Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not currently hold this information.

Following the publication of Guidance on the provision of wheelchairs on short term loan in March 2021 ( https://www.gov.scot/publications/guidance-provision-wheelchairs-short-term-loan/ ) Scottish Government officials engaged with individual Health and Social Care Partnerships to initially gauge what progress had been made in implementing the guidance. However, due to the pressures of the pandemic, a full review was not carried out as planned.

That engagement established that there were nine services who were providing a short term wheelchair loan service in house. These were Fife, Glasgow City, Inverclyde, East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire, West Dunbartonshire and NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde – Acute division.

Following a public consultation we plan to issue revised guidance on the provision of equipment and adaptations. Alongside short term wheelchair provision, this guidance includes extensive advice on the effective and timely provision of community equipment and housing adaptations. Accompanying the guidance is a range of good practice guides and self evaluation tools, which we will support services to utilise and evaluate how they are performing against the Key Actions contained in the guidance.

The first cohort of ScotGEM students graduated from the four-year course in June 2022. These graduates must now undertake two years of Foundation training before they are eligible to apply for specialty training posts. We therefore will not know how many ScotGEM students have entered General Practice Speciality Training until 2024.

Replacing the previous cashback arrangements with a standalone grant was a key commitment in the Programme for Government 2022-23 and will offer a more straightforward, flexible and accessible way to access funding for priority measures; particularly in our rural and island areas with additional funding support available through the rural uplift.

To access the grant, applicants must contact the Home Energy Scotland (HES) advice service, which acts as the gateway for this funding and other Scottish Government delivery schemes, including Warmer Homes Scotland. A wide range of marketing activity encourages individuals seeking advice or information on funding support for energy saving improvements to contact HES, including a national marketing campaign currently underway until late January 2023 across TV, radio, press and social media.

The launch of the HES Grant and Loan Scheme generated substantial media coverage across different platforms, including newspapers, radio and TV. It has also been covered on different Scottish Government platforms, including on the gov.scot website and Net Zero Scotland social media channels (Twitter and LinkedIn). Both of these platforms have substantial reach, with the Net Zero Scotland Twitter having over 20,000 thousand followers.

In addition, the Energy Saving Trust (EST) who deliver the HES advice service and the new grant on behalf of the Scottish Government have promoted the new scheme. Newsletters have been issued to installers to inform them of the changes and they have undertaken various media engagements to promote the new grant offer available.

The Scottish Government and its partners will continue to work together to raise awareness of the new HES Grant and Loan Scheme across Scotland, including in the Highlands and Islands region. This will include monitoring uptake of the new offer and tailoring marketing material to reflect the new offer available where necessary.

52 students graduated from the ScotGEM course in June 2022. This is the first cohort of students that have graduated since the course commenced in 2018.

Scottish Government is not currently considering the introduction of a home delivery service for Community Pharmacy. A large number of community pharmacies provide a free home delivery service and where they don't, patients are encouraged to use approaches such using a 'flu friend', when family, friends or neighbours are able to collect medicines on their behalf.

Under The Strategic Framework for a Cyber Resilient Scotland , the Scottish Government works closely with our delivery partners to improve the cyber resilience of Scottish businesses.

Between January 2021 and July 2022, 3,410 businesses that received the Scottish Government Business Gateway Digital Boost Programme funding undertook a Cyber Health Check, where qualified assessors performed a pre-assessment of their critical technical controls, in line with Cyber Essentials (considered a national standard by the National Cyber Security Centre).

In 2022, the Scottish Government was notified of 12 cyber incidents under our Notifiable Scottish Public Sector Cyber Incidents Policy and Procedure.

The Scottish Government will not provide further details as this would likely cause substantial harm to the effective conduct of public affairs and the secure delivery of our public services.

This, combined with other publicly available information, would likely allow identification of the organisations that reported cyber incidents under the procedure. It would therefore undermine the confidentiality of the policy procedure and adversely affect the trust and openness with which organisations currently report incidents and participate in the reporting process.Making further information on the timing of past cyber incidents publicly available would have a negative impact on the cyber security and resilience of the public sector.

The majority of spend relating to the Enhanced Psychological Practice programme relates to salaried posts in NHS Health Boards, creating additional capacity within the workforce and enabling delivery of evidence based psychological interventions at enhanced level. The allocated spend to date is as follows (please note numbers of learners/practitioners are cumulative and there are ongoing discussions with partners about the programme for future years):

2021-22 - £377,446

• £224,538 funding towards salaries/backfill for 18 months for 20 practitioners – learner phase followed by post qualification consolidation phase
• £152,908 towards development and delivery of education and training, and programme infrastructure – NES staffing, eLearning development, teaching support and consultancy, learning resources

2022-23 - £2,193,767*

• £1,925,908 funding towards salaries/backfill for 18 months for up to 81 practitioners – learner phase followed by post qualification consolidation phase
• £267,859 towards development and delivery of education and training, and programme infrastructure – NES staffing, teaching support and consultancy, eLearning development, SQA fees and learning resources

*salary costs included in this figure are based on 2021-22 Agenda for Change rates and will need to be amended on confirmation of the Pay Award for 2022-23.

The cost information related to delayed discharge for the NHS is no longer included in the PHS publications. This is due to the ongoing impact of the pandemic where detailed cost data could not be submitted by NHS Boards to PHS.

The Scottish Government does not have a reporting system in place to track instances of damp and mould in all socially rented homes.

Data on the presence of mould and damp is collected through the Scottish House Condition Survey (SHCS), including from a sample of about 700 social rented homes each year.

Survey results from the SHCS provide an indication of the prevalence of mould and damp in social rented housing. These results are expressed in the following table as percentages of homes with and without mould and damp.

It should be noted that as these results are based on a sample survey, the level of accuracy on the results can vary between +/-1% and +/-3%, as shown in the table. This means that the changes between years in prevalence in mould and damp estimated from the SHCS may not be statistically significant as they are within the margins of error of the survey estimates.

Table 1: Percentage of social sector dwellings with presence of mould and (any rising or penetrating) damp, SHCS 2012 to 2019