Chamber and committees

Under Agenda for Change staff have the right to request a review of their matching or evaluation outcome. As nearly all staff have been placed on the new pay system, boards are now turning their attention to completing reviews as early in 2009 as possible.

The data collected by the Scottish Government does not detail the number of specific review requests submitted but rather the two key statistics for management purposes:

1. the number of posts for which review requests have been received (i.e. if three people doing the same job in a given area submit review requests this would only count as a request to review one post) and;

2. the number of postholders affected by review requests (i.e. following on from the example above, if there are five people in total doing that same job in a given area, then the outcome of the three review requests submitted will affect all five staff).

A number of review requests have already been processed with boards around the country at different stages in handling. However, the following table details the total number of posts for which review requests have been received and the number of postholders potentially affected by these reviews. The figures are taken at 30 November 2008 and broken down by NHS board.

NHS Board	Number of Posts for which Review Requests Have Been Received	Number of Postholders Potentially Affected by the Review Request
Ayrshire and Arran	1,096	2,717
Borders	427	797
Dumfries and Galloway	485	2,728
Fife	558	1,688
Forth Valley	447	1,155
Golden Jubilee National Hospital	39	103
Grampian	1,617	4,083
Greater Glasgow and Clyde	3,586	9,403
Highland	804	2,374
Lanarkshire	2,524	2,524
Lothian	2,152	11,091
NHS24	21	57
NHS Education for Scotland	108	149
NHS Health	20	35
NHS National Services Scotland	485	1,525
NHS Quality Improvement Scotland	30	64
Orkney	121	160
Scottish Ambulance Service	94	3,822
Shetland	71	99
State Hospital	86	322
Tayside	1,132	5,366
Western Isles	38	42
Total	15,941	50,310

 

Assimilation is being taken forward in partnership locally and I know that existing staff have generally been prioritised for assimilation over retirees. There will, therefore, be retirees waiting for assimilation in many parts of the country. The Scottish Government does not collect data on the numbers involved but these are likely to be relatively small in the context of the larger process.

Under Agenda for Change staff have the right to request a review of their matching or evaluation outcome. As nearly all staff have been placed on the new pay system, boards are now turning their attention to completing reviews as early in 2009 as possible.

The data collected by the Scottish Government does not detail the number of specific review requests submitted but rather the two key statistics for management purposes:

1. the number of posts for which review requests have been received (i.e. if three people doing the same job in a given area submit review requests this would only count as a request to review one post), and

2. the number of postholders affected by review requests (i.e. following on from the example above, if there are five people in total doing that same job in a given area, then the outcome of the three review requests submitted will affect all five staff).

A number of review requests have already been processed with boards around the country at different stages in handling. Figures are available for the number of postholders affected by the reviews which have already been processed and this therefore allows a figure to be calculated for the number of postholders who are left and are, therefore, potentially affected by the outcome of outstanding review requests. These figures are presented in the following table. The figures are taken at 30 November 2008 and broken down by NHS board.

Number of Postholders who could be Affected by the Outcome of Outstanding Review Requests

NHS Board
Ayrshire and Arran	2,167
Borders	5
Dumfries and Galloway	2,105
Fife	1,564
Forth Valley	1,022
Golden Jubilee National Hospital	55
Grampian	140
Greater Glasgow and Clyde	9,403
Highland	1,683
Lanarkshire	1,586
Lothian	8,754
NHS24	30
NHS Education for Scotland	0
NHS Health	15
NHS National Services Scotland	361
NHS Quality Improvement Scotland	7
Orkney	0
Scottish Ambulance Service	0
Shetland	35
State Hospital	322
Tayside	4,321
Western Isles	20
Total	33,601

 

The Scottish Government pays a proportionate share (91.7%) of the City of Edinburgh Council''s expenditure on development and implementation costs for the Edinburgh Tram project. A total of £206.881 million has been drawn down to date as set out in table 1.

Table 1

Edinburgh Tram Expenditure	2002-03 (£000)	2003-04 (£000)	2004-05 (£000)	2005-06 (£000)
Month of Payment
June	0	0	121,369	4,271,101
July	0	0	578,554	0
August	29,656	528,096	471,370	0
September	0	1,684,648	615,262	0
October	331,678	687,422	0	0
November	0	554,906	114,731	859,387
December	311,949	376,207	291,646	0
January	180,575	909,258	2,035,697	0
February	140,871	0	0	0
March	332,021	389,423	141,786	1,632,190
April	486,807	1,101,081	120,656	5,368,775
May	0	925,222	1,917.781	1,369,172
June	218,985	0	0	0
Totals	2,032,542	7,156,263	6,408,853	13,500,625

 

Edinburgh Tram Expenditure	2006-07 (£000)	2007-08 (£000)	2008-09 To date (£000)
Month of Payment
June	0	0	14,128,172
July	0	0	9,049,325
August	5,316,445	0	43,086,443
September	0	0	9,957,687
October	12,109,729	0	1,462,720
November	0	0	2,480,528
December	6,972,186	0	0
January	0	0	0
February	0	0	0
March	1,234,591	0	0
April	0	0	14,524,929
May	0	69,918,838	5,863,750
June	0	0	0
Totals	25,632,951	69,918,838	82,231,111

 

The detailed phasing of expenditure is for City of Edinburgh Council to manage. The Scottish Government will continue to meet its agreed obligation of 91.7% of expenditure, subject to annual limits of £120 million in this financial year and £149 million in next financial year.

The Scottish Government will pay the agreed 91.7% of costs expended by CEC on lines 1a and 1b up to a limit of £500 million. This arrangement is not altered by the status of Line 1b.

We are in the process of investigating options “ including legislative ones “ for supporting a means of resolving disputes about high hedges. The findings of this work will be reported to Parliament early in 2009, alongside the findings of the review of national antisocial behaviour policy.

The Fresh Talent: Working in Scotland Scheme: Evidence Review report is now available on the Scottish Government website at www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/Recent. A copy of the report will also be placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 46484).

Progress is being made to reduce class sizes to 18 in P1 to P3 without legislation. We signed a concordat with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities last year under which local government undertook to reduce primary 1 to primary 3 classes to a maximum of 18 as quickly as possible. Local government also agreed to make year on year progress towards the delivery of the class size reduction policy. We have always acknowledged that progress on class size reduction would vary across local authorities depending on local circumstances and needs. We will continue to monitor the situation as to whether legislation would be required to cover this and the last administration''s policies.

No. We re-issued Additional Guidance on Local Authority Proposals for the School Estate, including School Closures on 11 October 2007. A copy is available in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 43920). The primary purpose of the guidance is to set out the roles and responsibilities of those involved in considering proposals that may lead to changes in the school estate including the closure of schools. The guidance already makes clear our expectation that, in formulating such proposals, authorities should indeed take account of all factors, in each case.