Chamber and committees

In this government’s first 100 days, we established six pilot schemes to provide free bikes for school age children who cannot afford one. A further four pilots were then established by the end of 2021. These pilots will run for up to 12 months, testing different approaches and delivery models to help inform a national rollout.

The total number of bikes issued to date is 2067. We expect to have issued 3000 bikes by the end of the pilot period. The bikes include adapted and non-standard bikes to cater for a range of needs.

We do not record data on bike numbers at local authority level. However, considering bikes issued and associated training and promotion sessions, free bikes activities have taken place in 20 of 32 local authority areas. The 9 pilots are running across a range of locations including in urban, rural and island communities.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-10083 on16 August 2022. 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.

In 2021 Play Scotland published its progress review of Scotland’s Play Strategy which identified eight broad recommendations for next steps on play in Scotland, including that government and others should “maintain a focus on playful learning and play in schools”. Play Scotland’s progress review is available at: https://www.playscotland.org/resources/progress-review-of-scotlands-play-strategy-2021/.

In 2020 the Scottish Government and Education Scotland published ‘Realising the Ambition: Being Me – Practice Guidance for Early Years in Scotland’. This national guidance for staff working with children and families from pre-birth until the end of Primary 1 and beyond, draws on research, evidence and theory and includes guidance on play pedagogy across the early level of Curriculum for Excellence. On 27 July 2022, Education Scotland launched an updated and strengthened version of the Early Level Play Pedagogy Toolkit, available at: https://education.gov.scot/improvement/learning-resources/early-level-play-pedagogy-toolkit/.

Individual school inspection reports consider play pedagogy alongside the variety of early level pedagogical approaches adopted by schools. They report on outcomes for learners and make reference to the quality of children’s experiences.

The Scottish Government is modifying homelessness legislation in September 2022 to suspend the power of Scottish local authorities to refer a person who is homeless or threatened with homelessness to another local authority in Scotland on the grounds of their local connection. This will not affect processes in place related to social housing. This change was recommended by the independent Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group in 2018 and will give people in housing crisis more choice about where they live and access to the support they need.

Homelessness stakeholders support the principle of the suspension of local connection referrals. Some concerns have been raised by those local authorities with the highest volume of homelessness presentations. As the timing of the change was the primary concern, the Scottish Government delayed amending the legislation on three occasions, most recently in March 2022 due to the potential impact on homelessness services of the Ukrainian resettlement scheme.

The Scottish Government has put in place a robust monitoring and evaluation framework to measure any impact on local authorities’ homelessness and support services. The Ministerial Statement on Local Connection, published in March 2021, allows for appropriate action to be taken should the capacity of a local authority to meet its homelessness and housing duties be adversely affected by the legislative change.

The Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers and Scottish Women’s Aid have raised concerns about people who have restrictions on their movement, for example, people subject to multi-agency public protection agency (MAPPA) arrangements and convicted perpetrators of domestic abuse. The change to local connection legislation will not override existing protocols to manage these matters.

Any other concerns will be addressed as they arise through regular engagement with stakeholders. Appropriate mitigations and support will be put in place where there is evidence that this is needed.

The Scottish Government is working in partnership with COSLA to appropriately direct the deployment of Scotland’s National Matching Services.

The teams are currently active in supporting Edinburgh, West Lothian and more recently Renfrewshire.

Matching activity has increased with a team deployed on board the M/S Victoria I passenger ship in Leith, with further plans in place to deploy support in Aberdeen later this week.

Teams will continue to work in partnership with our local authority partners to consider how best we can respond to areas where there is a need for increased matching activity; including where there is a need to prioritise matching activity in hotels where temporary accommodation arrangements are coming to an end.

The following table shows the number of valid card holders in the Young Persons’ Free Bus Travel Scheme as of close of business 1 August 2022 in the Perth and Kinross and Fife local authorities. This information is based on live data as of 1 August 2022 and will exclude those who have turned 22 or exited the scheme since its launch.

This information was supplied by the National Entitlement Card Programme Office (NECPO). NECPO support the 32 local authorities by assisting with the integration of various national and local public services on the National Entitlement Card (NEC) and are the joint controller with local authorities of this data.

The Scottish Government is committed to continuing to invest in NHS dentistry in rural areas, which is why we have updated the Recruitment and Retention Allowance to reflect the particular challenges in attracting dentists to work in more remote areas.

Dentists, who meet all the requirements and are providing GDS in a Classification 1 area, will receive:

• £25,000 paid over two years, at £12,500 per annum, for dentists in sub-part A of the first part of a dental list;
• £12,500 paid over one year for dentists undertaking VT.

Dentists, who meet all the requirements and are providing GDS in a Classification 2 area, will receive:

• £15,000 paid over two years, at £7,500 per annum, for dentists in sub-part A of the first part of a dental list;
• £7,500 paid over one year for dentists undertaking VT.

Scottish Government Ministers regularly meet with and are briefed by health officials and clinical advisers to ensure they are kept up to date with the ongoing situation regarding case numbers, treatment pathways and public health information messaging on the current monkeypox outbreak. This includes all relevant updates from the public health agencies across the UK, which are leading on the Monkeypox response.

As this requires a large data table to answer, a response has been provided through the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 63543).

This data is a subset of the most recent National Statistics on Police Recorded Crime 2021-22, which are available on the Scottish Government website here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/recorded-crime-scotland-2021-2022/

The Scottish Government published an Island Communities Impact Assessment on 14 December 2021 which concluded that ferry travel should not be included in the Scheme, but that issues relating to ferry fares should be considered as part of the Islands Connectivity Plan and the Fair Fares Review, which are underway.