Chamber and committees

We announced on 20 October that Local authorities are to be given flexibility to use £20 million of the £23 million previously held in reserve to meet the needs of people in their communities. This may include supplementing local budgets for the Scottish Welfare Fund to meet demand, providing financial support to tackle food insecurity or to meet fuel costs, or boosting local funding for Discretionary Housing Payments.

The remaining £3 million of the £23 million has been allocated to support the provision of Discretionary Housing Payments and will be distributed to local authorities shortly.

Once allocations are made, the amounts provided to each local authority for both purposes will be visible on the Communities Funding Mapping Tool: https://community-funding-mapping-1-1-scotgov.hub.arcgis.com/

This year the Scottish Government has increased funding for policing in Scotland by £60 million to more than £1.2 billion. This 5.1% rise, compared to 2019-20, is ensuring that Police Scotland can maintain officer numbers, enhance its community policing capability and maintain and modernise its estate.

At 30 September 2020, there were 17,249 officers, which is significantly above the level inherited in 2007, with a higher number of officers than at any time during the previous administration.

It is encouraging to note where progress has been made within the Scottish Borders, including a 27% fall in dishonest crime and a 58% fall in vandalism since 2006-07. We also know that people living in Scotland’s rural areas are less likely to be a victim of crime now than a decade ago.

However we must not be complacent, we will continue to bear down on crime in Scotland, through protecting police budgets and substantial investment in preventative programs.

In the coming investment period 2021-27 Scottish Water must address many investment priorities across the water and sewerage networks within a finite set of resources, and the focus will be on meeting legally binding standards. Scottish Water is working with stakeholders and customers to develop a new investment prioritisation framework which will identify and assess development needs across the networks on a rolling basis throughout the period. This may include rural provision schemes where the need is identified as urgent or appropriate.

Whilst the Scottish Government pivoted our work in respond to the pandemic, some work was forced to pause. This affected the setting up of a funding arrangement for the 2 year, £1 million fund that was committed to the Connected Scotland Strategy.

We have been in frequent and regular contact with the National Implementation Group that is overseeing the Strategy so that we can hear firsthand, issues that are arising and are working with the group to reassess our next steps in an altered landscape.

During our response to the pandemic, we set up a £350 million Supporting Communities Fund to ensure communities were directly supported with emergency funding, delivered at both national and local levels. Much of this supported wellbeing, access to food and helplines, all of which tackle isolation and loneliness. From that single fund, 442 organisations received funding including eight organisations in the Scottish Borders which received over £460,000.

Additionally, £43 million is being invested into communities through the Connecting Scotland digital scheme to provide people with access to digital devices and get them online. This will allow more people greater access to vital digital services as well as allow them opportunities to connect with friends and family.

We recognise the importance of tackling loneliness and we will continue to respond to the demands of the pandemic and the needs of communities across Scotland and those responses include making funding interventions where it is appropriate.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-32782 on 9 November 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

Police Scotland has been at the front and centre of the response to COVID-19 in Scotland, and continues to work closely with partners including local authorities and the NHS to support the response. We continue to be grateful to both police officers and staff who put themselves in harm’s way to protect the public.

This year the Scottish Government has increased funding for policing by £60 million to more than £1.2 billion. This 5.1% rise, compared to 2019-20, is ensuring that Police Scotland can maintain officer numbers, enhance its community policing capability and maintain and modernise its estate. Police Scotland has a higher number of police officers than at any time during the previous administration. At 30 September 2020, there were 17,249 officers, which is significantly above the level inherited in 2007.

Police Scotland has played an integral role in helping people do the right thing throughout the pandemic and have taken a sensible and proportionate response to enforcement whereby they Engage, Explain, Encourage and, only where necessary, Enforce, with this constituting a very small part of policing activity in relation to the COVID-19 response. The Chief Constable has provided assurance that the vast majority of interactions are focused on engaging, explaining, and encouraging, which supports our tradition of policing by consent.

The Scottish Government will continue to work closely with the Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland to monitor and manage the financial impacts of COVID-19 on the policing budget.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-32782 on 9 November 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

The estimate of R for Scotland on 28 October 2020 was that it was between 1.0 and 1.3. The Scottish Government calculates R at a national level but does not calculate it for the Scottish Borders, because the ranges around the estimates would be very large and would not help understanding of the differences between areas of Scotland. Instead of doing that, we use other ways to monitor the level of COVID-19 in regions; we use data such as positivity, case rate and hospitalisations to track the epidemic. For example, we use modelling based on Covid cases and deaths, conducted by Imperial College London, to give us an indication of whether a local authority is experiencing high levels of Covid. The model projects the epidemic two weeks into the future and computes probabilities of areas being hotspots at certain thresholds, where an area is defined as a hotspot if the cases (positive tests) per 100K population exceed a threshold, e.g. 500 weekly cases. For more information, please see Figure 11 and Table 1 in issue 24 of a series of Scottish Government Covid-19 modelling reports . An extract from Table 1 indicates the following probabilities for the Borders having more than 50, 100, 300 or 500 cases per 100,000 people in the week 8 - 14 Nov 2020:

While we have made a clear commitment to engage with Local Authorities on the setting of the individual levels, it is ultimately for Scottish Ministers to make decisions regarding their allocation, in line with their statutory powers to protect public health.

As indicated in our Coronavirus (COVID-19): Scotland’s Strategic Framework (https://www.gov.scot/publications/covid-19-scotlands-strategic-framework/ ) the measures are most likely to be applied at the level of local authorities, which is the basis of our initial allocation of levels. There is however discretion for Ministers to apply levels in future to whichever geography is most likely to be effective in suppressing the virus.

Following the changes to the tolerable standards, announced in March 2018, there was significant media coverage. The changes were further reported as they passed through Parliament, and regularly updated online information has been available since March 2018.

We have worked closely with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) who have continued to publicise the changes via themed social media campaigns, all linking to what the requirements mean for home owners.

Further information, literature and advice are also provided during SFRS’ Home Fire Safety Visits.

Interest free loan funding has been made available to support social landlords to make the changes. In addition, over 2018-20 we have provided the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) with £1m funding to install these alarms in the homes of people assessed to be at high risk from fire.

We will continue to explore all aspects of ensuring successful implementation of the changes, which we are now seeking to introduce from February 2022. This will include steps to ensure high levels of public awareness and appropriate support for homeowners.