Chamber and committees

The Homecoming ScotlandThemed Events programme is open to all event organisers. The range of awards (£5,000to £50,000) shows that the scale of activity funded will vary widely. It is a competitiveprocess and the key consideration in allocating funding will be that proposed eventsfit the tourism objectives of Homecoming Scotland. EventScotland’s Homecoming teamis in discussion with a wide range of organisations about potential events, manyof them voluntary or community groups.

Each potential applicantis being invited to talk through their proposal with the themed events programmemanager and each project is given appropriate and specific advice to assist themin making the strongest possible application in time for the funding deadline of26 February.

EventScotland’s experienceof funding through its Regional Programme, the model on which the Homecoming ThemedEvents Programme is based, is that on average 50% of successful applications comefrom community groups and that often the most innovative ideas come from grass-rootsorganisations.

I refer the memberto the answer to question S3W-8759 on 4 February 2008. All answers to written parliamentary questions are availableon the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

The detail of thefull report with its findings is necessarily subject to restrictions placed on Ministersby the Data Protection Act 1998 and by the general law of patient confidentiality.Recommendations 6 and 11, which were directed to the Scottish Executive’s MentalHealth Division, have since been accepted by the Scottish Government and are beingprogressed in conjunction with the Forensic Mental Health Services Managed CareNetwork and in the provision of a revised Memorandum of Procedure.

I have placed a copyof the recommendations contained in the Hawkins Report, along with NHS Ayrshireand Arran Health Board’s response, in the Scottish Parliament InformationCentre (Bib. number 44571).

The full adverse incidentreport with 30 recommendations was submitted to the Executive Medical Director atAyrshire and Arran Health Board and accepted in full on 24 October 2006. A detailed action plan was developed by the Head ofClinical Governance in Partnership with the Interim General Manager for Mental Health.Progress is monitored by the Clinical Governance Committee.

I have placed a copyof the recommendations along with Ayrshire and Arran Health Board’s response inthe Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 44572).

The councils receiveresources in the form of a fee with each application made under electricity or planninglegislation for renewable energy development. It is for individual councils to allocateresources in line with their priorities. We are providing additional resources througha consultant who is offering support and advice so that planning authorities canprepare up-to-date spatial and policy frameworks for wind farms as a basis for efficientand consistent decision making.

We recognise that,for some planning authorities, processing multiple renewable energy applicationscan be demanding.

The Scottish Governmentis aware that there are delays in some cases and that the size or volume of renewableenergy applications may be a factor in this.

The councils receiveadditional resources in the form of a fee with each application for a wind farmmade under the Electricity Act or planning legislation. It is the responsibilityof the councils to allocate resources to their functions as planning authorities.We are also providing additional resources through a consultant who is offeringsupport and advice to planning authorities so that they can prepare up-to-date spatialframeworks and policies for wind farms which should help them to consider applications.

It is for each localauthority to decide how they allocate their funding to particular projects. A recordlevel of investment in local government is only one part of the package that weagreed with COSLA in our concordat. It also contains a commitment to reduce ringfencing, which will give local authorities much greater freedom and flexibilityto allocate their resources as they wish. However we hope that local authoritieswill wish to allocate funding to homecoming, and early indications are that manywill do so.

GAE allocations arenot assessed or allocated on a school-by-school basis. They are a component of themore complex local government funding formula which is used to calculate a singlerevenue grant figure for each council. It is then a matter for each individual councilto decide how best to deploy the resources according to local needs and priorities.