Chamber and committees

The Executive has, however, takenmeasures through commissioning the recently published Review of Public Procurement in Scotland Report andthrough on-going dialogue with businesses and their representativeorganisations to ensure that public sector procurement processes are open tosmall and medium-sized enterprises and to social enterprises.

Communities Scotlandassesses local housing strategies against seven critical areas approved by ministers,and agreed with COSLA. These include market analysis, needs assessment andproblem identification, resourcing, and monitoring and evaluation.

In assessing against thesecriteria, Communities Scotland gives each local housing strategy a grade on aseven point scale which ranges from “outstanding” to “generally weak”. Thesegrades were developed in consultation with local authorities in an earlierpilot exercise.

During 2003-04 all 32 localauthorities submitted a local housing strategy to Communities Scotland forassessment. More than two-thirds achieved an overall grading of at least “good”,which is the mid point on the scale. Of the remainder, Communities Scotland areateams work with local authorities to improve their strategies.

The phasing out of Section54 (Tax Relief Grant) was completed on 31 March 2005.A further transitional arrangement has been put in place for tax year 2005-06whereby corporation tax liabilities of eligible registered social landlords(RSLs) will be funded by Communities Scotland up to a maximum of £100,000. Thereafter,Communities Scotland will deal with any issues of financial viability ofindividual RSLs if they occur.

The vast majority of applicationshave been successfully processed, with over 822,000 cards issued by 4 May 2006. However,a tiny number of applications will inevitably go astray for a variety of reasons,and at this point it is sensible for the local authorities to advise the applicantto re-apply.

It should be noted that the statisticsgiven below are based upon the data which are held in the Scottish Executive’s roadaccident statistics database and which were collected by the police at the timeof the accident and subsequently reported to the Executive. They may differ fromany figures which the local authorities would provide now, because they do not takeaccount of any subsequent changes or corrections that local authorities may havemade to the statistical information, for use at local level, about the locationof each accident, based upon their knowledge of the roads and areas concerned.

Injury road accidents occurringon the A726, between Strathaven and East Kilbride (the junction at the south-eastof Birniehill roundabout) and the associated numbers of fatalities and serious injuries,as reported in the STATS 19 statistical returns.

Provisional numbers of road accidentsand casualties in 2005 as a whole will be published in June.

Over the period 2005-06 Registersof Scotland have specifically addressed arrears of the oldest casework. Thenumber of cases older than three years has dropped from 14,128 to 9,345.

The remainder of the A726 isa local road and is the responsibility of the appropriate local road authorities,South Lanarkshire, East Renfrewshire and City of Glasgow Councils. Each roads authority is responsiblefor safety on the section of road for which it is responsible.

Transport Scotland hasthe operational responsibility for this area and can be contacted for more informationif required.