The Staff Governance Standard commits NHSScotland employers to ensuring that all staff are treated fairly and consistently and that the minimum standards as described in the Partnership Information Network (PIN) policy guidelines are met or exceeded.

As stated in the Dealing with Employee Concerns PIN all employees have a fundamental right to raise issues of concern with their manager, to be accompanied by a trade union/professional organisation representative or colleague if they so wish, and to appeal to a higher level if they feel the issue has not been resolved satisfactorily.

The PIN policy is clear that harassment and victimisation of any member of staff who raises a concern will not be tolerated and will be treated as a serious disciplinary offence which will be dealt with under the management of conduct arrangements.

If it becomes apparent that there are problems with an NHS board in relation to the implementation of the PIN policies it would be expected that the trade unions and professional organisations would raise the matter through their local partnership processes.

The Accounts Commission audits local authorities as part of the performance audit of how local authorities discharge their best value and community planning duties

However the independent Crerar Review of regulation, audit, inspection and complaints handling of public services in Scotland identified over 50 bodies which could reasonably be considered as having a role in the scrutiny of all public services, which would include local authorities and their community planning partners.

The Scottish Government update to Parliament on 23 June 2008 included a list of those bodies which we considered to have either a significant impact on public services via scrutiny or where scrutiny was clearly their primary function. This list does not include other public bodies, e.g. Scottish National Heritage or the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, whose activities will also have a tangential impact on local authority activities:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2008/06/23153230.

Prior to this though, in March 2008, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth had already asked the Accounts Commission to work with the relevant bodies that scrutinise local authorities and local authority services to find ways of introducing a more proportionate approach through better planning and scheduling of service inspections.

Through this work the Accounts Commission has already co-ordinated a scheduled 25% reduction for all current scrutiny body contact with councils in 2009, when compared to 2007 levels. Further details are available on the Accounts Commission website at:

http://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/scrutiny/.

However, to ensure this continuous improvement, the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill introduced into Parliament on 29 May 2009 includes, for the first time, a duty on listed bodies scrutinising services provided by or on behalf of local government to co-operate, in order to ensure more proportionate and co-ordinated scrutiny.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-24123 on 2 June 2009. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

All the bodies referred to in the answer to S3W-24123 already publish annual reports, setting out their budgets, which are lodged with the Parliament.

(A report by Audit Scotland for the independent Crerar Review published, in September 2007, an analysis of the overall cost of external scrutiny of public services in Scotland. A copy can be found on the Scottish Government website http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/923/0053070.pdf.)

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-24123 on 2 June 2009. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the parliament''s website the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

All the bodies referred to in the answer to S3W-24123 already publish annual reports, setting out staffing levels, which are lodged with the Parliament.

(A report by Audit Scotland for the independent Crerar Review published, in September 2007, an analysis of the cost of external scrutiny of public services in Scotland. A copy can be found on the Scottish Government website:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/923/0053070.pdf.)

The information requested is not held centrally. Services for people with post traumatic stress disorder are planned and delivered by NHS boards and their partners to reflect the level of individual clinical need.

Support for Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder is further enhanced by new arrangements from 1 April this year with the charity Combat Stress for improved access to specialist mental health services, and the Veterans First Point pilot service in Edinburgh for advice and support to Veterans and their families.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-23987 on 27 May 2009. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

The Scottish National Rural Network is currently operating online and, later this year, will include local and national events. It aims to promote sustainable economic growth and community development. Networking on this scale will help rural communities learn of development opportunities and reap benefits through sharing examples of innovation and best practice across Scotland, the UK and Europe.

The Scottish Government''s broadband commitment currently extends to provision of basic broadband services (512Kbps), which are already available to over 99% of the population. The Scottish Government''s Broadband Reach Project aims to meet known demand in the areas where the remaining 1% live, many of which are rural in nature. We expect all those premises that registered for the project prior to the original deadline of 31 March 2008, and which have placed an order for service, to secure broadband access by the end of May 2009.

The requirement for a Scottish National Rural Network is a specific legal requirement by the European Commission. The remit for the first stage review of the Scotland Rural Development Programme did not include specific reference to the Scottish National Rural Network. The government will make public the findings of the review at a later date.

We have no firm data on the number of private rented properties that are not registered.

However, based on statistics from the Scottish Household Survey, we estimate that approximately 85% of private rented sector properties are covered by applications for registration.

There are about 233,000 households in the private rented sector. Taking the number of properties included in landlord applications “ 198,476 as of April 2009 “ as a proxy for households gives an estimated coverage of 85% of private rented sector households.

However, these figures are an estimate only. We do not know how many of the 233,000 private rented households would require registration. Some are likely to be exempt because they do not fall within the scope of the legislation, for example, because the let is to family members or because the landlord is resident in the let property. Some households in the sector may also share a property (for example, tenants who live in an HMO). In other words, we cannot directly compare households with the number of properties requiring registration.

Local authorities have a range of powers available to them to enforce registration including taking action to identify unregistered landlords and to ensure compliance with the registration requirement.

In October 2007, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing announced the establishment of a new Low-cost Initiative for First-Time Buyers (LIFT) to bring together a range of Scottish Government initiatives to help households get onto the housing ladder.

LIFT covers a broad range of support for first-time buyers, including the New Supply Shared Equity scheme and Open Market Shared Equity Pilot schemes; shared ownership; Rural Home Ownership Grants (RHOGs), and GRO grants for owner occupation (grants to private developers to build low cost housing for sale).

The only information held on applicants centrally for LIFT relates to the Open Market Shared Equity Pilot scheme. Between October 2007 and 30 April 2009, a total of 1,848 completed application forms have been returned to the registered social landlords (RSLs) operating the scheme on behalf of the Scottish ministers. Not every completed application form will, however, be eligible for the Open Market Shared Equity Pilot scheme.

Please see below the total number of completed applications received broken down by each local authority:

Local Authority	Number of Completed Application Forms Returned
Edinburgh and the Lothians, Fife and Scottish Borders
Edinburgh	684
East Lothian	122
Fife	5
Midlothian	113
Scottish Borders	0
West Lothian	318
Eilean Siar	0
Grampian
Aberdeen City	142
Aberdeenshire	87
Moray	10
Highland	185
Orkney	4
Shetland	0
Tayside and Forth Valley
Angus	0
Clackmannanshire	0
Dundee	3
Falkirk	9
Perth and Kinross	23
Stirling	76
West
Argyll and Bute	1
Dumfries and Galloway	5
East Ayrshire	3
East Dunbartonshire	2
East Renfrewshire	2
Glasgow	30
Inverclyde	1
North Ayrshire	0
North Lanarkshire	11
Renfrewshire	1
South Ayrshire	5
South Lanarkshire	4
West Dunbartonshire	2
Total	=SUM(ABOVE) 1,848