Chamber and committees

To date 17 homes have been approved through the demand-led Rural Affordable Homes for Key Workers Fund. This includes 7 homes in Highland, 7 homes in Orkney, 2 homes in Moray and 1 home in North Ayrshire. More Homes Division officials are in discussion with local authority partners on a number of other potential projects.

We are continuing to engage with all local authorities through Scotland Housing Network’s Local Housing Strategy Forum to encourage proposals to be forward where there are identified local requirements.

The Scottish Government, along with public sector bodies across the UK, face a very challenging environment as we manage our finances through the current financial year and set our budget for 2025-26. We are continuing to fund the charity, Health in Mind, in 2024-25, to deliver a specialist peer service to those affected by historic forced adoption. We also fund the charity Birthlink to manage the Adoption Contact Register for Scotland which helps facilitate connections between individuals and families affected by adoption. Decisions on funding other related historical forced adoption activities have not yet been made.

The Scottish Government has spent approximately £6.4 million on the necessary design and assessment work for the A720 Sheriffhall Roundabout scheme since Transport Scotland appointed its technical advisor, AECOM, in July 2013.

This figure is inclusive of VAT where applicable and covers costs associated with design and assessment work. This includes costs associated with options assessment, engineering design and preparation work, environmental assessment (including environmental survey work), traffic and economic assessment, stakeholder engagement, statutory process including public local inquiry, and supervision of ground investigation works.

This data is not centrally available; whilst Public Health Scotland publish the total number of patients waiting for specialist mental health services, detail of the individual types of assessment or diagnosis is not held. The publications for both CAMHS and Psychological Therapies waiting times for each quarter can be found at Publications - Public Health Scotland.

The Scottish Government is committed to implementing the National Neurodevelopmental Specification: Principles and Standards of Care for Children and Young People, published in September 2021, which specifies service standards that all children’s services should follow, to ensure access to support is effective and consistent across Scotland.

The Scottish Government have also established the National Autism Implementation Team, in partnership with Queen Margaret University, to support Health and Social Care Partnerships to consider best practice and support improvement through the redesign of autism diagnostic services.

The National Implementation Team is supporting NHS Boards to examine diagnostic pathways for autism and establish regional experts to assist with improving tiered autism specialisms across health boards.

The Scottish Government does not collect this data.

The Scottish Government is committed to implementing the National Neurodevelopmental Specification: Principles and Standards of Care for Children and Young People, published in September 2021, which specifies service standards that all children’s services should follow, to ensure access to support is effective and consistent across Scotland.

The Scottish Government have also established the National Autism Implementation Team, in partnership with Queen Margaret University, to support Health and Social Care Partnerships to consider best practice and support improvement through the redesign of autism diagnostic services.

The National Implementation Team is supporting NHS Boards to examine diagnostic pathways for autism and establish regional experts to assist with improving tiered autism specialisms across health boards.

This information is not held centrally by either Scottish Government or Public Health Scotland (PHS).

PHS does not capture waiting list information on all NHS services and where they are captured, many are sourced from aggregate returns submitted to PHS by NHS boards. It is therefore not possible to identify the number of individuals that ‘have been on an NHS waiting list’. In addition, the aggregate data supplied by NHS boards does not provide patient-level information and as such, age breakdown is not available.

Neither Scottish Government or Public Health Scotland (PHS) centrally hold all of the information requested.

Table 1 presents the latest available statistics on the total number of admissions for patients aged less than 16 years who had waited over a year for planned treatment as an inpatient or day case covered by the Treatment Time Guarantee (TTG) from 2013 onwards. The data below are presented at NHSScotland level for all specialties, broken down by calendar year. Please note that this does not cover services that are exempt from the TTG, including obstetrics services, and organ, tissue or cell transplantation whether from a living or deceased donor. Spinal treatment by injection or surgical intervention was excluded from TTG until 1 April 2014 and designated national specialist services for surgical intervention of spinal scoliosis was excluded until 1 October 2014. These have been included in the TTG reporting from these dates.

Table 1 – Total number of admissions as an inpatient or day case for patients aged less than 16 years who had waited over a year (52 weeks), NHSScotland and all specialty level, by calendar year, from 2013 onwards

Under devolution, consequentials of this kind become part of the Scottish Government’s overall budget for that year. As part of the Scottish Budget process, it is for Scottish Ministers to propose funding levels for specific programmes in Scotland, and when the budget is required.

In the case of cladding remediation, we have said that we will spend whatever is necessary to address the problems created by unsafe cladding, that we will make provision for that at the appropriate time, and that we expect the cost of that in Scotland to be at least the quoted amount of consequentials – that is, £97.1 m.

We publish updated information on programme spend on a quarterly basis at https://www.gov.scot/publications/single-building-assessment-spending-information/.

The Scottish Government encourages all building owners to be open and transparent about the presence of Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) in their properties, including making information available on websites. Information on the presence of RAAC in the public sector can also be found in a recently published Scottish Government report: https://www.gov.scot/publications/raac-in-the-public-sector/

The Scottish Government encourages all building owners to be open and transparent about the presence of Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) in their properties, including making information available on websites (although there is no duty on the part of local authorities to gather information on RAAC in privately owned buildings). Information on the presence of RAAC in the public sector can be found in a recently published Scottish Government report: https://www.gov.scot/publications/raac-in-the-public-sector/