A successful bid will place sport at the forefront of public consciousness. It will therefore complement existing strategies aimed at encouraging all Scots to be physically active, increasing access to first class facilities and allowing all, particularly the young, to reach their potential.

The Executive has also made a significant commitment to provide more time for physical education, more teachers of physical education and more choice in physical education.

Through its development programme, Communities Scotland aims to provide affordable, good quality housing for people on low incomes in both West and East Dunbartonshire Local Authority areas. It is also the aim of Communities Scotland to provide a range of affordable housing options within these areas including social rented provision, low cost home ownership (through a combination of GRO Grant subsidy to private developers and shared ownership/equity housing provided via RSLs) and rented/low cost home ownership housing to meet special needs (elderly, disabled etc.)

Within West Dunbartonshire in the current financial year 2005-06 Communities Scotland propose to invest over £11 million in the provision of affordable housing and will achieve 142 new unit approvals. Currently this level of investment is set to rise to over £14 million in 2006-07.

Within East Dunbartonshire Communities Scotland are scheduled to invest just under £2 million in the provision of affordable housing for 2005-06 (with 111 unit approvals) and funding is predicted to increase to over £5 million for affordable housing provision in 2006-07.

A major component of affordable housing investment will take place within areas of deprivation such as Hillhead in Kirkintilloch and in Twechar, both areas of low income households. As a result of the shortage of available land for building, particularly in higher pressurised market areas such as Milngavie and  Bearsden, Communities Scotland is working closely with East Dunbartonshire Council in the operation of its affordable housing policy which requires housing developers to allocate a percentage of their development for affordable units. It is expected that around 900 new affordable houses will be secured through this policy.

The deployment and utilisation of these officers on initiatives designed to reduce fear of crime amongst older people is a matter for the chief constable.

The Volunteering Strategy, with ProjectScotland, a new full time volunteering programme for young people at its centre;

The funding of the CVS and LVC networks that support local voluntary and volunteering activity and which have been awarded funding of over £16 million for the next three years;

The refocused Millennium Volunteers programme, which is designed to sustain volunteering and promote a sense of community involvement for young people aged 16 to 25, and

General support for infrastructure bodies that provide a range of support services to the voluntary sector across Scotland.

Each of these initiatives and organisations has set targets and performance indicators that are monitored and reported on each year. Volunteering activity generally is also monitored through the Scottish Household Survey, which can be accessed at:

www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/16002/4031.

Free personal care for people at home is included in the services for home‑based elderly GAE line. From this line, West Dunbartonshire has been allocated £9,422,000 and East Dunbartonshire £8,122,000.

Local authority GAE, including community care for older people, is published on the Scottish Executive website at www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/gaestats.

Local authority revenue expenditure, known as GAE, is funded by a combination of centrally provided government funding through Aggregate External Finance (AEF) and funding raised by local authorities through council tax. Local authorities are free to spend above or below the GAE level, according to their own local needs and priorities. The money that local authorities receive through AEF is, in the main, provided by way of a block grant and not allocated to specific services.

GAE is allocated to individual local authorities on the basis of a needs-based distribution formula agreed with COSLA. GAE forms part of the complex formula used to calculate one revenue grant figure for each local authority.

The Scottish Executive is contributing to the enhancement of capacity-building and self-sufficiency and improving social inclusion in a number of ways via housing and social justice funding initiatives introduced by Communities Scotland:

In East Dunbartonshire, the Affordable Housing Investment Programme (AHIP) has grown from approximately £500,000 per year in 2000 to £3.043 million in 2005-06.

Communities Scotland also expects to approve expenditure of £85,000 in East Dunbartonshire in 2005-06 from its Wider Role programme for housing associations on a variety of community-focused projects.

Additionally, East Dunbartonshire Community Planning Partnership has been allocated a total of £828,000 from the Community Regeneration Fund (CRF) for the period 2005-06 to 2007-08, based upon the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). The majority of this funding will be spent in the Hillhead and Twechar areas. A further £90,000 has been allocated from the Community Voices Fund, to support capacity building and social inclusion projects between 2005-06 and 2007-08.

In West Dunbartonshire, Communities Scotland’s programme in Clydebank in the next five years will amount to around £16.7 million, plus an additional £9 million related to Link Housing Association’s programme.

Communities Scotland also expects to approve expenditure of £822,000 in West Dunbartonshire in 2005-06 from its Wider Role programme.

West Dunbartonshire Community Planning Partnership has been allocated a total of £13.368 million from the CRF for the period 2005-06 to 2007-08, based upon the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, and a further £258,000 from Community Voices. Spending will take place largely within the most disadvantaged areas highlighted in the SIMD.

RSI Funding to East and West Dunbartonshire 1997-98 to 2005-06¹

Note: 1. Partnership bid with Argyll and Bute Council.

Local authorities’ activities funded as a result of RSI have now become integrated with local authorities’ wider homelessness strategies and since 2004-05 these activities have been included within their local outcome agreements, which set out on an annual basis how they are implementing these strategies.

Within these reporting arrangements, it is for local authorities to decide how and where to spend RSI funding, according to local priorities and pressures. The Executive does not hold information regarding the geographical areas in which funding is spent.

The final evaluation of the RSI was published in March 2005 (which can be found at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/03/20886/54982) and concluded that this initiative had achieved significant progress and produced tangible reductions in the need to sleep rough across the country. The evaluation concluded that the RSI enhanced services in cities and often created specific services for the first time in rural and smaller urban areas, and referred positively to services provided in East Dunbartonshire.