Chamber and committees

In March 2022, we published The National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care in Scotland . This Strategy sets out a new framework to shape Scotland’s health and social care workforce over the next decade and places training, wellbeing, job satisfaction and the principles of Fair Work at its heart. The strategy, the first of its kind, stresses the need to plan, attract, train, employ and nurture staff.

As part of this publication, and as announced in the 2021 Programme for Government, we have committed to increasing the number of medical school places by 100 per annum over the lifetime of this Parliament, whilst also doubling the number of Widening Access places over the same period. This will result in an additional 500 medical school places and 120 Widening Access places, ensuring a healthy supply of trainee doctors for further training at postgraduate level.

We have also committed to expanding the number of trainee doctor posts in line with medical workforce modelling intended to achieve a planned and sustainable medical workforce to meet current and future needs. We remain committed to increasing the number of GPs working in Scotland by at least 800 by 2027. In June of this year we launched our national GP recruitment campaign to promote working as a GP in Scotland as a good career choice.

The Institution of Fire Engineers provided a list of eleven chartered fire engineering firms that operate in Scotland. All UK chartered fire engineers are eligible to participate in the Single Building Assessment programme.

The single building assessment reports undergo a review by technical staff within the Cladding Remediation Unit.

The UK Government’s Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is reserved. Only the CMS has the power to take action to enforce payment of sums due under a maintenance assessment arranged through the CMS.

The Scottish Government recognises this is an exceptionally challenging and uncertain time for families and we are working across the public and third sector to ensure that support is there for anyone who needs it.

We are investing around £12.5 million this year to support the provision of free income maximisation, welfare and debt advice services.

We provide funding to One Parent Families Scotland, which operates an advice line and debt advice services for lone parent families.

We are currently working with six fire engineering companies in the pilot phase of the single building assessment. We are engaging with professional bodies in order to expand the number of assessors and firms involved in this work.

Scottish Government officials have spoken with the Victoria State Government on matters of mutual interest in fire safety and cladding remediation.

The provision of NHS Pharmaceutical Care services is the responsibility of territorial Health Boards. Any concerns by members of the public on pharmacy closures and accessing services should be raised with the Health Board.

The arrangements under which applications may be made to open new pharmacies are long-standing and the current process is detailed in the NHS (Pharmaceutical Services) (Scotland) Regulations 2009. When an application to open a pharmacy is made, NHS Boards are required to establish a Pharmacy Practices Committee to act on their behalf in considering applications for entry to the Pharmaceutical List. In considering the application the Board will consider the pharmaceutical services already provided in the area, the pharmaceutical services to be provided and any representations received by the Board and also any other information available which is relevant to the consideration of the application. During this process, members of the public can be consulted on the need for additional community pharmacy capacity in their local area.

An application shall be granted by the Board only if it is satisfied that the provision of pharmaceutical services at the premises named in the application is necessary or desirable in order to secure adequate provision of pharmaceutical services in the neighbourhood in which the premises are located. The Scottish Government is not involved in deciding applications for pharmacies to be added to the Pharmaceutical List.

The Housing Need and Demand Assessment (HNDA) Tool contains a default count of households who are both overcrowded and concealed. The Scottish Government's Centre for Housing Market Analysis (CHMA) also publishes separate counts of overcrowded and concealed households which local authorities may choose to use. Alternatively, local authorities may choose to use local information about overcrowded and concealed households using sources such as waiting lists or local survey work, where they can evidence that this is robust.

Specific details are published as bespoke separate documents, as follows:

• Single count of overcrowded households and single count of concealed households (see Table 3)

Estimating concealed family rates with overcrowding using Scottish survey data (2016-2018) (www.gov.scot)

• Count of households who are both overcrowded and concealed (see Excel worksheet called ‘HoTOC’)

Housing Need and Demand Assessment (HNDA): tool 2020 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Following the public consultation and Parliamentary scrutiny of Draft National Planning Framework (NPF) 4, we have been carefully considering the wealth of evidence received and intend to lay a final NPF4 in the Parliament later this Autumn.

Draft NPF4 was accompanied by a Housing Land Requirement Explanatory Report , which provides an explanation on the proposed Minimum All-Tenure Housing Land Requirement and Assessment Reports for each authority area.

When planning for housing, household trends are a more relevant indicator of current and future housing need and demand than population.

Household projections are nationally available datasets from the National Records of Scotland (NRS). Household projections are a key input to Housing Need and Demand Assessment (HNDA) as they are an indicator of future households yet to form. Household data is distinct from population data as they can be one person or a group of people living together. They therefore reflect both changes in population trends and changes in the number of people living in each household.