Chamber and committees

It is anticipated the annual cost of the recently announced longer term agreement will be in the region of £5 million. The transitional arrangements from 17 January 2012 to the end of June 2012 are anticipated to cost £1.875 million at most. Although the quicker staff move to their new working arrangements, the less that sum will be.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The Long Term Conditions Alliance Scotland, through its administration of the Self Management Fund over the last three years, has allocated a total of £1,089,841 to projects which support people to live with chronic pain in Scotland.

Precise accounting information would need to be sought from the Scottish Ambulance Service direct but there are some 2,400 staff who were eligible for the £250 availability and the £100 ignore payments. Paying the availability payment on a pro-rata basis for three months therefore works out at £156,250. Figures supplied to us by the Scottish Ambulance Service as part of the regular monitoring arrangements show that there were 1,130 incidents where staff were disturbed during rest breaks between 10 October 2011 and 8 January 2012 (the most recent date for which we have validated data). A total of 2,100 disturbs of individual staff members resulted from these. This therefore amounts to some £210,000 in disturb payments.

It is planned that the posts will be filled within 18 months. However, recruitment activity is already underway and it is anticipated that a large proportion of the staff should be in place more quickly than that.

The tender for HIV prevention services in the NHS Grampian area was scheduled to be advertised on 6 February 2012, with the contract due to be awarded on 7 March 2012. The contract award notice will be published on 9 April 2012 with the expectation that the service will commence as soon as possible after that date.

The Scottish Government does not collect this type of operational data. It is for the Scottish Ambulance Service to categorise calls, or re-categorise as necessary, according to the best and most up to date clinical information available. This has always been the case and will not change following the recently announced settlement on rest breaks.

Breathing Space Funding is as follows:

2010-11

£1,043,000 total funding received:

£825,000 Scottish Government funding allocation for Breathing Space

£218,000 NHS 24 funding (internal allocation).

2011-12

£1,178,152 total funding received

£825,000 Scottish Government funding

£353,152 NHS 24 funding (internal allocation)

Funding has not been allocated yet for 2012-13.

Please see the following information regarding call demand, with both annual and monthly figures.

Age Category information has only been collected since June 2010, and the figures represent the periods June to December 2010, and January to December 2011.

Total call demand represents a percentage increase from 2007 to 2011 of 114%

Monthly Breakdown

Age Group %Interactive calls Age Group

The provision of HIV prevention services are a matter for local NHS boards. The role of government is to ensure that our policy priorities of fewer new blood-borne virus infections and fewer STIs are achieved, and that individual are not adversely affected by any local commissioning decision.

NHS Grampian has informed us that there has been no gap in the provision of HIV prevention services since 1 December 2011, and they have continued to undertake a range of prevention activities. We will continue to monitor this closely.