Chamber and committees

Business Stream remains an important part of the Scottish Water group and its finances are being carefully monitored. As with all licensed providers, and many other sectors, income will be affected by a number of factors including lower activity and the deferral of customer charges.

As mentioned within the answer to question S5W-31447 we continue to keep locations under review.

In terms of access for Dumbarton residents, along with the regional testing site at Glasgow Airport that offers drive through testing, we have Mobile Test Units that regularly visit Port Glasgow, Helensburgh and Dumbarton.

The Scottish National Investment Bank is on track to launch later this year. Once established, the Bank will be able to deliver long-term, strategic investment in businesses and communities across Scotland. The Bank will be required to develop, and to periodically update, a Gender Equality Strategy and this work will be taken forward in line with the requirements of the Scottish National Investment Bank Act 2020.

Equalities legislation will be amended so that the Public Sector Equality Duty applies to the Bank, requiring it to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination and advance equality of opportunity when carrying out its activities. The Bank’s policies will therefore take account of its legal obligation in relation to this.

The Scottish National Investment Bank, once established, will have responsibility for ensuring that its processes and procedures enable it to fulfil its statutory obligations. This will include developing appropriate data gathering mechanisms in relation to the equalities duties to which it will be subject. It is anticipated that in doing so, the Bank will make reference to appropriate frameworks and practices.

As the Minister for Parliamentary Business & Veterans reported to the Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee on 19 December 2019, we have a rough number for the cost to the Scottish Government of dealing with FOI.

In 2012, the Scottish Government undertook an exercise aimed at evaluating the cost of dealing with FOI. Dealing with an FOI request generally involves following a number of distinct steps and work was carried out on a sample of cases to estimate how much time, broken down by staff band, was spent on each step. This was used to develop an estimate of the cost for handling requests, reviews and appeals. The figures were uprated for inflation in 2019. This approach was a bespoke exercise that looked at the steps in handling an FOI and the Scottish Government has not conducted a similar exercise for conducting litigation.

Staff working on responding to the judicial review are civil servants who receive a salary rather than being separately remunerated for dealing with particular matters. In addition, they do not record the proportion of their time that they spend working on particular matters as a matter of course. It is therefore not possible to say how many hours were spent by civil servants involved in this work.

Staff working on responding to the judicial review are civil servants who receive a salary rather than being separately remunerated for dealing with particular matters. In addition, they do not record the proportion of their time that they spend working on particular matters as a matter of course. It is therefore not possible to say how many hours were spent by civil servants involved in this work. Staff working on the judicial review were in band A, B, C and the Senior Civil Service.

The Scottish Government is not aware of any mobile testing units (MTUs) closing due to lack of booked appointments.

The only occasions where MTUs have had to close have been due to adverse weather conditions or other site issues such as unplanned building works.

Please find list of dates attended each site and the number of tests conducted as of 15 September 2020.

Helensburgh

20 July – 0 tests

21 July - 13 tests

27 July - 18 tests

28 July – 19 tests

3 August – 22 tests

4 August – 33 tests

10 August – 30 tests

11 August – 33 tests

17 August – 48 tests

18 August – 105 tests

24 August – 245 tests

25 August – 296 tests

30 August – 204 tests

31 August – 279 tests

1 September – 247 tests

7 September – 288 tests

10 September – 125 tests

14 September – 121 tests

Dumbarton

3 September – 22 tests

5 September – 58 tests

7 September – 22 tests

9 September – 154 tests

11 September – 73 tests

13 September – 14 tests

15 September – 197 tests

A Mobile Testing Unit has not yet deployed to Vale of Leven.

The number of tests carried out at Helensburgh on 27-28 July 2020 = 37 (18 on 27 July and 19 on 28 July)

The mobile testing unit in Dumbarton was set up on 3 September and no information exists for the period 28 July - 2 August.