Chamber and committees

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

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

Orkney Islands Council and Shetland Islands Council are wholly responsible for their internal ferry services.

The Scottish Government has set up a Ferries Accessibility Fund which is open to grant applications from any ferry or harbour operator providing a domestic ferry service covered by the Ferries Plan. This includes local authority and private sector ports and ferry services. The table below sets out details of successful Accessibility Fund Grant awards in relation to Orkney, Shetland and Na h-Eileanan Siar internal ferry services.

There has been no other Scottish Government capital investment in relation to inter-Island ferries in these areas in the last 5 years.

The money provided by the Scottish Government to local authorities is allocated using a needs-based formula. However, there is no separately identifiable allocation of funding for individual services, such as ferry services.

The vast majority of the funding provided by the Scottish Government to local authorities is in the form of a block grant. It is then the responsibility of each local authority to allocate the total financial resources available to it, including funding for ferry services, on the basis of local needs and priorities having first fulfilled its statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities including the Scottish Government’s key strategic objectives and manifesto commitments.

It is for the Councils themselves to determine how much they spend on ferry services within their areas.

High quality public services, such as the construction of the new £275 million Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, delivered on time and on budget, is a clear indication that The Scottish Government is driving an ambitious programme that provides excellent public services that support our more fragile communities.

As well as investment in 100% broadband provision to include our rural and remote communities and £3billion dualling the A9, £120m of Pupil Equity funding in 2017-18 has provided additional resources to the majority of schools in rural communities.

This despite our block grant for day-to-day spending on public services being cut, in real terms, by more than £500 million over the next two years by the UKG.

The rejection rates for 2015, 2016 and 2017 (to 31 August) are around 7%, 7%, and 10% respectively. The variation between rejection rates from year to year over this 3 year period is considered to be normal and not significant in statistical terms.

Similar to the answer provided for S5W-12495 on 21 November 2017, the Scottish Government uses historic actual costs and pending costs as a guide to likely future costs, and sets the budget accordingly.

Funding under these schemes is provided retrospectively and all approved work must be completed and claimed within one year of the date in which the application is approved. Therefore, work that is approved in one year can, in some cases, fall to be paid the next year. In any event, once claims have been submitted and processed for any particular year, the total amount claimed by all applicants is compared against the allocated budget for that year and this is used to estimate likely future spend.

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.

Each scheme is demand led. The Scottish Government uses historic activity as a guide to likely future activity, and sets the budget accordingly.

The Scottish Government allocates funding to Skills Development Scotland on an annual basis for delivery of training programmes and other activities, including the Employability Fund. In the Budget Bill 2017-18 Skills Development Scotland was allocated Grant in Aid of £179.1 million which will be used to meet its commitments in 2017-18 including the delivery of 9,000 Employability Fund training places.

It is difficult to aggregate a total overall breakdown of spend on Employability Fund since its introduction as liabilities are carried forward from one year to the next and that spend has been split across both Skills Development Scotland and the college sector

Since the launch of the Employability Fund in 2013 until the end of the last contracted year, March 2017, there have been over 63,000 training places delivered.

The average cost per capita for Foundation Apprenticeships (FA) is £3,424 per person over the 2016-18 duration which is made up FA Framework delivery costs and participant travel costs associated with the delivery of the Foundation Apprenticeship (FA) programme.

As with Modern Apprenticeships, the total cost of delivery per person will vary by Foundation Apprenticeship framework. For example, £2,296 over 2 years for Accounting or Financial Services to £5,103 over 2 years for Engineering. The individual FA framework delivery costs are published on Public Contracts Scotland and provide the basis for contracting with all lead providers.

For 2016 -18 FA delivery contracts there were a total of 354 starts registered by end of September 2016.