Chamber and committees

These are operational matters for Scottish Canals. Scottish Canals receives Grant in Aid for its core duties of operating and maintaining the waterways for which it is responsible as navigation authority .

Scottish Canals has benefitted from significant increases in grant in aid awards in recent years. Since 2019, the Organisation’s capital grant from the Scottish Government has increased by 87% and it has received an annual uplift in resource funding since 2020.

We are continuing to work on the review of the Housing for Varying Needs design guide, including engagement with stakeholders, with a view to publishing a consultation on proposed updates to the guide before the end of the year.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6O-01331 on 7 September 2022. The answer to the Oral parliamentary question is available on the Parliaments website, the Official Report can be viewed at:

https://archive2021.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/report.aspx?r=13875

In terms of recorded offences, the data received from Police Scotland for producing the National Statistics on Recorded Crime, is a simple count of the number of crimes and offences, for each local authority, which the police have recorded and cleared up.

The nature of this data is such that while some crime codes refer to a single act or section of legislation, others include a wider range of legislation. As such we are unable to separately identify crimes and offences recorded under either Section 2 or Section 36 of the Road Traffic Act 1988. We are able to separately identify crimes recorded under Section 3, which relates to careless and inconsiderate driving. This document has been placed with the Scottish Parliament, bib number 63591. 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 .

The document provides figures for 2018-19 to 2021-22, along with data for the years of 2013-14 to 2017-18. Those earlier years were requested through a previous PQ S5W-22619 on 2 May 2019 and in preparing updated information for this PQ, statisticians identified a small coding error in the calculations made in 2019.

The error meant a small number of cases included in the earlier answer were for another part of the Road Traffic Act, beyond Section 3. This had a negligible impact on the implied magnitude of offences recorded under Section 3 (accounting for less than 0.5% difference for each year at the Scotland level). However we would like to use this PQ answer to highlight the amendment and issue the revised figures for 2013-14 to 2017-18.

In terms of (i) prosecutions and (ii) convictions: These are also included in the aforementioned document (placed with the Scottish Parliament, bib number 63591) – split into each of Sections 2, 3 and 36 of the Road Traffic Act 1988.

Care should be taken when comparing different data sources relating to the criminal justice system. For example recorded crime statistics count crimes and offences at the time that they came to the attention of Police Scotland, while criminal proceedings statistics report on cases which have concluded in court. This means that a crime may be recorded by the police in one year, with charges brought and court proceedings concluded in subsequent years. In addition, a person may be proceeded against for more than one crime, or a set of crimes with more than one victim, in a proceeding, but only the main charge is counted in these court proceedings statistics. There is also the possibility that the crime recorded by the police may be altered in the course of judicial proceedings.

Funding the Scottish Government has allocated to improve energy efficiency of buildings 2020 to 2022

Information is available from the Criminal Proceedings in Scotland 2020-21 statistical publication.

Table 4(b) in the main tables provides information on the number of convictions for 'Driving under influence'; and the additional dataset titled 'Drink and Careless driving' provides further information on the number of convictions for causing death by careless driving when under influence of drink/drugs.

These can be found under the 'Supporting documents' at this link - Criminal Proceedings in Scotland, 2019-20 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The following table shows the number of cardholders under the Young Persons’ Free Bus Travel Scheme as of the end of the day on 12 September 2022, broken down to local authority level.

This data is supplied by the National Entitlement Card Programme Office (NECPO). NECPO support the 32 local authorities by assisting with the integration of various national and local public services on the National Entitlement Card (NEC) and are the joint controller with local authorities of this data. The table includes travel products collected from the Transport Scot Pass Collect mobile application.

The Scottish Government recognises more than ever, the importance of people with mental health problems getting the right help, at the right time and in the right place. We are committed to providing clear, comprehensive and accessible support for those with mental health needs.

Under The Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007 local authorities have a duty to provide support to adult adoptees. If an adult adoptee or any other person affected by adoption requires support they should approach their local authority who are required to carry out an assessment and provide support to address any needs, including mental health, that are identified.

The 2022-23 Local Government Settlement of almost £12.7 billion provides local authorities with a cash increase of over £1 billion or 9.2 per cent compared to
‎ 2021-22, and it is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on support for adult adoptees, on the basis of local needs and priorities.

In 2020-21 NHS Mental Health Expenditure was £1.25bn. Through investment of £21m in 2021-22 in our Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for adults, including people affected by psychological trauma or adverse childhood experiences, we have made over 1,800 awards to community projects focused on prevention and early intervention. The Scottish Government is providing a further £15m in 2022-23.

At June 2022 our latest published statistics show that Social Security Scotland had reached 3,061 employees with 1,050 these colleagues employed with Dundee as their office location.

By Autumn 2022 we expect Social Security Scotland to directly employ more than 3,500 people. We have made 2,000 offers of employment with new staff joining up until the end of 2022. We have 11 organised campaigns to launch with a Dundee specific location in 2022-23. We have/have not yet planned the specific Dundee campaigns for 2023-24.

a) The number of mergers and transfer of engagements of RSLs based in Glasgow between 2014 and September 2022 is 5.

b) The number of mergers and transfer of engagements of RSLs based in Glasgow between 2010 and 2014 is 0.