Chamber and committees

The following table sets out the number of Architecture and Design Scotland staff, broken down by pay banding, permanent staff, fixed term appointments (FTA) and full time equivalent (FTE).

Since the Best Use of Timber Awards were established in 2012, Scottish Forestry has allocated £6,000 each year towards the delivery of the awards, with the exception of 2020 when the awards did not take place due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Architecture and Design Scotland does not allocate funding for the project other than staff resource.

Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment (CRWIA) is a process through which authorities can identify, research, analyse and record the anticipated impact of any proposed measure – including new schools - on children’s human rights and wellbeing.

The CRWIA provides a template to help assess the impact of the measure on the Articles of the UNCRC, and consider how implementation of it can help progress the realisation of children’s rights, and support and promote the wellbeing of children and young people in Scotland.

The Learning Estate Strategy 2019 which underpins the Learning Estate Investment Programme incorporates a requirement to consult in its guiding principles. The subsequent CRWIA guidance Nov 2021 states that the CRWIA template “is a tool that can help inform and meet these duties”. The Learning Estate Investment Programme will signpost the CRWIA guidance and templates as part of the shared learning event programme.

Since joining the Scotland + Venice project in 2016, Architecture and Design Scotland has supported the commissioning and work of external curatorial teams on behalf of the Scotland + Venice partners, (Scottish Government, Creative Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland, the British Council (Scotland), the V&A Dundee, and Architecture and Design Scotland).

Funding allocated directly by Architecture and Design Scotland towards the Scotland + Venice project in the years 2016-17 to 2022-23 is provided in the following table.

We know that deprivation is a significant driver of excess mortality and reduced life expectancy. Reducing poverty and inequality therefore sits at the heart of our investment across all portfolios and remains the best way of improving life expectancy.

Increasing life expectancy across Scotland remains a clear ambition for this Government and we are using all the powers and resources available to us to create a fairer Scotland. We are doing that by ensuring health services are accessible to all, committing £19bn to public services over the next year; committing £4 billion in social security and welfare payments over the next financial year; and extending the Scottish Child Payment to families with eligible under 16s – by increasing it to £25 per week per child.

Furthermore, our Care and Wellbeing Portfolio, as the principle strategic reform vehicle in Health and Social Care, is being designed to promote a ‘health in all policies’ approach in order to strengthen cross-government collaboration on key and critical issues that contribute to the goal of reducing inequalities and increasing life expectancy.

Architecture and Design Scotland provides non-chargeable advice and resources to all local authorities. Architecture and Design Scotland:

• provides advice on projects;
• connects people and organisations to create thriving places;
• shares insight to grow capacity across Scotland; and
• champions good design and collaboration.

Extensive support to local authorities has been provided via a wide range of programmes, events and initiatives since the organisation was established. A full breakdown of the instances local authorities have received planning advice from Architecture and Design Scotland, broken down by (a) local authority and (b) year to is not held centrally but examples are regularly reported in its Annual Reports.

This is a question for the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland (RoS). She advises me that, following the impact of the pandemic, RoS has stabilised and started to improve the position this year, in line with the strategy set out in their Corporate Plan .

RoS has committed to clearing the stock of older casework within the duration of the current Corporate Plan. RoS is in fact slightly ahead of target on their strategic objectives and the series of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) used to measure progress. KPI statistics are published quarterly on the RoS website .

The information requested is not held centrally.

Following the successful completion of a two-year Scotland-wide pilot in 2022, the new fast-track Prescribed Blue Badge model for people with motor neurone disease (MND) was launched on 9 May 2022 via the provision of updated guidance for local authorities.

MND specialist nurses in Scotland now have the power to prescribe a Blue Badge for people with an MND diagnosis should their MND specialist nurse deem them as meeting the eligibility criteria. This means that such applicants can bypass the Local Authority assessment process and experience significantly shorter waiting times.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-14269 on 7 February 2023. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at: https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .