Chamber and committees

Public Health Scotland publish figures quarterly and annually on the number of acute beds broken down by NHS Board of Treatment and Specialty.

The most recent annual publication, covering April 2020–March 2021, was published on 29 September 2020.

Scottish Government officials have a weekly call with NHS Tayside’s Cancer Team to track all patients on an urgent suspicion of cancer (USC) pathway and update on service delivery, including workforce.

In March 2021, after a request for national support, Scottish Government representatives met with NHS Tayside Chief Executive and senior medical staff and other health boards to provide support to ensure the continuation of its breast oncology services following the departure of one consultant.

We are continuing to work with NHS Tayside to ensure the long term continuation of service for women in the NHS Tayside area. A new consultant has been appointed who took up post in mid-July and there is ongoing recruitment for a further post. Ongoing clinical support will continue to be provided by NHS Grampian.

The Scottish Government set out the local arrangements that should be put in place to provide clinical and professional multi-disciplinary team oversight for social care services during the COVID-19 pandemic in a letter dated 17 May 2020.

These arrangements, which build on the foundations of health and social care integration, have contributed to the protective arrangements for care home and care at home services during the pandemic. The Scottish Government wrote to local MDT oversight teams in March 2021 setting out the expectation that these arrangements should continue for the remainder of the pandemic and beyond, although these will need to evolve taking account of learning and local circumstances.

The additional funding announced will enable both the establishment of new multi-disciplinary teams and strengthening of existing teams.

The level of future funding associated with this Programme for Government commitment will not be confirmed until publication of the Scottish Government multi-year spending review, currently expected to be spring of 2022. The Scottish Budget for 2022/23 will be published on 9 December.

However, the Scottish Government has already committed £2.3 million of funding for genomic medicine for 2021–2022. The funding for 2021-2022 will support the extension of ‘The Bridge to a Scottish Strategy for Genomics Strategy’ which increases laboratory capacity and frontline genetic services for rare and inherited disease.

The Scottish Genomics Leadership Group, jointly chaired by Professor David Crossman, Chief Scientist for Health for the Scottish Government, and Susan Buchanan, Director for NHS National Services Division, are our expert group in genomic medicine and are providing advice to the Scottish Government to plan our long-term agenda for genomic medicine in Scotland.

On 30 September 2021 we launched the NHS Scotland COVID Status app which was developed for vaccination information initially. We have developed our app to meet the EU requirements so we expect this to be compatible with the IATA Travel Pass. We have and continue to engage with international stakeholders and UK Government to ensure the app is compatible with the other countries requirements of entry.

The Scottish Government provided Scotland’s local authorities with an additional £1.2 billion in direct support during 2020-21 through the local government finance settlement – over and above their regular grant payments to combat COVID-19. Taken together with the additional £259 million confirmed for this year, this brings the value of the overall COVID-19 support package for councils up to over £1.5 billion.

£10 million of funding was announced on 3 August to enable local authorities to undertake CO2 monitoring to assess the ventilation levels in all learning, teaching and play spaces by the October break.

Further to initial recommendations from the Short Life Working Group on Ventilation, funding of up to £25million to support businesses with ventilation was announced on 28 September. Due to be open for applications in November, further details will be available in due course.

The Scottish Government obtains information which informs how we identify and advise people at highest risk of becoming severely ill or dying from Covid-19 from a variety of reliable UK and international sources. While that evidence is published and readily available, it is not always easy for people at highest risk to understand or to translate into informed choices about individual behaviours. We are therefore planning to publish a summary of the current evidence that underpins our advice in a form that people find accessible this autumn.

Local authorities are responsible for a range of public services, including housing, and the vast majority of funding for these services is provided to local authorities by means of a block grant from the Scottish Government. It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available on the basis of local needs and priorities.

In addition to the block grant, outlined below is the additional financial support the Scottish Government has provided to local authorities in the last five years to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping.

Rapid rehousing transition plans – Ending Homelessness Together fund

Since 2018, the Scottish Government has provided funding from the Ending Homelessness Together fund to local authorities to develop and implement rapid rehousing transition plans (RRTPs). RRTPs are the planning framework for local authorities’ housing-led approach to prevent and address all forms of homelessness, including rough sleeping. Funding for the development of the RRTPs was granted in 2018/19 and subsequent funding was granted for the implementation of the plans. The breakdown of funding by year and local authority can be found in the following table:

It is not possible to estimate how many people in South Ayrshire would find it difficult to meet the cost of purchasing or fitting fire alarms, because information about the number of homes that do not have alarms that meet the new standard is not currently collected as part of the Scottish House Condition Survey.

Home owners are responsible for the costs of on-going work needed to protect and preserve their own property, which includes the costs for the fire alarms to meet the new standard. However, we have provided £0.5 million additional funding for Care and Repair Scotland to provide help installing alarms for older and disabled homeowners on low incomes. We have also provided £1 million to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to provide alarms for owners who are considered most vulnerable to the risk of fire.

It is not possible to determine exactly how many properties have alarms of the prescribed type installed as this information is not currently collected as part of the Scottish House Condition Survey.