Chamber and committees

Scottish Government Human Resources does not hold a central record of the creation or approval of new posts, this process is handled by individual business areas under the direction and approval of a Director. There is no single Directorate responsible for all rural and island based staff.

To provide information that is equivalent to the creation of posts, we have:

• Identified SG offices in rural and island locations based on categorisation established by National Records of Scotland or by Local Authority.
• Provided the headcount of directly employed staff at those locations in each of the last 5 years, with the year-on-year change indicating instances when new posts may have been created.

Our most recently published data are at 30 September 2022. 30 September has been used as the reference date each year for comparison purposes. These data cover staff in Scottish Government Core Directorates only.

Table showing headcount variation year-on-year from 30 September 2018 to 30 September 2022

The Scottish Government do not hold this information.

Under the current constitutional arrangements in the United Kingdom immigration is fully reserved to the UK Government and is dealt with by the Home Office.

If a displaced person from Ukraine has been issued a visa, they are free to travel anywhere within the UK or to leave and re-enter the UK when they wish, as long as they are meeting the conditions within their visa. The UK Governments Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities publish data on arrivals in the UK, with a Scottish Sponsor Visa: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ukraine-sponsorship-scheme-visa-data-by-country-upper-and-lower-tier-local-authority
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In addition, the Scottish Government publish the latest Scotland-level data and information on people displaced by the war in Ukraine coming to Scotland through the Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme. This data can be found on our website via:
‎ https://www.gov.scot/publications/ukraine-sponsorship-scheme-in-scotland-statistics-january-2023/

Skills Development Scotland deliver careers services to all 358 publicly funded secondary schools in Scotland.

The Scottish Government worked with Skills Development Scotland, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and others in the aquaculture sector to develop an Aquaculture Skills Action Plan in December 2018. The Action Plan was developed following a sector skills review ‘Skills review for the aquaculture sector in Scotland’, undertaken on behalf of Highlands and Islands Enterprise and published in the same year.

Lantra is the skills interests organisation of land-based, aquaculture and environmental conservation businesses and organisations across Scotland, and their activities are supported by the Scottish Government. Lantra coordinate the Aquaculture Skills Group that progresses the Aquaculture Skills Plan, with support from the Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre and other stakeholders in the aquaculture sector.

The Scottish Government is also considering the skills and development opportunities required for aquaculture and other land-based sectors through the work of the independent Commission for the Land-Based Learning Review. The Commission reported the conclusion of its review in January 2023. As committed to in the Programme for Government, we will consider the recommendations made by the Commission in its review and produce a response.

The share of local government funding to be allocated to young carers is not set centrally, and the Scottish Government does not hold this information.

The Scottish Government’s policy towards local authority spending is to allow each local authority the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of local authority funding is provided by means of a block grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including support for young carers, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

Since 2018-19, additional funding to support the implementation of the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 has been included within the local government block grant, as set out in the following table:

Due to the scope and timeframe of the question, the information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost as this data is not available from a single source.

The Scottish Government has issued the following guidance regarding “purposeful walkers” and use of restraint practices in hospitals and care homes:

The Scottish Government is committed to improving fair work practices across the social care sector.

There are more than 1,200 social care providers across Scotland; and each of these providers will have their own internal pay scales.

Since 2016, the Scottish Government has delivered funding to ensure adult social care workers are paid at least the Real Living Wage (RLW). Our ambition is that all care workers, including those working in the children’s sector, are paid the Real Living Wage as a minimum. Work to better understand the current composition of the Children’s social care sector is taking place in collaboration with key stakeholders.

This information is not held centrally. Local authorities and integrated health and social care partnerships are responsible for commissioning services for people within their area.

Information on expenditure on the programme is published quarterly: https://www.gov.scot/publications/single-building-assessment-spending-information/

The recently published figures have additional information that show committed spend on remediation of £148,000.