Chamber and committees

The funds earmarked to support the staging of the European Nations Football Championships in 2008 have been reallocated to support the Executive’s National and Regional Facilities Strategy as previously announced in March this year.

The Scottish ministers do not issue a detailed report of their assessment in circumstances such as this where they are not determining the planning application. Internal planning documents are exempt from disclosure under exemption 2 of Part II of the Code of Practice on Access to Scottish Executive Information as they include information relating to internal discussion and advice.The Scottish ministers are, of course, aware that there is a general presumption against development in the green belt. However, such development may be acceptable in special circumstances. In this case it was clear that there was a pressing need for a new water treatment works to improve the quality of drinking water supplied to the Greater Glasgow area in order to meet current regulatory standards.The Scottish ministers were aware that East Dunbartonshire Council received over 3,900 objections to the proposal. And they were also aware that the Council had received more than 3,300 letters supporting the development. Ministers may call-in a planning application where it is considered that a planning authority has failed to give full consideration to local objections. But a substantial volume of objections is not in itself sufficient grounds to call in an application. All other relevant issues must be taken into account, as they were in this case, and a balanced decision reached.

The ScotlandsPeople website did not come into operation until 2 September 2002, so the General Register Office for Scotland collected no income from it during financial years 2000-01 and 2001-02. ScotlandsPeople replaced the Scots Origins website, from which GROS derived £63,346 in income from accesses to the site in the financial year 2000-01 and £164,704 in 2001-02.

The General Register Office for Scotland spent £501,581 on advertising during financial year 2000-01 and £618,046 during 2001-02. This expenditure related mainly to publicity for the 2001 Census and includes fees paid to appointed publicity agents. During the same period there was no expenditure on sponsorship.

The introduction of byelawsis a matter for local authorities under section 201 of the Local Government (Scotland)Act 1973. The Executive has a supervisory role, in that Scottish ministersultimately confirm all byelaws, but the initiative in making them lies with thelocal authority.

Data about injury road accidents are collected by the police and reported to the Scottish Executive using the STATS 19 statistical report form. These returns cover only road accidents in which one or more people were injured: they do not cover damage only accidents.During 2002, there were 20 injury road accidents that were identified in the STATS 19 returns as occurring on the A811 between its junction with the A811 at Ballat Cross and the centre of Stirling.It should be noted that this figure is based upon the data which are held in the central statistical database and which were collected by the police at the time of the accident and subsequently reported to the Executive. It may differ from any figure which the local authority would provide now, because it does not take account of any subsequent changes or corrections that the local authority may have made to the statistical information, for use at local level, about the location of each accident, based upon its knowledge of the road and area concerned.

The number of injury accidents that have occurred on the A84 between Stirling and Lochearnhead in 2001 and 2002 are as follows:

Year	Fatal	Serious	Slight	Total
2001	2	8	18	28
2002	0	8	11	19

No specific provision is provided to local authorities for the payment of non-domestic rates. Local authorities meet the cost of non-domestic rates from the overall resources available to them.

In mid May, Scotland the Brand was offered a contract to co-ordinate the showcasing of Scottish food and drink at the planned evening of Scottish culture this coming September in Barcelona. Given their specialist marketing skills and in light of the time available for planning this event, no other contractors were invited to bid on this particular occasion.

To date six out of eight Scottish safety camera partnerships have been approved in Dumfries and Galloway, Fife, Grampian, Lothian and Borders, Strathclyde and Tayside. It is expected that the remaining two partnerships, Central and Northern, will go live next year.By agreement with HM Treasury, the Scottish safety camera partnerships are resourced from hypothecated fine income.