Chamber and committees

The cap on claims for the Mother and Baby Unit Family Fund is currently being reviewed, in line with feedback received from the consultation analysis. Both Scottish Mother and Baby Units are aware of this and until the review is complete, the £500 cap can be waived on a case by case basis, subject to local judgement.

I provided figures in my previous response to S6W-12191 on the number of delayed discharges from hospital under the requirements of the Adults with Incapacity Act, which related to the guardianship process. All patients whose discharge from hospital is delayed by the application process for a guardianship are recorded under Code 9.

The Scottish Government is progressing a range of actions with partners to expedite AWI discharges from hospital to ensure that, once medically fit, patients can be cared for in a setting that is most appropriate for their needs. This includes:

• reviewing the guardianship process to identify opportunities to reduce timescales for the processing of applications;
• working with partners at a national level to disseminate good practice to local areas;
• providing targeted advice and assistance to Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs), working with them to identify improvements to the process.

In August 2022, NatureScot launched the Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (IRNS) scheme, which provides projects that offer nature-based solutions with technical assistance grants to address investment barriers and develop replicable and scalable business models. Through this work, IRNS aims to build capacity for environmental projects to attract financial investment. The scheme aligns to the Scottish Government’s Interim Principles for Responsible Investment in Natural Capital, which sets out our expectations for a values-led, high-integrity market. Successful applications were announced in November 2022, with £580k of funding awarded to projects across a range of environmental contexts and locations.

We are supportive of community wealth building, and the opportunities it presents to act as a conduit for supporting our Net Zero ambitions, in particular supporting a just transition. The land and property pillar of community wealth building is particularly relevant to land reform, and is very much in line with both existing land reform mechanisms (such as the Community Right to Buy) and our proposals for the next Land Reform Bill.

Measures put forward for inclusion in the Bill include a requirement for owners of large-scale landholdings to prepare and publish Land Management Plans. In the consultation we propose that one of the purposes of these plans should be to show how the management of the landholding contributes to relevant land use, economic and community development priorities and opportunities, as set out in community plans, regional land use strategies, and national policy. Management plans could be used to identify areas of land suitable for disposal to local community organisations seeking to develop projects that will meet local needs. We sought views in the consultation on whether people agree that the Plans should provide information on developments/activities that will contribute to local and inclusive economic development or community wealth building.

We received over 540 responses to the consultation, and will consider views submitted on how management plans could contribute to community wealth building, as we develop the measures that will be included in the Bill. In addition, to support the development of legislation we have established a CWB Steering Group chaired by the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth. Representatives across the public, private and third sectors have been invited to provide ideas and insight as we develop legislative proposals. This includes consideration of issues linked to the use of land and property assets in both rural and urban areas.

The Bathing Waters (Scotland) Regulations 2008 enable Scottish Ministers to designate a bathing season in a period where they expect a large number of people to bathe at a designated bathing water. The definition of bathers, in this instance, is exclusive to paddlers and swimmers and does not cover other water users.

For all 87 designated bathing waters in Scotland the bathing season runs from 1 June to 15 September each year, in accordance with the traditional period of peak usage. In comparison with the 3.5 month bathing season in Scotland across Europe the season length varies from 2 months in Sweden to 6 months in Cypress.

The aim of the Bathing Waters Regulations is to minimise the risks to human health to swimmers and paddlers from bacteriological impacts whilst bathing. It would be disproportionately costly to monitor bathing waters outwith the current bathing water season when they are not regularly used by large numbers of bathers. General health advice on wild swimming is available from the UK Health Security Agency at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/swim-healthy-leaflet/swim-healthy , which is also applicable to Scotland

The number of bathing waters in Scotland has increased since last year and now stands at 87, with 98% achieving the bathing water quality standards and more rated excellent than ever before.

On Scotland’s national forests and land, Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) constructs roads for use on a multi-purpose basis e.g. timber transport, tree planting, environmental improvement works, recreational access. FLS does not hold data that ascribes a particular use to sections of forest road, nor does it hold specific data as to what lengths of road have been constructed by windfarm developers. Over the past ten years, levels of forest road construction by FLS have been as follows:

2012: 46 Miles

2013: 52 Miles

2014: 43 Miles

2015: 34 Miles

2016: 37 Miles

2017: 37 Miles

2018: 44 Miles

2019: 32 Miles

2020: 27 Miles

2021: 24 Miles

2022: 22 Miles

The Scottish Government aims to answer all ministerial correspondence within 20 working days and regularly reviews and monitors its performance against this target.

Correspondence from MSPs; councillors; third sector organisations and other key stakeholders; or the wider public is not categorised separately, therefore, calculating the percentage of responses sent within 20 working days to MSPs specifically could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost. Between December 2021 and December 2022, the response rate for all ministerial correspondence was approximately 77% (of 43,091 items of ministerial correspondence, 33,173 were responded to within 20 working days).

The number of properties expected to be liable for the Higher Property Rate (HPR) in 2023-24 before any reliefs are applied is presented in the below tables, broken down in Table 1 by property class, and in Table 2 by local authority. 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 an imputed Valuation Roll based on an incomplete draft Valuation Roll, as used by the Scottish Fiscal Commission in Scotland’s Economic and Fiscal Forecasts December 2022, and figures are therefore subject to change.

Figures in these tables are rounded to the nearest 10, with values greater than zero but lower than five displayed as ‘[low]’.

Table 1: Number of properties liable for HPR in 2023-24 by property class

The consultation analysis report for the Mother and Baby Unit Capacity in Scotland consultation was published in August 2022. This report and other resources are being fed into an options appraisal which is setting out the next steps in improving specialist perinatal mental health care for women and their babies in Scotland. This will consider the geographical need and variation across Scotland. This options appraisal will be undertaken by NHS National Services Scotland and will commence in January 2023 with a view to being completed by the end of September 2023.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally.

The Mental Welfare Commission (MWC) for Scotland has safeguarding duties in relation to people who are subject to the protection of the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000. This duty includes monitoring the use of welfare guardianship orders to determine how and for whom the AWI Act is being used. Hearings take place within 28 days of the application being submitted to the court. The Commission is notified of the date of an Adults with Incapacity hearing in court and also the date the order is granted. The most recent AWI monitoring report (covering 2021-22) was published by the MWC in October 2022. A link to the report can be found on the MWC website.