiatives to expand access to naloxone and the latest estimated reach of the National Naloxone Programme was 74.7% (percentage of people at risk of opioid overdose who have been supplied with THN) at the end of 2023-24 Quarter 3. We continue to support Police Scotland in their carriage of naloxone by all front-line police officers, where it has been administered to over 450 individuals. Our click-and-deliver service continues to distribute large numbers of kits (894 in quarter 3 of 23-24, last data available) while the work we have supported through the Scottish Ambulance Service also meant 211 kits were distributed by them in the same period.

Recent activity to further expand access to naloxone has included making it available in first aid kits (crash packs) within Scottish prisons while also expanding the work being done by the Scottish Drugs Forum to distribute naloxone to people on liberation from prison through peers. We also continue to engage with UK Government colleagues around the forthcoming legislative change to naloxone prescribing regulations which will make accessing kits easier across the UK.

Additional harm reduction measures being implemented can be found on the Scottish Government’s website: https://www.gov.scot/policies/alcohol-and-drugs/national-mission/

With the passage of the Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Act 2024, work is now progressing to have pilot buildings on an SBA pathway. The first step in this work is to complete a pilot cleanse of the 107 developments on the pilot list to ensure they are within the scope of the legislation. This would be conducted by a suitable expert, likely a Fire Engineer to provide assurance the correct buildings are on a pathway.

Scottish Government are aware of 30 Pilot assessments that have been undertaken for of the pilot entries. A pilot assessment includes any assessment carried out prior to the publication of the Single Building Assessment specification on the 21 June 2024. These numbers relate to known pilot assessments only as developers, home owners or other organisations could have commissioned assessments without informing the Scottish Government and therefore the true numbers may be higher and could increase as further information becomes available.

Pilot works to mitigate or remediate risks have started for five of the pilot entries. Works in this context refers to any action taken to address known cladding-related risks, including Urgent Interim Measures.

For those within the scope of the legislation, homeowners and residents will be informed and they will continue on the SBA pathway with the aim of completing a SBA in line with the newly published specification as soon as possible after the commencement of the Act.

Local authorities as strategic housing and planning authorities are responsible for assessing affordable housing needs in their area and setting out their investment priorities in their Strategic Housing Investment Plans (SHIPs). These plans set out planned proposals for affordable housing supply over a five year period, including homes for mid-market rent, and should be available on each local authority’s website.

The Scottish Government only holds development information relating to projects on site and does not hold information relating to projects in planning beyond projects outlined in SHIPs. It is worth noting that not all mid-market rent projects in planning would necessarily be delivered through the Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP).

The following table provides a breakdown by local authority area of mid-market rent homes receiving funding through the AHSP which are currently on site. The figures include Registered Social Landlord mid-market rent and Council mid-market rent homes, and other mid-market rent homes through programmes such as Places for People Capital MMR Initiative and Rural and Island Housing Funds.

A robust governance process is one important aspect of delivering effective care and meeting the Scottish Stroke Care Standards measured in the Scottish Stroke Care Audit.

That is why NHS Board reviews conducted by the Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme explicitly ask NHS Boards to set out their governance structure and any plans to improve this.

We have also asked every NHS Board to nominate an accountable individual to take overall responsibility of stroke care, including meeting the Scottish Stroke Care Standards.

A tool for collection of empirical data relating to various stroke rehabilitation outcomes - such as time to rehabilitation assessment, creation of rehabilitation plans, commencement of rehabilitation, input from various Allied Health Professional specialities and time to commencing community rehabilitation - has been developed. Data collection with this tool is currently being trialled in two NHS Boards, with the aim of using this across Scotland once this has been assessed.

We are in the process of developing a tool to capture and publish patient experience of rehabilitation in each NHS Board.

The Scottish Stroke Care Audit already tracks the number of beds by health board as part of the Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme. This information will be added to the dashboard of the most recent annual report within the next two weeks.

We will continue to work with Public Health Scotland on the most effective methods of capturing and reporting organisational data, including staffing levels.

The revised criteria assessing NHS Boards requires more rigorous reporting on stroke service governance structures and data reporting, and these will take time to fully implement.

I expect NHS Boards to prioritise their stroke governance structures and have scheduled a roundtable meeting with the accountable individuals from all NHS Boards where the importance of service governance will be emphasised.

The Scottish Stroke Care Standards are designed to enhance service delivery and improve patient outcomes. Monitoring performance against these standards through the Scottish Stroke Care Audit allows us to identify where challenges are being faced in the delivery of stroke care and implement quality improvements where required.

We recognise the standards are challenging and continue to expect Health Boards to identify aspects of their stroke services which do not meet these standards and to work to improve their standards of care locally to meet the Scottish Stroke Care Standards.