Chamber and committees

The Executive has no plans to directly fund former SIP projects from the Community Regeneration Fund (CRF).

The new Community Regeneration Fund has combined and replaced both the Social Inclusion Partnership Fund and the Better Neighbourhood Services Fund from April 2005 and will be allocated to Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs). CPPs will berequired to set out how they are managing the transition of projects and services in their Regeneration Outcome Agreement.

Where CPPs decide continuation of funding of former SIP projects is no longer appropriate, CPPs have been advised to consider whether they should sustain such projects using mainstream resources, funding from other programmes or whether time-bound exit strategies should be used.

It is the intention of the Scottish Executive to implement the EU Environmental Noise Directive through regulations in the Scottish Parliament. Discussions with the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Transport on some of the many technical issues associated with this complex directive are now nearing completion, and it is anticipated that consultation will be carried out early in 2005 with a view to implementing the directive shortly thereafter.

Information on the number ofclinical radiology training posts in NHS Scotland is collected by NHS Educationfor Scotland (NES). The data is not available by health board area, however, thenational information can be broken down by region and this is shown in the followingbelow.

Number of Training Posts andVacancies in Radiology in NHSScotland at December 2004

Specialty By Region	National Training Number	Visiting Training Number	Fixed-Term Training Appointment	Vacancies	Total
Radiology
East	2	8	0	1	11
North	11	5	0	1	17
South East	27	1	1	0	29
West	38	12	1	4	55
Total	78	26	2	6	112

 

Information on the domicile ofdoctors in training is currently not held centrally. We are committed to improvinginformation to inform workforce planning and are working through a number of measureson domicile to enable more robust information to be collated and utilised.

The number of radiologist posts created is not available centrally. Information on established posts and vacancies in clinical radiology is shown in the following table by NHS board in each of the last three years.

NHSScotland Workforce Statistics Consultant Clinical Radiologists Establishment by NHS Board

	Establishment			Establishment			Total Vacancies			Total Vacancies
	Whole-Time Equivalent at 30 September			Headcount at 30 September			Whole-Time Equivalent at 30 September			Headcount at 30 September
	2001	2002	2003	2001	2002	2003	2001	2002	2003	2001	2002	2003
Scotland	209.1	218.2	230.7	220	228	240	19.6	23.8	31.5	20	24	32
NHS Ayrshire and Arran	13.0	15.0	15.0	13	15	15	1.0	4.0	4.0	1	4	4
NHS Borders	3.6	3.0	3.0	4	3	3	-	-	-	-	-	-
NHS Argyll and Clyde	13.7	13.7	16.3	15	15	17	2.0	2.0	3.0	2	2	3
NHS Fife	10.1	7.1	8.9	12	9	10	5.0	4.0	5.0	5	4	5
NHS Greater Glasgow	47.7	54.8	59.8	50	57	62	1.6	5.0	6.0	2	5	6
NHS Highland	6.0	9.8	9.8	6	10	10	-	2.0	2.0	-	2	2
NHS Lanarkshire	21.9	19.6	22.7	24	21	24	3.0	1.0	4.5	3	1	5
NHS Grampian	21.7	19.6	20.6	23	21	22	2.0	-	-	2	-	-
NHS Lothian	37.8	37.0	38.0	40	39	40	2.0	1.8	2.0	2	2	2
NHS Tayside	22.5	23.5	22.5	23	24	23	1.0	-	1.0	1	-	1
NHS Forth Valley	6.0	9.0	8.0	6	9	8	1.0	2.0	1.0	1	2	1
NHS Western Isles	-	1.0	1.0	-	1	1	-	1.0	1.0	-	1	1
NHS Dumfries and Galloway	5.0	5.0	5.0	5	5	5	1.0	1.0	2.0	1	1	2

Source:ISD Scotland.

The responsibility for the recruitmentof all staff in NHSScotland is managed locally by each of the individual NHS boardsacross Scotland. However, the Executive is pursing several initiativeson behalf of the health service on a Scotland wide basis which will enable NHS boards to improve theirability to recruit and retain Cconsultant staff in specialties where there is currentlya shortage.

A short-life working group iscurrently assessing a range of retention initiatives, with particular emphasis oncrucial shortage areas that includes radiology.

This activity is all taking placewithin a background of Scottish, United Kingdom and, indeed global, shortages in some specialties thatincludes Radiology.

At 30 September 2003, there were199.2 whole-time equivalent (WTE) consultant clinical radiologists in NHS Scotland.Using 2003 mid-year population estimates there are 3.9 consultant clinical radiologistsper 100,000 population. Comparable figures for the United Kingdom and Europe arenot readily available.

The Executive remains deeplyconcerned about the continuing high incidence of knife crime and its contributionto violent crime. The role of knives and other weapons in homicides and assaultsneeds urgent and effective action. Accordingly the Executive has been reviewingknife crime law and enforcement, as promised in the Partnership Agreement. The FirstMinister in his statement on 22 November 2004 set out a programme of measures whichwe believe will tackle the impact of knife crime across Scotland today. One of themeasures in this five-point plan is a proposal to ban the general sale of swords.

The Executive will be consultingon these proposals early in 2005. We recognise that, in strengthening the law onthe sale, ownership and use of swords, exceptions may have to be built into thelegislation to cover legitimate aspects on sword use and ownership, for examplefor sporting or cultural purposes.

The Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE) initiative provides a framework for local public sector agencies to respond to large scale redundancies quickly and effectively. A local response to the situation faced by workers at Richards of Aberdeen is underway. Assistance has been provided in the form of a Jobs fair, held at the offices of Jobcentre plus, in November 2004 with over 35 local employers taking part.

The outcome of such additional financial support is assessed through the monitoring and evaluation arrangements for the particular programme being funded.