Chamber and committees

Independent reporters from DPEA have held 96 public inquires on behalf of Scottish Ministers since 1999.

These relate to public inquiries held where a planning authority and/or statutory consultee objected to an application under the Electricity Act.

Dates by year are not available for cases received prior to 2011

Scottish Ministers are aware that Defra Ministers are establishing a taskforce, which we understand will inform the development of a circular economy strategy across the UK Government.

While the strategy will be England-only in scope, Scottish Government officials are already engaging with UK officials on input into the development of the strategy, recognising that there may be implications for, and opportunities to align policy with, devolved governments. The Scottish Government expects the taskforce’s work, and development of our own circular economy strategy, to be a topic for discussion at a future Inter-Ministerial Group for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

There is a budget of £1.8m which covers Connecting Scotland, Ethical Digital Nation and Unlocking the Value of Data programmes. To date, the following spend has been committed:

• Grant funding to the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) to develop digital training, continue support for existing clients and deliver existing projects. This funding covers support for a wide range of digital inclusion initiatives including:
• ‘Digital Champion’ training, delivered through Mhor Collective, which equips individuals to support others in engaging safely and meaningfully online, building digital confidence within communities.;
• Offboarding support for existing Connecting Scotland users, including temporary extension of connectivity with further support for users to transition to other means of connectivity;
• Supporting the delivery of three digital inclusion programmes - lending libraries, social housing, and place-based initiatives - helping more people to get online through access to devices, connectivity, and technical support, and providing public and third-sector organisations and their staff with support in digital inclusion provision;
• The University of Liverpool to undertake research on a Minimum Digital Living Standard for Scotland. The findings from this research will provide the Scottish Government with detailed Scotland-specific data to identify where there is a need for targeted support for digital inclusion, and help to inform future service design;
• licenses, travel and other services
• staffing costs to support the management of the programme.

All remaining spend in this financial year will be assessed in line with the guidance set out by Ministers in the Scottish Public Finance Manual and current Scottish Government guidelines on spending controls

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government as it relates to an operational matter for the children’s hearings system.

The member should contact the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration, one of the statutory bodies of the hearings system, for this information.

The recruitment and management of staff dedicated to child protection services is a matter for individual local authorities. The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS)’s Healthcare Staffing Programme monitors NHS Boards’ compliance with the Common Staffing Method. The HIS Healthcare Staffing Operational Framework sets out HIS’s methodology for monitoring compliance. The HIS Healthcare Staffing Programme forms part of the HIS Safe Delivery of Care (SDoC) inspections, both in terms of pre-inspection activity and as part of the onsite inspection team. The SDoC inspection methodology is used for the current acute hospital inspection programme and will therefore also be applied to the maternity inspection programme when it commences from January 2025.

The outturn cost to the Scottish Government of providing each relief, including Retail, hospitality, and leisure relief in 2020-2023, are available in Table 3 of Non-domestic rates income statistics, available at https://www.gov.scot/publications/non-domestic-rates-income-statistics/.

At the December 2023 Budget, Islands and specified remote areas hospitality relief was forecast by the Scottish Fiscal Commission to cost £4 million in 2024-2025, available in Figure A.10 in Scotland’s Economic and Fiscal Forecasts December 2023, at https://fiscalcommission.scot/publications/scotlands-economic-and-fiscal-forecasts-december-2023/. Updated forecasts for 2024-2025 will be released alongside the December 2024 Budget.

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government as it relates to an operational matter for the children’s hearings system.

The member should contact the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration, one of the statutory bodies of the hearings system, for this information.

NHS 24 is committed to providing safe and effective care to our patients across Scotland 365 days of the year. During times of peak demand staff work hard to answer as many calls as quickly and safely as possible.

Calls to the 111 service can be unanswered for a variety of reasons, including callers choosing to end their call after being connected to the automated messaging service and hearing the options available to them.

These include accessing self-care advice via NHS Inform or contacting another area of the health service which may be more appropriate to meet their needs.

The Scottish Government continues to support NHS 24's on-going work to help reduce unanswered calls, including recently revising NHS 24's key performance indicators to help better reflect and understand the current demands on the service.

This work allows the Service to capture any unmet demand, and any potential risks where callers have made multiple attempts to access 111 without success.

It will also allow the Service to continue to make improvements to service delivery moving forward.

This information is not held by the Scottish Government as it relates to an operational matter for the children’s hearings system.

The Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) publish their annual statistics, which sets out a measure on time taken to progress referrals through the children’s hearings system. The information is available on the SCRA website: Official Statistics - SCRA.