Chamber and committees

The inflation rate for construction work will vary from project to project.

The Office for National Statistics Construction Price Indices dataset provides an estimate of inflation within the UK construction industry. In the 12 months to April 2022 there was annual growth in the all construction Output Prices Index of 8.8%.

Source: Construction output price indices - Office for National Statistics

Forestry and Land Scotland provides the following guidance on its website:

Purchase or scavenge firewood for domestic use

Members of the public can obtain a permit to buy timber for the purpose of domestic heating.

A firewood permit is available where a set quantity of small unprocessed logs is available for collection. A scavenging permit allows the recovery of timber from a recent harvesting site using hand tools.

Please contact your local office for help with any enquiries about the availability of these licences, and how to buy them.

In the Financial year 2022-23, in the Dumfries and Galloway Area, 5 firewood permits and 12 Scavenging permits have been issued by Forestry and Land Scotland. The issue of permits is limited due to the inconsistency of the availability of suitable material, particularly on sites in convenient locations for public access. This type of collecting of firewood has had ongoing health, safety and welfare concerns as Forestry and Land Scotland have had a number of incidences of permit holders, getting lost in the forest and/or using chainsaws to cut up wood in the forest rather than collecting suitable lengths by hand or using hand tools as per the respective permit conditions.

While there are not any plans to reopen the Local Bridge Maintenance Fund at this time, the Scottish Government will continue to meet with COSLA and individual local authorities on a regular basis to discuss the issues affecting local government.

The Scottish Government has increased funding to local government by over £570 million in 2023-24, including an additional £147 million of capital funding.

Our consultation document on the next Land Reform Bill proposes a series of important changes to the framework of law and policy that govern the system of ownership, management and use of land in Scotland. The proposals are in line with the recommendations of the Scottish Land Commission. They include the introduction of a Public Interest Test (PIT) "to assess whether, at the point of transfer of a large-scale landholding, a risk would arise from the creation of continuation of a situation in which excessive power acts against the public interest." The consultation also set out proposals on the criteria for triggering the PIT, and the possible outcomes of it. The Commission has not recommended the introduction of a cap on the total amount of land that can be owned.

We have received 540 responses to the consultation, and these include a wide range of views on the threshold for land acquisitions that could be subject to the PIT. The responses are being analysed and will be taken into account as we develop measures for inclusion in the Bill.

As with previous land reform legislation, it is imperative that any proposals are fully compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Mental Health Workforce Plan is scheduled to be published in spring 2023. A separate National Workforce Strategy for Health & Social Care was published on 11 March 2022, with a new Staff Wellbeing Strategy to be published in early 2023.

From the establishment of the Fund in April 2020, until the latest reporting in June 2022, there were 88 successful claims to the Mother and Baby Unit (MBU) Family Fund. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lothian who administer the Fund on behalf of Scottish Government, do not hold comprehensive information about a claimant’s home Board. Since April 2020:

• 32 families made a claim to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde MBU, with an average amount claimed of £303.
• 56 families made a claim to NHS Lothian MBU, with an average amount claimed of £250.

This data is not centrally available; aggregated data for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Waiting Times is sent to PHS from each NHS Board. It does not contain any information specifically on the number of young people removed from waiting lists, it reports on the number of referrals for young people to services, numbers waiting to start treatment and total waiting, and then numbers for those who started treatment and those who’s referral was rejected / not accepted (with both outcomes resulting in them being removed from the waiting list).

Table 1 shows the number of young people that started treatment – i.e. resulting in them being removed from waiting lists - and Table 2 shows the number that were not accepted for treatment therefore removed from waiting lists. The figures are presented by NHS Board of Treatment and relate to the financial years 2014-15 to 2021-22.

Data from 2012 has been published on the Information Services Division website, but data prior to 2014 is from a period when the aggregate dataset in development and is not regarded as reliable compared to more recently collected data. All data presented in Tables 1 and 2 has been previously published, however the data presented has been newly extracted and analysed to take account of subsequent data resubmissions to provide the most accurate figures. Therefore figures below may differ slightly to previously published figures for some years.

Table 1: People who started treatment in CAMHS from April 2014 to September 2022, by NHS Board of Treatment.

In August 2022, NatureScot launched the Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (IRNS) scheme, which provides projects that offer nature-based solutions with technical assistance grants to address investment barriers and develop replicable and scalable business models. Through this work, IRNS aims to build capacity for environmental projects to attract financial investment. The scheme aligns to the Scottish Government’s Interim Principles for Responsible Investment in Natural Capital, which sets out our expectations for a values-led, high-integrity market. Successful applications were announced in November 2022, with £580k of funding awarded to projects across a range of environmental contexts and locations.

I provided figures in my previous response to S6W-12191 on the number of delayed discharges from hospital under the requirements of the Adults with Incapacity Act, which related to the guardianship process. All patients whose discharge from hospital is delayed by the application process for a guardianship are recorded under Code 9.

The Scottish Government is progressing a range of actions with partners to expedite AWI discharges from hospital to ensure that, once medically fit, patients can be cared for in a setting that is most appropriate for their needs. This includes:

• reviewing the guardianship process to identify opportunities to reduce timescales for the processing of applications;
• working with partners at a national level to disseminate good practice to local areas;
• providing targeted advice and assistance to Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs), working with them to identify improvements to the process.