Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government will improve vocational education and training in Dunfermline and the whole of Fife through continued investment in the region and through encouraging strong partnerships with Fife College, Fife Council, the Scottish Funding Council, Skills Development Scotland and others.

Fife College will receive almost £42 million to meet learner needs in 2015-16. Additionally it will receive significant resources for new facilities: £6 million has enabled the college to build a new campus in partnership with the local authority in Levenmouth (set to open in the summer of 2016) and £140 million of Non-Profit Distributing investment (along with Forth Valley College), for the Dunfermline Campus.

The college will also receive more than £0.5 million over the next three years for the Developing the Young Workforce in Fife Group and there will be an increase in MA starts, including the launch of pathfinder foundation apprenticeships in engineering.

Scottish Government officials were approached by Fife Council towards the latter part of 2014 to discuss plans for an integrated school and college campus in Dunfermline, which included Woodmill and St Columba’s high schools. Thereafter, exploratory meetings were held with the Council involving Scottish Government officials, the Scottish Funding Council, Fife College and Scottish Futures Trust.

More recently, Councillor David Ross wrote to the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning on 1 May 2015 and 1 July 2015, with the Cabinet Secretary responding to the respective letters on 2 June 2015 and 6 August 2015. Moreover, Councillor Fay Sinclair wrote to the Cabinet Secretary on 24 June 2015 and the Cabinet Secretary replied on 29 July 2015.

The Scottish Government continues to promote the benefits of the living wage to businesses in Dunfermline, Fife and across Scotland. Research shows that the living wage can enhance productivity, reduce absenteeism and improve staff morale. We have introduced statutory guidance addressing fair work practices, including the living wage in public contracts, are promoting the living wage as a mandatory element of the Scottish Business Pledge, and there are now over 430 Scots based accredited living wage employers including 22 in Fife and five in Dunfermline.

The criteria for eligibility for the small business bonus scheme are: rateable value of the properties occupied by each rateable occupier falling within the thresholds set out in the following table; and that the rateable occupier is not a payday lender.

The following table shows the level of relief available under the corresponding rateable value thresholds.

*Allows a ratepayer occupying two or more properties with a cumulative rateable value of under £35,000 to qualify for relief at 25% on individual properties each with rateable value up to £18,000.

The Scottish Government’s Digital Scotland Business Excellence Programme has provided £360,000 to the Supplier Development Programme (SDP) to help businesses develop their digital capacity and be more efficient in bidding and fulfilling public contracts. As part of a national programme, the SDP have 480 Fife businesses registered with them, 106 of these have stated that they are based in Dunfermline.

Over the course of the last two financial years Fife Council and the SDP have worked in partnership to deliver the following events in (a) Dunfermline and (b) Fife:

Public Contracts Scotland increases the visibility of the volume of business available to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It provides a national advertising website for Scottish public bodies to post Official Journal of the European Union notices (contracts over the European directive threshold), lower-value notices and subsequent contract awards. In 2014, 410 SMEs based in Fife won contracts awarded on Public Contracts Scotland.

The 2016-17 local government funding proposal delivers a strong but challenging financial settlement for local government, which will be strengthened by our joint working to improve outcomes for local people through health and social care integration and by improving educational attainment.

Local government in Scotland starts from a healthy base. Despite the ongoing cuts to the Scottish budget as a result of the UK Government's continuing austerity programme, the Scottish Government is continuing to protect people and treat local government very fairly with financial settlements maintained on a like-with-like basis with extra money for new responsibilities over the period 2012-16.

Our proposed local government settlement for 2016-17 involves reductions to local government budgets of around 2% of total council spending. We’re also making £70 million available to continue the council tax freeze for a ninth consecutive year, saving the average band D household in Fife, £1,500 in total over the period of the freeze.

Funding allocations for councils are calculated using the needs-based formula agreed with COSLA and Fife is receiving total funding of over £682 million in 2016 and they will continue to get their fair share of the final settlement for next year.

The Scottish Government continues to promote the benefits of fair work in Fife and across Scotland. While employment law remains reserved to the UK Government, the Scottish Government is doing everything it can to promote good working practices with the powers available to us. This includes publishing statutory guidance addressing fair work practices. This guidance makes it clear that a positive approach to fair work practices can have an impact on the quality of services, goods and works and that inappropriate use of zero hours contracts by a company bidding for a public contract would be likely to affect its ability to provide the required quality of service.

