Chamber and committees

Community organisations in rural areas and elsewhere are uniquely placed to identify and address the issues that keep individuals in their local communities healthy.

A place-based approach is the foundation of Community-Led Local Development (CLLD). Communities are empowered and supported to design and implement the solutions to the challenges and opportunities they identify in their local area, which can include community led health and social care provision.

Through the Communities workstream within the wider Place and Wellbeing programme we are also working with the community and voluntary sector to enhance the capacity of community organisations (in rural areas and elsewhere) to complement the actions of the public sector in keeping people well. As part of the Communities Workstream we are exploring how we can increase the influence of local community organisations in the decisions that impact on the health and wellbeing of their communities.

We have also introduced participation requests as part of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, which provide a mechanism for communities to seek dialogue with public service providers including NHS Health Boards on their own terms and become meaningfully involved in local service delivery.

The Scottish Government works closely with the legally categorised emergency responder organisations, including Local Authorities, who are responsible for assessing, planning, responding to and recovering from the consequences of civil contingencies emergencies, as considered in the national risk assessment documents produced by the UK and Scottish Governments, as well as the public facing Community Risk Registers produced by Scotland’s three Regional Resilience Partnerships (RRPs). These documents include specific risk assessments for both severe storms and wildfires.

Representatives of all responder agencies are required, by the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, to meet regionally in Scotland’s 3 Regional Resilience Partnership (RRP) areas, in the North, West and East and below that, 12 Local Resilience Partnerships (LRPs) are in place. The Resilience Partnerships meet to ensure plans are in place to co-ordinate a response to any kind of emergency event, including for wildfires and severe storms, should they require a multi-agency response. Existing plans are regularly tested in joint exercises and during real emergencies.

The Scottish Government Civil Contingencies Division co-chairs the Voluntary Sector Resilience Partnership which brings Cat 1 Statutory responders together with relevant Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations to discuss issues around VCS involvement in emergencies, to help empower Scotland’s communities to become more resilient.

The Scottish Government supports this partnership activity in many ways including supporting multi-agency partnership meetings, and organising a range of exercising, learning and professional development opportunities.

Glasgow Prestwick Airport operates on a commercial basis and at arm’s length from the Scottish Government and Ministers do not intervene in operational matters. Additionally, statistics regarding arrests in any location at a matter for Police Scotland.

We are continuing to work across the Scottish Government and with delivery partners, including Public Health Scotland and See Me, to ensure that employers across all sectors are equipped with the knowledge, skills and resources they need to promote and support the conditions that enable good mental health at work.

Together, we are delivering a joint package of support for employers across Scotland to support mentally healthy workplaces, which includes:

• The ‘Supporting a Mentally Healthy Workplace’ employer platform, which was launched in August 2022 and signposts employers to a wide range of free mental health and wellbeing resources and information.
• The ‘Supporting a Mentally Healthy Workplace: National Learning Network for Employers’, which was established in March 2023 to complement the employer platform and to bring together employers of all sizes and across all sectors to share learning and experiences of supporting mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.
• Public Health Scotland’s Mentally Flourishing Workplaces Framework. Developed in collaboration with a range of employers, this aims to help employers identify what they can do to improve mental health support for their employees, and work together to be a mentally flourishing organisation.
• The See Me in Work Programme, led by See Me, Scotland’s anti-mental health stigma campaign. which provides online support for employers to enable them to create stigma-free and mentally healthy working environments.

Additionally, since 2019 Scottish Government’s Mental Health Directorate has provided funding to the Lifelines Scotland wellbeing programme, to support blue light responders – Police Scotland, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the Scottish Ambulance Service – who have had difficult experiences in the course of their work which have affected their mental health and wellbeing.

Please find below information, broken down by financial year, the costs for social media managers within the Communications division for the last five financial years.

I wrote to the Economy and Fair Work Committee on 25 June 2024 to confirm that a market testing exercise for Glasgow Prestwick Airport was underway. Scottish Ministers’ longstanding position is that the airport should be returned to the private sector at the appropriate time and opportunity. This must be to an organisation with the commitment and capability to operate businesses directly relevant to GPA.

Any decision to sell GPA must represent value for money for taxpayers and be informed by what is right for the long-term success of the business and its contribution to the local and Scottish economy.

The process is ongoing and I will update Parliament when a significant development has been made.

The Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care support policy in Scotland and has published clear social care standards setting out what people should expect when using health, social care or social work services in Scotland. Whereas it is local authorities and Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) who have the statutory responsibility to ensure that these standards are upheld and that social care support services are commissioned and available to provide people with the appropriate social care support in the right place and at the right time.

As set out in the Programme for Government 2023-24, the Scottish Government has committed £3,03m in 2023-26 to progressing the National Centre for Remote and Rural Health and Care, which launched in October 2023.

The Centre will focus initially on Primary Care and community services priorities in Phase 1 as an initial proof of concept, with scoping work being carried out during the first 2 years of the Centre to lay the ground for expansion to include the wider rural healthcare workforce and Social Care in due course.

The Scottish Government continues to work closely with partners to support older people on a range of issues related to age equality. This includes delivering actions set out in the Strategic Action Framework, A Fairer Scotland for Older People. We also launched a new £3.8m Social Isolation and Loneliness Fund on 8 March 2023 which funds 53 projects supporting people at risk of social isolation and loneliness.

In relation to your question about initiatives to prevent social isolation in Aberdeenshire, I would refer you the written answer to your question S6W-33671 on 31 January 2025 where this response is covered.

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

I wrote to the Economy and Fair Work Committee on 25 June 2024 to confirm that a market testing exercise for Glasgow Prestwick Airport was underway. Scottish Ministers’ longstanding position is that the airport should be returned to the private sector at the appropriate time and opportunity. This must be to an organisation with the commitment and capability to operate businesses directly relevant to GPA.

Any decision to sell GPA must represent value for money for taxpayers and be informed by what is right for the long-term success of the business and its contribution to the local and Scottish economy.

The process is ongoing and I will update Parliament when a significant development has been made.

Glasgow Prestwick Airport operates on a commercial basis and at arm’s length from the Scottish Government and Ministers do not intervene in operational matters.

It is the legal responsibility of the assigned Health Board or GP practice to act as the data controller for an individual's medical record. The data controller will monitor the data and rectify any discrepancies, in line with existing Data Protection legislation and processes.

Each NHS Scotland Health board has a privacy notice to inform the public of why and how they use information they are in control of and this can be accessed via their individual website.

Guidance is publicly available on NHS inform at: https://www.nhsinform.scot/care-support-and-rights/health-rights/confidentiality-and-data-protection/health-records/#viewing-your-health-records.