Chamber and committees

The Scottish Governmentis committed to further improving Scotland’s school estate,and to working with authorities, including the City of Edinburgh Council, on how best to continue to achieve that. We will beproviding financial support towards the current rebuilding of Bonaly and JuniperGreen Primary Schools and of Broughton, Craigroyston, Forrester, Holy Rood, St Augustine’sand Tynecastle High Schools. Funding allocations in support of future investmentplans for the school estate have yet to be announced.

Where packaging isgenuinely excessive, the supplier would be liable to enforcement action under theprovisions of the Packaging (Essential Requirements) Regulations 2003, which arereserved.

The Scottish Governmentis working with the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to ensure furtheraction by retailers to implement the Courtauld Commitment to reduce packaging andwaste. In addition, we have set increasing recovery obligations in the producerresponsibility regulations for packaging.

The Scottish Government’sHealth Directorate has an Environmental Management Policy for NHSScotland whichimposes a number of mandatory requirements on NHSScotland bodies (this includesall health boards, Special Health Boards and NHS National Services Scotland). Interms of this policy all these bodies must have in place an environmental managementpolicy statement which commits each health board to comply with all environmentalobligations and is consistent with and supportive of the Scottish Executive’s sustainabledevelopment objectives as contained within Choosing Our Future: Scotland’s SustainableDevelopment Strategy.

To reinforce the ScottishGovernment strategy on recycling one of the mandatory requirements of the NHSScotlandEnvironmental Management Policy is that each board “must include targets for thereduction of clinical, special and other waste arisings and identify, where practicable,re-use, recycling and recovery opportunities.”

This information isnot held centrally.

A range of Scottish Governmentfunding, which can help support people with autism spectrum disorders to preparefor and find work, is available to local agencies. These include local authorities,health boards, local enterprise bodies and some non-departmental public bodies whoare best placed to make decisions about funding local organisations.

The Scottish Government workscollaboratively with voluntary sector organisations, service users and carers ongroups such as the national ASD Reference Group and the ASD education working group,to develop appropriate and responsive services for people on the autism spectrumincluding those with Asperger syndrome.

In consultation with the referencegroup, the Scottish Government has funded a number of pilot projects to help meetthe diverse needs of children, young people and adults with autism spectrum disordersand their carers, including a one stop shop for adults with Asperger syndrome inEdinburgh. These pilot projects aim to inform service development in other areas.

The Scottish Government alsoprovides significant funding each year to help local authorities make provisionfor children and young people with additional support needs, including Aspergersyndrome. In 2007-08 this funding included £44.7 million specifically for: the implementationof the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act2004; inclusion, and the training and development of staff working with pupils withadditional support needs. It is a matter for education authorities to decide howto allocate this funding in the light of local needs and circumstances.

The public consultation onthe draft regulations relating to the single survey and property sale questionnaireended on 15 May 2007. Ministers will consider the way forward for theseproposals in light of the responses received from the consultation.

We are committed to reducingthe amount of waste sent to landfill and to moving towards a zero waste Scotland. Thisincludes the promotion of re-use. We intend to work with the community recyclingsector and others to consider, by the end of this year, what more we can do to encouragere-use.

A number of bodies in the privatesector, the community recycling sector and charity shops are already encouragingthe re-use of goods such as furniture, bicycles, carpets, children’s toys and othergoods.

Information on Freecycle andother similar websites is included in the useful links section of the Scottish WasteAwareness Group’s website http://www.wascot.org.uk/html/links.asp?cat=8&catTitle=Reuse.

Existing planning policies areset out in National Planning Policy Guideline 6: Renewable Energy Developments.Consultation has taken place on revised guidance and this is expected to be publishedshortly.

Although we do not consider thatit is realistic to eliminate waste entirely, we are committed to more sustainablewaste management including waste prevention, increased recycling and compostingand reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill.