- Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Adam Ingram on 6 September 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive how many pre-school providers are at risk of imminent closure, broken down by (a) local authority and (b) type of provider.
Answer
This informationis not held centrally.
Statistics on thenumber of pre-school education providers by local authority and type ofproviders are available in the pre-school and child care statistics 2006 availableat http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/09/13155926/0.
- Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 6 September 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive whether Lord Sutherland’s review of the policy of free personal and nursing care will consider the effect of the policy on other services delivered to older people in Scotland and, in particular, whether resources have been diverted from general services for older people to pay for free personal and nursing care services and what action will be taken to prevent any such diversion.
Answer
The Independent FundingReview of Free Personal and Nursing Care, chaired by Lord Sutherland, will investigatethe level and distribution of resources to local authorities in implementing thispolicy. Local authorities arerequired to meet their statutory responsibilities for the assessment and deliveryof services to older people in their area. It is for each individual local authorityto determine the most appropriate allocation of the total resources available toit to meet these and it’s other responsibilities.
- Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Thursday, 23 August 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Adam Ingram on 6 September 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive what the cost per head of pre-school provision is in each local authority in respect of (a) education and (b) childcare services.
Answer
The information requestedis not held centrally. I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-3570 on6 September 2007 for information on local authority pre-primaryeducation expenditure. It is not possible to split these data between educationand child care services.All answers towritten parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website thesearch facility for which can be found at
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.
- Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Adam Ingram on 6 September 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will investigate the reasons for pre-school closures and make the findings available to the Parliament.
Answer
Theresponsibility for planning and delivering pre-school education lies with localauthorities. Authorities need to take population projections into account toensure that there is enough pre-school education provision available in theright areas. Over time this may involve opening new provision and closing othercentres in line with patterns of demand.
The Scottish governmenthas no plans to undertake an investigation into the reasons for the closure ofindividual pre-school education settings.
- Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Adam Ingram on 6 September 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive how many telephone calls have been handled by the National Child Protection Line in each month since its launch in February 2007.
Answer
The Child ProtectionLine has answered the following calls since February 2007:
| Feb 2007 | 98 |
| March 2007 | 82 |
| April 2007 | 40 |
| May 2007 | 36 |
| June 2007 | 44 |
| July 2007 | 27 |
| Total | 327 |
- Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Adam Ingram on 6 September 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive how much funding each local authority receives from it to provide pre-school services.
Answer
The Scottish governmentprovides local authorities with block grant for their core revenue servicesthrough the core local government finance settlement. A needs-based methodology(otherwise known as grant aided expenditure (GAE)) is used to determine the allocationof that block grant. As GAE is a component used in distributing the total blockgrant that the Scottish Government provides to local government, it is not abudget or a spending target. It is for each local authority to decide how bestto allocate the resulting overall block grant across all their services, basedon local needs and priorities.
The GAEallocations for each local authority for pre‑school services in 2007‑08is shown in the following table.
| Local Authority Area | Nursery Teaching Staff (£ Million) | Pre-School Education (£ Million) |
| Aberdeen City | 0.931 | 6.822 |
| Aberdeenshire | 1.281 | 9.959 |
| Angus | 0.563 | 3.775 |
| Argyll and Bute | 0.416 | 3.069 |
| Clackmannanshire | 0.256 | 1.634 |
| Dumfries and Galloway | 0.666 | 5.319 |
| Dundee City | 0.664 | 4.698 |
| East Ayrshire | 0.617 | 4.031 |
| East Dunbartonshire | 0.536 | 3.291 |
| East Lothian | 0.504 | 3.197 |
| East Renfrewshire | 0.506 | 3.175 |
| Edinburgh, City of | 2.045 | 13.686 |
| Eilean Siar | 0.121 | 1.051 |
| Falkirk | 0.788 | 4.980 |
| Fife | 1.897 | 11.896 |
| Glasgow City | 2.913 | 19.259 |
| Highland | 1.080 | 8.649 |
| Inverclyde | 0.402 | 2.773 |
| Midlothian | 0.457 | 3.016 |
| Moray | 0.441 | 3.249 |
| North Ayrshire | 0.727 | 4.556 |
| North Lanarkshire | 1.893 | 11.575 |
| Orkney | 0.087 | 0.764 |
| Perth and Kinross | 0.719 | 5.307 |
| Renfrewshire | 0.924 | 5.795 |
| Scottish Borders | 0.597 | 4.606 |
| Shetland | 0.119 | 1.157 |
| South Ayrshire | 0.521 | 3.271 |
| South Lanarkshire | 1.595 | 10.002 |
| Stirling | 0.461 | 3.326 |
| West Dunbartonshire | 0.472 | 3.018 |
| West Lothian | 1.015 | 6.303 |
| Scotland | 26.215 | 177.195 |
In addition thereare other relevant GAE allocations which go wider than pre-school services. Theseinclude Sure Start (£59.912 million), special education (£272.688 million) and childcarestrategy (£44.556 million).
- Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Thursday, 16 August 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Stewart Maxwell on 5 September 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive what the total estimated cost is of meeting the Scottish Housing Quality Standard by 2015 in respect of local authority owned housing stock, also broken down by local authority.
Answer
I have asked Angiolina Foster Chief Executive of Communities Scotland to respond. Her response is as follows:
Local authoritiesthat have submitted Standard Delivery Plans (SDPs), setting out how they will achievethe Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS), plan to invest approximately £1.94billion by 2015. This figure is in 2004-05 prices and is based on individual localauthorities’ interpretations of the Standard and assessment of investment needs.
The breakdown of plannedSHQS investment by local authority is as follows:
| Local Authority | Total Expenditure to Meet SHQS (£000) |
| Aberdeen City Council | 210,752 |
| Aberdeenshire Council | 115,084 |
| Angus Council | 10,405 |
| Clackmannanshire Council | 15,307 |
| Dundee City Council | 133,760 |
| East Ayrshire Council | 91,759 |
| East Dunbartonshire Council | 38,019 |
| East Lothian Council | 131,485 |
| East Renfrewshire Council | 40,191 |
| Falkirk Council | 124,796 |
| Fife Council | 200,420 |
| Midlothian Council | 34,534 |
| Moray Council | 7,382 |
| North Ayrshire Council | 147,474 |
| North Lanarkshire Council | 237,317 |
| Orkney Islands Council | 5,066 |
| Perth and Kinross Council | 53,729 |
| Shetland Islands Council | 6,777 |
| South Ayrshire Council | 65,712 |
| South Lanarkshire Council | 213,000 |
| West Lothian Council | 55,350 |
| Total Expenditure | 1,941,328 |
Local authoritiesthat have transferred their stock to housing associations (Glasgow, Dumfries and Galloway, Scottish Borders, Eilean Siar and Argyll and Bute),or that are in the process of doing so (Inverclyde) are not required to submit anSDP. Stirling, Renfrewshire, Highland, Edinburgh and West Dunbartonshire Councilsare currently developing their SDPs which will include details of their plannedSHQS related investment.
- Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Adam Ingram on 5 September 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive what plans it has to review the operation and effectiveness of the National Child Protection Line.
Answer
The operation of theChild Protection Line is under review and development through a national workinggroup, whose membership includes representatives from Child Protection Committees(including police and social workers) and out-of-hours and phone-based child protectionservice providers. See
www.scotland.gov.uk/childprotectionfor further information.
We plan to commissiona rigorous independent evaluation of the service after it has been operational for18 months, in August 2008.
- Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Adam Ingram on 5 September 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive what plans it has to increase public awareness of the National Child Protection Line.
Answer
We are currently consideringhow best to increase public awareness of the national Child Protection Line andwill be discussing proposals with the national working group for this project andwith Child Protection Committees.
- Asked by: Claire Baker, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Thursday, 26 July 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Jim Mather on 4 September 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will provide additional funds to local authorities to implement the principle of full cost recovery for voluntary organisations delivering public services.
Answer
Organisations shouldbe paid the full costs for providing a service, and we expect local authoritiesand third sector organisations to conduct suitable negotiations for service deliverythat take all costs into account.
