Chamber and committees

The general policy of the Scottish Government is to advise MSPs to directly approach public bodies and organisations for information held by them which is not held by the Scottish Government, and although acting to collate non-Scottish Government held information may have happened in the past, it is not currently viewed as practicable.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. For convenience, the National Records of Scotland have provided the data requested below:

Table 1: Acute gastroenteropathy due to Norovirus (A08.1) was the underlying cause of death, 2015 to 2022.

he system of Dog Control Notices is operated by local authorities. Information requested on what breeds, or types, of dog have most often been the subject of Dog Control Notices in each year since 2018 is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government funded the creation of the Scottish Dog Control Notice Database. This national database went live in February 2022 and brings together the records of all local authorities into a centralised database, that is accessible by local authorities and Police Scotland.

The national database was created and is managed by the Improvement Service. The following table provided by the Improvement Service shows the requested Dog Control Notice information for 2022 and 2023.

Active Dog Control Notices on 31 December 2022

In the most challenging budget settlement since devolution we are providing nearly £13.5bn in the Local Government Settlement 2023-24. We are increasing the resources available to Local Government by over £793m, which represents a real terms increase of £376m or 3%.

The Scottish Government’s policy towards local authorities’ spending is, however, to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of funding is provided by means of a block grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on Education, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

Local Government Financial Statistics for 2021-22 showed that local authorities spent around £6.9bn on education in Scotland, and that 2021-22 was the seventh year in a row education gross revenue expenditure saw a real terms increase.

The Scottish Government provides additional revenue funding to local authorities to support Gaelic medium education through the Gaelic Specific Grant Scheme. Information on funding from 2012 has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre under Bib. No 64655.

Children’s Social Work Statistics data provides an annual breakdown of the number of children and young people being looked after in community and residential placement types. However, data is not currently collected on reasons for homelessness or the linkage with parental outcomes including parental imprisonment.

Table 1 shows the number of children looked after on 31 July in kinship care and foster care placement types between 2013 and 2022. Publication tables in the Children’s Social Work Statistics publication show that on 31 July 2022 a total of 12,596 children were looked after compared to 16,032 on 31 July 2013. 4,249 (34%) young people were looked after by kinship carers with a further 4,155 (33%) young people in foster care.

Of all children looked after, the proportion of children placed with kinship carers has increased from 26% in 2013 to 34% in 2022. Of all the children looked after, the proportion of children placed with foster carers has stayed the same between 2013 and 2022 (33%).

Glasgow City Council were awarded funding from the low carbon Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme (VDLIP) to support its project at Govan Graving Docks in February 2023.

The low carbon VDLIP is a capital programme which aims to tackle persistent vacant and derelict land and support place based approaches to delivering regeneration and sustainable inclusive growth, as part of a just transition to net-zero. It is available on a competitive basis to all Scottish local authorities and Clyde Gateway Urban Regeneration Company.

The VDLIP Independent Panel assess project proposals and make recommendations to Scottish Government on which projects should be funded, based on the aims and objectives of the fund.

A full list of projects warded funding from VDLIP is available at Low Carbon Fund: Vacant and Derelict Land Investment Programme projects - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) 

The fund will reopen for projects seeking funding for 2025-26 in April 2024.

This is an operational matter for ScotRail. The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

The answer to this question has been lodged at the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe). The Bib reference number is 64638.

Roads can be closed for a variety of reasons and we don’t hold specific data on the frequency or average duration of road closures for the purpose of crime scene investigation. The closure of a road in the aftermath of an accident is a matter for Police Scotland, who liaise with NHS colleagues as appropriate to understand if accident investigation is merited. The decision to reopen a road after an investigation is also a matter for the Police in their operational capacity.

The number of deaths where malnutrition was the underlying cause in any death over the past 10 years is as follows (Table 1):

Table 1 - malnutrition (E40-E46) was the underlying cause