Chamber and committees

The Scottish Further Education Funding Council, a predecessor of the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, took over the responsibility of allocating funds to further education colleges from the Scottish Office Education and Industry Department on 1 July 1999. The information requested is as follows:

Year	Capital (£)	Revenue* (£)
1996-97	64,625	6,510,300
1997-98	-	6,137,900
1998-99	-	6,257,000
1999-2000	153,850	6,785,700
2000-01	608,041	7,453,480
2001-02	885,273	11,089,224
2002-03	2,059,243	8,761,778
2003-04	225,775	8,521,056
2004-05	1,766,887	8,754,073

Note: *Recurrent grant-in-aid.

Funding for roads is provided primarily through the local government finance settlement. The local roads maintenance provision for Scotland in 2005-06 totalled some £260 million.

The roads provision for 2006-07 and 2007-08 is £360 million per annum. This represents a better than 23% increase on the 2004-05 allocation for roads maintenance. Additional provision of £60 million has been made available for 2006-07 and 2007-08 for improving local roads. This was in direct response to the COSLA bid during SR2004 which we met in full. We expect local authorities to therefore use this resource accordingly.

The service specification for the tendering process will recognise the role of the trade unions and will seek information from potential operators on how they intend to work and develop relations with those organisations. The successful operator will be expected to work in partnership with the relevant trade unions.

The Executive is of the view that the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE) is likely to be applicable to any staff transfer arising from the tendering of the Clyde and Hebrides ferry services. This means that transferring employees would be entitled to be employed on the same terms and conditions as they had at the point of transfer. However, the contract will also include mechanisms to protect the terms and conditions of the existing workforce during the contract period.

The Scottish Executive is committed to protecting the interests of the workforce of Caledonian MacBrayne and the communities it serves.

In line with the relevant regulations (the Public Service Contracts Regulations), prospective bidders at the pre-qualification stage may only be required to show that they understand the project’s requirements and are likely to be able to undertake the work adequately. At the pre-qualification stage a contracting authority cannot take into account which providers it thinks are likely to submit the best proposals for carrying out the specific project, or (for example) has the best, or better, employment policies than other bidders.

However, in relation to protecting the interests of the workforce the subsequent Invitation to Tender document will invite bids on the basis that the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE) applies. This provides some protection for the CalMac workforce. However, we are also aware that TUPE offers protection only at the point of transfer. It is still possible that a prospective operator could contemplate replacing the current staff with others on different terms and conditions. Consequently, we will include provisions in the contract, and make it clear to the bidders that, if this were pursued, the new operator would have to pay for any redundancy or other compensation involved, and that such payments would not qualify for subsidy. These would have to be met from the operator’s own resources. In addition, any saving of staff costs that arose would be clawed back through an equivalent reduction in subsidy. This will create a disincentive to an operator to propose an approach involving replacement of the existing staff.

The Construction Procurement Manual will be published on the Scottish Executive’s website today. Along with complementary changes to the Scottish Public Finance Manual, the revised guidance addresses a number of measures relating to the procurement and management of major capital projects including: mandatory use of the independent Gateway Review process on high-risk or mission-critical projects exceeding £5 million budget, clearer decision-making and accountability in relation to choice of procurement route, and clarification of appointment processes for design teams in accordance with EU procurement rules.

As Lord Fraser’s report acknowledged, the circumstances of the Holyrood project might be regarded as exceptional. Since 1999 many improvements have already been implemented by the Executive, including publication of the Construction Client Pack and the introduction of Gateway Reviews. The further improvements incorporated in the new Construction Procurement Manual and in the revisions to the Scottish Public Finance Manual should help ensure that other Scottish public projects do not experience similar difficulties in future.

The Construction Procurement Manual will be available at:

www.scotland.gov.uk/topics/Planning-Building/Construction.

The funding council and its predecessors provided funding as follows:

Year	Support (£)	Enrolments*
1996-97	6,574,925	6,770
1997-98	7,432,900	7,290
1998-99	8,346,450	9,485
1999-2000	8,386,494	10,660
2000-01	9,058,602	12,080
2001-02	13,078,008	12,095
2002-03	11,669,139	12,495
2003-04	10,021,016	10,945
2004-05	12,016,343	-

Notes:

*Numbers have been rounded to the nearest five.

1. Figures relating to student activity are kept on the basis of enrolments. A student may enrol on more than one course. Enrolment figures for 2004-05 are not yet available.

2. The figures shown under “Support” represent the initial grant-in-aid allocation, bursary funding (from 1997-98) and any additional funding allocated to Clydebank College by the Scottish Office Enterprise and Industry Department and subsequently by the Scottish Further Education Funding Council.

Local authorities are responsible for safety on local roads in their area. Scottish ministers provide local authorities with revenue and capital allocations for expenditure on a number of services, including roads and transport, which may be used for local road safety projects. Specific support has been provided since 2000 for cycling, walking and safer streets projects, including safer routes to school (CWSS): prior to that there was no specific grant schemes in this area. Support has been provided since 2003 for 20mph schemes around schools, related safety projects and home zones (20mph); a child pedestrian training pilot in West Dunbartonshire (CPTP), and funding for new school travel co-ordinator posts (STC). Accident investigation and prevention (AIP) measures have also been carried out on trunk roads in West Dunbartonshire. The level of support by financial year is given in the following table.

Council	Year	Project	Support (£)
West Dunbartonshire	2000-01	CWSS	98,000
	2001-02	CWSS	57,000
		AIP	96,855
	2002-03	CWSS	87,000
		CPTP	22,500
	2003-04	CWSS	151,000
		20mph	101,000
		CPTP	30,000
		STC	14,000
		AIP	30,048
	2004-05	CWSS	151,000
		20mph	220,000
		CPTP	30,000
		STC	19,000
		AIP	8,796
	2005-06	CWSS	159,000
		20mph	220,000
		CPTP	7,500
		STC	19,000
East Dunbartonshire	2000-01	CWSS	114,000
	2001-02	CWSS	66,000
	2002-03	CWSS	101,000
	2003-04	CWSS	176,000
		20mph	99,000
		STC	16,900
	2004-05	CWSS	175,000
		20mph	220,000
		STC	23,000
	2005-06	CWSS	185,000
		20mph	220,000
		STC	23,000

 

Potential operators and their proposals will be heavily scrutinised. The first stage of that process, the pre-qualification stage, considers their ability to provide the service. This involves looking at their financial standing, standards of ability and technical capacity including experience and safety record. For those bidders that pass the first stage, the second stage requires them to put together a very detailed bid explaining how they would provide the service. The proposals will be scrutinised closely. To pass this stage, operators must convince the Executive that the standard of service for users would be at least as good as that currently provided by CalMac. The final stage looks at the bid for subsidy. However, only those bidders who have demonstrated that they are capable of delivering the service to the required standard will reach this stage.

The Scottish Executive provides funding to Road Safety Scotland for the development of key road safety education initiatives and publicity messages. Road Safety Scotland provides publicity to complement enforcement campaigns, focussing on drink driving, organised by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland. Road Safety Scotland has arranged radio advertising, beer-mats and posters in support of the police festive drink drive campaign launched on 5 December.

Road Safety Scotland’s current strategy for drink drive publicity is informed by research, published by the Scottish Executive in 2004, on the Evaluation of the 2003-04 Festive Drink Drive Campaign undertaken by the Association of Chief Officers of Police in Scotland. The research is enabling Road Safety Scotland to target specific messages at key groups. Copies of the research report are available in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 34045).