Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not hold this information as the recruitment and deployment of all staff in local authority schools is a matter for individual Councils.

The HIV Transmission Elimination Implementation Group will be responsible for assessing and prioritising the recommendations contained within the HIV Transmission Elimination Proposal.

The group is currently being formed and will be co-chaired by Professor Nicola Steedman, the Scottish Government’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer and Dr Dan Clutterbuck, Lead Clinician for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Lothian Sexual and Reproductive Health Services and Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh.

The formal governance and reporting structures are still to be agreed upon and will form part of the discussion at the first meeting, which is scheduled for the end of March.

Although UCAS has confirmed that at the end of the January equal consideration date there has been a reduction in applications compared to this time last year, our higher education institutions will continue to accept, and consider, applications until the end of June and thereafter through any clearing process. Therefore, we expect application numbers to continue to increase. Scotland’s higher education institutions are working hard to recruit applicants to their nursing programmes and it is worth noting that not all funded places are applied for via UCAS(for example our Open University funded places), and these applications will also contribute to final numbers.

Alongside this, we continue to explore alternative pipelines into the nursing profession such as earn as you learn routes and apprenticeships. In addition to that work we will also address current challenges to the nursing profession in relation to workforce supply, retention and professional development as part of the new Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce. This will ensure our nurses, already the best paid in the UK, will have the best conditions and career opportunities.

We realise that recruitment to initial teacher education is challenging for various reasons and this is being seen across the UK. However, as in previous years, Scottish universities will keep their application processes open until they have met their targets in both primary and secondary by subject. We will continue to work with universities to monitor applications to all initial teacher education programmes. Typically, we have seen teacher training applicants increase by around 17% by the end of the application cycle.

Whilst organisations are encouraged to apply in advance, registered charities and community amateur sports clubs (CASCs) have until 31 March 2023 to apply for the water and sewerage charges exemption scheme for the 2022-23 financial year. If exemption is granted, it will be backdated to 1 April 2022 - provided the criteria of the scheme were met at that time - and any charges will be refunded. The organisation’s income must be below £300,000 to qualify. Exemption will not be granted if:

• The organisation holds a permanent alcohol licence to sell alcohol at the premises
• the premises is a charity shop or other premises used for the purposes of retailing new or second hand merchandise
• the premises operates as a café which is open to the public and operated on a regular basis to generate income
• the organisation is a local council or an Arms-Length External Organisation (ALEO) which can be used by councils to deliver services

A strategic outline business case was approved in November 2022. A full outline business case, incorporating the findings from the pilot phase of the Cladding Remediation Programme, is due for completion in Summer 2023 and will inform the development of the full outline business case. 

In Scotland, wildfowling on the foreshore is a public right. While the Parliament could potentially legislate on wildfowling, the Scottish Government does not have any current plans to bring forward legislation to prevent wildfowling on the foreshore.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. Licensing schemes are administered by licensing authorities. The Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Order 2022 came into force on 1 March 2022, and required licensing authorities to establish schemes in their areas by 1 October 2022.

The Scottish Government welcomed Audit Scotland’s report, which provided useful lessons which we are already implementing through successor schemes to the NPD and hub models which the report considered. These schemes allowed us to deliver much needed new schools, new NHS facilities, new colleges and other key infrastructure that would otherwise not have been possible. They also provided a significant boost to the Scottish economy at a time of constrained private sector investment.

The eleven main recommendations in the Audit Scotland report are in included within the following tables along with accompanying Scottish Government comments.

The Scottish Government should:

The Scottish Government has provided funding to support job retention during energy transition in Aberdeen through a number of projects. Some are focussed on the North East, while others are nationwide. Many Scottish Government schemes and policies support ‘job retention’ directly or indirectly, therefore this is not an exhaustive list.

The £12 million Oil & Gas Transition Training Fund announced in 2016 was a three-year fund to support workers from the oil & gas sector at risk of redundancy. It supported over 4,000 people, surpassing the 1,000 participants planned for each of the three years the fund was in operation.

Starting in 2017, we are investing £125 million over 10 years in the Aberdeen City Region Deal to support Aberdeen’s ambition to become an energy transition capital, providing significant investment to diversify its economy and support job retention.

Our 2021-22 budget also included an allocation of £14.3 million through the North East Economic Recovery and Skills Fund (NEERSF) to tackle the dual impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the downturn in oil and gas. Courses delivered via the Fund covered entrepreneurship and broader provision linked to the local labour market, including the transition to net zero. A report on the Fund is due to be published in March 2023.

£3.5 million of this allocation from NEERSF was spent in the two financial years 2021-23 on projects linked to jobs supporting the transition delivered by partners including the Energy Transition Zone, Robert Gordon University, Opportunity North East and the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce. The Energy Transition Zone skills funding from the Energy Transition Fund for 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 was £519,000.

Our £500 million Just Transition Fund is also supporting the North East and Moray and we have committed £50m of the Fund in financial year 2022-23 to help businesses, communities and individuals to transition to net zero, creating jobs in low carbon industries and contributing to the region’s future prosperity.

We plan on consulting on proposed updates to Housing for Varying Needs to uplift standards applicable to homes delivered with support through the Affordable Housing Supply Programme in the Spring of this year. This consultation will also include proposals for the introduction of an all-tenure Scottish Accessible Homes Standard which is planned to be implemented through changes to building standards and guidance from 2025-26.