We have also introduced the Scottish Business Pledge. This recognises businesses who do not use exploitative zero hours contracts and deploy a wider range of progressive workplace policies to support fair work, innovation and productivity. There are now more than 170 pledge companies across Scotland, including four in Fife.

The Scottish Government does not directly employ people on zero hours contracts. We condemn the inappropriate use of zero hours contracts. Unfair work practices like this are unacceptable and they undermine our ambitions to grow our economy and tackle inequalities in our society.

The National Specialist Services Committee (NSSC) has discussed the outcome of the review group options appraisal which recommends consolidation of the national specialist cleft surgical service to a single site in Glasgow.

The recommendation only applies to the cleft surgical element of cleft services. All other aspects of cleft care will continue to be delivered close to home. No changes are proposed to locally delivered cleft care – such as orthodontics, speech and language therapy, dental services and support from specialist nurses; and there is no suggestion of the withdrawal of specialist outreach clinics.

Cleft Care Scotland, the National Managed Clinical Network, will continue to ensure that every patient with a cleft lip, cleft palate or cleft lip and palate is offered specialist cleft care from diagnosis to adulthood and work with families to offer the right care, in the right place at the right time to produce the best possible outcome for the patient.

If the recommendation is approved, it is expected that this model of care will minimise the impact of change on patient travel and will ensure local care provision, wherever safe and appropriate, with expert input into decisions in local services and treatment for children and adults with cleft lip and/or palate.

However, NSSC has agreed that all stakeholders should have the opportunity to have their views heard. The next steps are:

To consult widely with stakeholders to test the proposed change and to identify any issues that need to be addressed in the implementation of a single cleft surgical service provided by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde;

Consultation will include close working with Cleft Care Scotland, CLAPA and other patients/parents, as well as the staff involved;

That an equality impact assessment is carried out on this proposal.

This will enable the review group to bring a report on the outcomes from the consultation process and a final proposal to NSSC. A fuller communication advising the engagement and consultation process will be issued by National Services Division early in 2016.

The Scottish Government has set a clear policy framework around children’s services, and it is for NHS Fife to ensure it provides appropriate healthcare services for children and young people in its area to meet this.

Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) is the national approach to improving the wellbeing of children and young people through policy and the delivery of services at both national and local level. GIRFEC provides common ground for everyone – children and their families, childcare providers, teachers, health visitors, social workers and police as well as the voluntary sector. It provides a framework within which everyone can work in the same way.

The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 and the GIRFEC approach have a number of key provisions, including the shared language of wellbeing, the named person role and the child’s plan. The named person will work closely with families and is the single point of contact that parents told us they wanted. They will be central to providing support by delivering a more accessible, streamlined and coordinated service for children and families when they need it based in the universal services which they know and trust. From birth until five, or school entry, the health visitor will usually be the named person.

Health visitors play a vital role in our communities, and they are at the core of delivering universal services.

The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 is rooted in children’s rights and the Getting it right for every child approach, and has a number of key provisions, including the shared language of wellbeing, the named person role and the child’s plan. The named person will work closely with families and is the single point of contact that parents told us they wanted. They will be central to providing support by delivering a more accessible, streamlined and coordinated service for children and families when they need it based in the universal services which they know and trust. From birth until five, or school entry, the health visitor will usually be the named person.

I announced on 18 June 2014 that the Scottish Government would be providing funding (£2 million in year 2014-15 with a total of £41.6 million over the next four years) for additional health visitors with the goal to grow the workforce by 500 by 2018. This funding is in addition to resources health boards are already committing to grow that workforce to meet their obligations.

This funding will help health boards ensure they have enough health visitors to provide universal visits and developmental reviews for children such as 27-30 month review and meet their obligations under the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act to provide a named person for children under five through the health visitor.

A Universal Health Visiting Pathway in Scotland was published in October 2015. It presents a core home visiting programme to be offered to all families by health visitors as a minimum standard. It consists of 11 home visits to all families, three of which include a formal review of the family and child’s health by the health visitor (13-15 months, 27-30 months and prior to starting school).

It covers the antenatal to pre-school period and provides an opportunity for health visitors, children and their parents to build a strong relationship, in which health visitors can appropriately support families including acting as a gateway to other services. This early engagement will provide health visitors with a sound foundation for their role as the named person for children under five years of age.

For Fife, we have identified a need to grow the health visitor workforce by 20 by 2018 and will be supporting them to do this and deliver the new pathway. This improvement to their universal community paediatric services will help them to meet the needs of all families locally.