Chamber and committees

The Do a Little, Change a Lot website: www.dochange.net, was redesigned and re-launched on 2 September to coincide with the new phase of the campaign. The site had 2,378 hits in its first month. No pre-launch projections were made. The previous version of the site had around 19,800 hits from September 2001 to August 2002.

The Scottish Executive Education Department began receiving website statistics in February 2001. Since then the total number of recorded hits to the home page of the Children's Hearings website is 25,266 and to the entire site is 310,706.Statistics were not routinely collected on a monthly basis until November 2001. The following table gives details of monthly figures from then. No pre-launch projection of the number of hits was carried out prior to set-up of the site.

Month	Hits for Home Page	Successful Hits for Entire Site
November 2001	851	9,533
December 2001	640	6,581
January 2002	955	11,517
February 2002	876	10,280
March 2002	2012	24,001
April 2002	2963	35,173
May 2002	4230	49,063
June 2002	5201	60,349
July 2002	1056	12,169
August 2002	1720	23,584
September 2002	2,209	36,868
Total	22,713	279,118

The Foolsspeed campaign was supported by 25 local authorities, for example through the display of the Foolsspeed logo on council vehicles, letter heads and road safety related material. Many authorities also negotiated free advertising space to display the logo, such as bus backs, parking tickets and library book carrier bags. All 22 Road Safety Units in Scotland promoted Foolsspeed in various ways, such as using the message to encourage slower speeds in the vicinity of schools in Fife. The display of the logo on wheelie bins in certain areas highlights the campaign to residents and makes it very visible to drivers when the bins are on the pavement. All police forces in Scotland have supported the campaign, partly through police road safety units, but also during periods of high profile enforcement initiatives such as Speedwatch.A number of commercial organisations, including Tesco, Safeway, Robert Wiseman Dairies and Transco have been involved in a variety of ways, for example displaying the logo on fleet vehicles and milk cartons, and promoting the Foolsspeed message with their drivers. Other companies agreed to promote Foolsspeed on their safe driving courses and to their drivers.An evaluation of the Foolsspeed campaign was published on 30 October. Copies of the research report, Changing Speeding Behaviour in Scotland: An Evaluation of the 'Foolsspeed' Campaign, have been placed in the Parliament's Reference Centre (Bib. number 24874). This includes findings about the impact of the campaign on driver behaviour.

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond. His response is as follows:Procurement decisions for prisoner places, whether in the public or private sector, are based on the best available population projections at the time of the decision and the contract term or projected asset life which provides the best economic value to taxpayers.

Recent maintenance inspections of Balmoor Bridge and an assessment of the structure for its load carrying capacity have confirmed that the bridge is suitable for current trunk road purposes. There are no plans to replace the bridge.

The M74 Completion website is designed to provide information to communities or businesses which will be affected by the M74 motorway construction proposals, and is jointly funded by the Scottish Executive, Glasgow City Council, South Lanarkshire Council and Renfrewshire Council. Total set-up costs were £18,100, and total operating costs of the site to date, from May 2002, are £8,490.

The Scottish Executive set up the Scottish public sector property website to speed up sales and lettings of public sector property and expose it 24 hours a day to a wider market than other property marketing methods.It cost £12,000 to establish, £9,470 running costs in the first year and will cost £9,000 for each of the succeeding two years, all plus VAT. There are currently over 1,700 properties currently on the site.Over time we expect there will be a reduction in advertising and marketing costs.

It cost £25,000 to establish the Learn to Let Go website and the most recent annual operating costs of the site were £1,434 for hosting of the site and £3,246 for additions and updates in the course of the year.

The Do a Little, Change a Lot website www.dochange.net was redesigned and re-launched on 2 September to coincide with the new phase of the campaign. The new website cost £26,000 to establish. Annual operating costs of £7,300 cover hosting of the site, application rental and support and marketing. The previous version of the site cost £89,517 to establish and operate.

The total cost of establishing the Know the Score website was £15,000. It is estimated that the operating costs in the first year will amount to £2,025 (we are currently in discussion with the website designers about updating the site, but do not yet have projected costs for this). All of the above costs are exclusive of VAT.