There has been a period of exceptional market volatility due to a range of global factors such as the Covid pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine as well as the impact of Brexit. As a result of this, projects have experienced cost pressures out-with normal inflation expectations.

The Learning Estate Investment Programme carried out an evidence-led assessment of these issues which resulted in an increase of 11% in support to projects reaching contract close from August 2022 to December 2023 inclusive, and impacted on 20 projects.

The current Full Time Equivalent of Civil Servants working on the preparations for a National Care Service is 160. The cost of this for 2023-24 is estimated to be £9.77 million. This is an average cost of £814k per month. The cumulative spend from 2021-22 to November 2023 is £17.4 million.

It is the statutory responsibility of local authorities to manage their school estate. Therefore, the Scottish Government does not hold this information.

We are working with NHS Boards to maximise current resources and productivity to reduce long waits, which have been exacerbated by the impacts of the global pandemic. We remain committed to reducing waiting times year on year across the NHS as set out in the Policy Prospectus .

We are working to implement the commitments of our Neurological Care and Support – National Framework for Action 2020-25 , to improve the provision of co-ordinated health and social care and support, develop sustainable workforce models and ensure high standards of person-centred care. Since October 2020, we have provided £2.6 million to fund innovative projects working to improve outcomes for people living with neurological conditions.

Whilst the Framework is not condition specific, it covers issues affecting people with all types of neurological conditions, including dystonia. The Scottish Government is working in partnership with NHS24 to update accessible public-facing information about dystonia , and other neurological conditions, for the NHS Inform website.

We recognise that uncertainty while waiting can have an impact on health and wellbeing. That is why we have launched a new Waiting Well Hub on NHS Inform to provide patients with information to support their health and wellbeing while waiting for health and social care services. This includes information on physical and mental health, as well as advice about practical issues like money worries.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery was commissioned by the Scottish Government to establish Specialty Delivery Groups in order to support, innovate and develop high quality services across Scotland. Significant progress has been made to release outpatient activity through redesign, with over 100,000 appointments released through Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT) and Patient-Initiated Review (PIR), well ahead of the target of 50,000 for 2023-24.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-23817 on 8 January 2024. 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 Scottish Government has commissioned the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) to improve Community Urgent Care (CUC) pathways as part of the wider Urgent and Unscheduled Care Programme. In addition to validated nationally collected data from Public Health Scotland, an Unscheduled Care Improvement Dashboard is in creation which will consist of ‘data for improvement’ collected manually by each Health Board Area, which supports tracking of locally held data to reflect the impact of improvement activity, creating visibility of progress.

Work is also underway through an external partner to evaluate the Redesign of Urgent Care pathway through NHS 24 111 service which launched in 2020 and provides access to local Flow Navigation Centres and virtual A&E teams.This evaluation will assess impact on a range of measures, including patient and staff experience and assess what other outcomes are impacted by the service.

• The Scottish Government has commissioned the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) to improve Community Urgent Care (CUC) pathways as part of the wider Urgent and Unscheduled Care Programme.
• In addition to validated nationally collected data from Public Health Scotland, an Unscheduled Care Improvement Dashboard is in creation which will consist of ‘data for improvement’ collected manually by each Health Board Area, which supports tracking of locally held data to reflect the impact of improvement activity, creating visibility of progress.
• Work is also underway through an external partner to evaluate the Redesign of Urgent Care pathway through NHS 24 111 service which launched in 2020 and provides access to local Flow Navigation Centres and virtual A&E teams. This evaluation will assess impact on a range of measures, including patient and staff experience and assess what other outcomes are impacted by the service.

A&E performance remains below the levels we all wish to see, however, we continue to work closely with Boards to support delivery of sustained improvements across a range of areas.

Emergency Departments across NHS Scotland and the rest of the UK, continue to face sustained pressures. The combined impact of pandemic backlogs, Brexit-exacerbated staff shortages, and delayed discharges are all contributing to the challenges the NHS is facing, with significant pressure being placed on our urgent care services in particular.

Through our Urgent and Unscheduled Care Collaborative Programme, we are supporting Health Boards to take action to improve patient flow and reduce A&E delays through a range of actions such as: increasing community capacity such as hospital at home, optimising the use of early and effective triage, rapid decision-making and streaming to assessment areas.

The ‘Included, Engaged and Involved Part 2: Preventing and Managing School Exclusions’ guidance was published in 2017.

In June last year, I convened the first meeting of a Headteacher taskforce which focused on school exclusions. The topic of school exclusions was also discussed by a wide range of stakeholders, including local authorities, at the series of behaviour summits held between September and November last year.

In November, the Behaviour in Scottish Schools Research (BISSR) was also published, which provides the accurate national picture in relation to behaviour in Scotland’s schools. Local authority staff were interviewed as part of BISSR.

We are currently working with the Scottish Advisory Group on Relationships and Behaviour in Schools , which includes COSLA, to establish what actions are required to be included in the national action plan to respond to the findings of the summit process and BISSR. The national action plan will be published as soon as possible.

The number of properties expected to be liable for the Intermediate Property Rate (IPR) in 2024-2025 before any reliefs are applied is presented in the below tables, broken down in Table 1 by property class, and in Table 2 by council area. Property class is a classification used by Scottish Assessors to describe the type of property, and does not necessarily accurately reflect the use of a property. The Scottish Government does not hold property-level data on industry sectors.

These tables are based on the non-domestic valuation roll as at 1 October 2023.

Figures in these tables are rounded to the nearest 10.

Table 1: Number of properties liable for IPR in 2024-2025 by property class

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

With the exception of 2 prison cells at HMP Open Estate, Castle Huntly, all other cells across the SPS estate have access to natural light.

All prison cells have access to artificial light sufficient for reading purposes.