Chamber and committees

Decisions on the allocation of SFRS resources, including pumping appliances, are a matter for the service and its Board.

There has never been a single occasion where SFRS has not responded with the required resources. SFRS has contingency plans in place to ensure fire cover is maintained at all times.

The number of firefighters per head of population is higher in Scotland than other parts of the UK and decisions about the provision of resources is an operational matter for the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service.

In 2019-20 the Scottish Government will increase the funding to SFRS by £5.5 million to invest in service transformation plans. This is on top of the £15.5 million additional spending power provided this year – a level of funding not matched anywhere else in the UK.

Decisions on the allocation of SFRS resources, including pumping appliances and staffing, are a matter for the service and its Board.

Decisions on the allocation of SFRS resources, including pumping appliances, are a matter for the service and its Board.

The Scottish Government wants everyone made redundant by Kaiam to receive all monies owed to them. Responsibility for dealing with employee claims in insolvency is fully reserved to the UK Government and is dealt with by the Redundancy Payments Service, which is part of the Insolvency Service.

The Redundancy Payments Service makes payments of certain monies owed to ex-employees up to statutory limits. The total paid out by the Redundancy Payments Service to Kaiam ex-employees currently stands at over £800,000.

Appropriate representations to the Redundancy Payments Service that may assist in expediting payment or highlighting any concerns that have been raised. We would however urge employees to continue to liaise with the Redundancy Payments Service and the administrators in respect of their claims.

We remain committed to supporting the former staff of Kaiam and any potential new businesses emerging from the administration of Kaiam’s business in Livingston.

Data collected from a sample of local authorities and published as part of the Financial Review in 2016 implied a unit cost estimate for provision of ELC in local authority settings of £5.45 per hour for three and four year olds and £7.74 per hour for two year olds. The Financial Review is available here : https://www.gov.scot/Resource/0050/00506148.pdf .

The Scottish Government does not currently collect data for each local authority on confirmed funding rates for funded providers delivering the ELC entitlement. We have, however, recently agreed with local government colleagues that funding rates will form part of our data collection during the expansion programme. We expect to publish information about 2018-19 funding rates in the Summer and will lodge with the Scottish Parliament Information Centre once available.

The annual local government finance circulars provide details of the total revenue and capital funding allocations to each local authority and can be found at the attached link: https://www.gov.scot/publications/local-government-finance-circulars-index/ .

The Scottish Government is committed to fully fund the expansion of early learning and childcare entitlement and reached agreement with COSLA on a multi-year revenue and capital funding package to deliver the expansion in April 2018. Local Authorities received confirmation of funding allocations for the next three financial years (2019-20 to 2021-22 inclusive) to support the expansion to 1140 hours of Early Learning & Childcare including nursery provision on 1 May 2018.

The Scottish Government is taking a suite of actions to encourage people to choose Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) as a career.

A major component of our strategy to increase the workforce to deliver the 1140 hours expansion from 2020 is our ongoing national recruitment campaign. The campaign utilises a range of channels, including TV, radio, digital and press advertising as well as roadshows touring the country in schools and high footfall areas in public places, such as shopping centres and train stations. The campaign directs potential recruits to a national campaign website where a comprehensive suite of information on what is required to be an ELC practitioner sits, alongside advice on training and job opportunities.

To ensure there is sufficient capacity in the training system to train the additional recruits required, we have worked with the Scottish Funding Council to create additional HNC and BA Childhood Practice places in 2017-18 and 2018-19, and will create further additional places in 2019-20. We are also committed, jointly with Skills Development Scotland, to increasing the number of Modern Apprenticeship places for ELC by 10%, year on year, until 2020.

The expansion of ELC entitlement to 1140 hours also represents an opportunity to build a more diverse workforce. To increase the number of males in the sector, we are providing funding in financial year 2018-19 to the Scottish Funding Council for a new Challenge Fund for Men in Early Years, to give colleges the opportunity to trial innovative and replicable approaches to attracting more males onto ELC courses.

We are also working directly with our ethnic minority communities via our partnership with the Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Organisations, to raise awareness of employment opportunities for the sector and to ensure appropriate training pathways are in place to allow those from our ethnic minority communities to enter the sector.

‘Partner nurseries’ are providers contracted by the local authority to deliver the funded entitlement to early learning and childcare to 3 and 4 year olds and eligible 2 year olds. They are also referred to as ‘funded providers’.

The first point of contact for a nursery wishing to become a funded provider should be their local authority. The local authority is responsible for local contracting arrangements. They will advise on the process for becoming a funded provider and the support available locally. We know that some providers have found contracting processes to be cumbersome, and we are working with local authorities to simplify these processes and reduce burdens on providers.

Nurseries wanting to know what will be required of providers delivering the expanded entitlement of 1140 hours can find out more from our National Standard, which sets out the criteria all providers across Scotland will have to meet from August 2020 onwards. The National Standard and our Delivery Support Plan, which sets out a range of actions to support both new and existing providers, can be found on our website: https://www2.gov.scot/Publications/2018/12/1980/downloads

https://www.gov.scot/publications/delivery-support-plan-early-learning-childcare-providers .

Our Delivery Support Plan, published on 19 December, sets out how we will ensure providers, including childminders, are supported through the transition to 2020.Our funding agreement with COSLA supports the payment of sustainable rates to funded providers and enabling the payment of at least the real Living Wage to all childcare workers delivering the funded entitlement from 2020. Many local authorities are already using the additional resource available in 2018-19 to increase rates being paid to funded providers, with further increases expected in 2019-20 as they transition towards the sustainable rates for full roll-out of 1140 hours from August 2020.

We are also working with COSLA to enable providers in the private and third sector to post job opportunities for free on the myjobscotland website from March 2019.

We have increased the financial contributions for all ELC related Modern Apprenticeships. For those aged 25 and over, the increase is from £700 to £1,700 and we are working with delivery partners to identify how we can further incentivise more of those in this older age range to take-up training opportunities in ELC.

We will provide targeted advice and support to providers, to help them implement Fair Work practices and to deliver the real Living Wage commitment.