Chamber and committees

The Care Inspectorate for Scotland are responsible for setting and reviewing the ratios for all childcare setting in Scotland. Usually, childminders can care for a maximum of eight children at any one time under the age of 16 years, of whom a maximum of six children will be under 12 years, no more than three children will be under primary school age, and only one child will be under one year old.

The number of children cared for at any one time includes the childminder’s own children or family members, whether or not they are present in the service. Evidence indicates that these ratios provide good outcomes for children.

In discussion with a setting, The Care Inspectorate may vary the adult to child ratios to take account of special circumstances that support the best outcomes for children, such as the presence of siblings under the age of one, the presence of children with additional support needs or the layout of the premises being used. Ratios will also be varied where more than one childminder works from the premises, or the childminder employs an assistant.

Guidance was last published on these ratios in 2018. It was last reviewed in 2019.

Our Commitment to Childminding , published in January 2021, sets out how the Scottish Government will continue to work with partners to promote childminding as a positive career choice and as a choice for parents and carers when they decide the most appropriate childcare option for their family.

This includes promoting childminding careers by working with employability bodies, including the Department of Work and Pensions and Skills Development Scotland, and exploring the opportunities to ensure that Early Learning and Childcare students are exposed to the career options of childminding within student placements during the course of their study.

The Scottish Government will continue to monitor trends in the number of childminding services and to ensure that our approach reflects the evidence obtained from the recently published Financial Sustainability Health Check . We also want to ensure that childminders continue to play a vital role in ongoing delivery of the 1140 programme and in how we implement our new Programme for Government Commitments for one and two year olds over the course of this Parliament.

Under the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 education authorities in Scotland have a statutory duty to consult and plan on delivery of early learning and childcare (ELC) ( part 6 section 50 ) and on the delivery of day care and out of school care ( part 8 section 55 ) in their local area, at least every two years. Locally-led consultation and service planning is essential to ensuring funded ELC offers that meets local demand and circumstances.

In addition, the Scottish Government has undertaken a number of research exercises to understand parents’ and carers’ needs and preferences at a national level. Over the last three years these include:

• Parents' views and use of early learning and childcare , published in August 2018, in which findings were drawn from an online survey and a telephone survey of parents. The study explored the views and experiences of parents and carers with children under the age of six across Scotland, to inform the expansion of ELC in Scotland. The report found that at the time, nearly 9 in 10 parents (88%) used some form of funded provision and that most combined this with paid and/or informal provision.
• Annual questions about use and affordability of childcare in the Scottish Household Survey for households with a child aged under 11 years old on. The latest report, Under Use of Childcare, published in September 2020, found 79 per cent of households with a child aged two to five years used some form of childcare in 2019.
• Out of school care parent survey , published on 30 August 2019. The report found that use of out of school care was similar across both term-time and the school holidays, with more than half of parents using term-time care (58%) and holiday care (61%). Half of all parents (50%) used both, while 23% used neither.
• Most recently, the Financial Sustainability Health Check of the childcare sector in Scotland, which was published on 31 August, collected information from providers on demand for their services. At the time of the survey (May 2021) overall levels of demand (measured as occupancy levels) were lower for all types of service compared to March 2020. The largest reduction in demand had been in school age childcare (SAC) only services. However, the report also found that demand had generally held up better for services delivering funded ELC than for non-funded services. More detailed information on reported demand can be found in Section 2 of the supporting Analysis and Evidence paper.

New regulations require that, where applicable, from November 2022 local authorities, along with other public bodies, report a target date for achieving zero direct emissions of greenhouse gases and targets for reducing indirect emissions of greenhouse gases. Overall, around 50% of reported public sector emissions are now covered by a net zero target that aligns with, or is more ambitious than, the 2045 national target.

Since 2015, local authorities, along with other public bodies, have had a duty to report on their compliance with the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, as well as their annual organisational emissions.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

Local authorities are independent corporate bodies with their own powers and responsibilities, separate from the Scottish Government. As long as they act lawfully, it is up to each local authority to structure the council and form a decision making process that is appropriate for the individual local authority.

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) publishes information on retention rates of Scottish-domiciled university students at Scottish Universities in their Report on Widening Access (RoWa). SFC data on retention rates go back to 2012-13 (into 2013-14).

http://www.sfc.ac.uk/publications-statistics/statistical-publications/2021/SFCST052021.aspx

(See Table 2)

The development of a domestic hydrogen sector will play an important role in supporting a just transition to Net Zero by 2045, and presents significant long-term economic opportunities.

We are taking forward an Energy Transition Scotland programme, including the Energy Transition Fund (ETF), which in its first year of operation is already funding key transition projects – such as the Global Underwater Hub, the Energy Transition Zone, the Aberdeen Hydrogen Hub, and the Net Zero Technology Transition Programme.

These projects will help to ensure Scotland’s energy sector plays a leading role in the development and deployment of new, low carbon projects.

Additionally, the Emerging Energy Technologies Fund (EETF) will provide £180m over the next five years to support the development of hydrogen, and carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) that underpins negative emissions technologies (NETs).

Details on the £100m capital funding that will be dedicated to the support of the Scottish hydrogen sector as committed in our Hydrogen Policy Statement will be published alongside our Hydrogen Action Plan targeted for publication in the first year of this Parliamentary term.

The Hydrogen Action Plan will set out the actions that will be taken over the coming five years to support Scottish supply chain activity and drive the development of a low-cost hydrogen capability to meet our initial ambition to generate 5GW of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen by 2030.

We also support to the Acorn Hydrogen projects at St Fergus, Aberdeenshire, where 35% of the UK’s annual gas supply enters the National Transmission System. We believe Acorn can be the first large-scale hydrogen project developed in Scotland. Acorn Hydrogen will be enabled by its sister project, Acorn CCS, considered the most advanced CCS project in the UK. Acorn is leading the Scottish bid into the UK Government’s cluster sequencing process to allow Carbon, Capture and Storage (CCS) to be deployed by the mid-2020s, and we are supportive of the Scottish Cluster’s bid into the UK Government’s cluster sequencing process. It is critical that the UK Government recognises Acorn CCS as one of the first two projects to commercialise in the 2020s as part of this cluster sequencing process, and does not delay these Scottish projects, which are essential for meeting our emissions reduction targets.

The Acorn Hydrogen project will initially involve the construction of a 200 MW hydrogen production plant that could become operational by 2025, and which would allow for a 2% hydrogen blend by volume into the National Transmission System (NTS). The emissions from the hydrogen production would be captured, transported, and safely stored offshore deep underground, reusing current oil and gas infrastructure.

Acorn CCS and Hydrogen are key catalysts for clean growth in the north east of the UK and beyond. These projects are highly scalable, due to availability of large volumes of natural gas feedstock, up to 46GT of offshore CO2 storage capacity, and the availability of existing offshore pipeline infrastructure. Large volumes of hydrogen can be generated in the 2020s and beyond, offering an opportunity to establish hydrogen infrastructure before other complementary decarbonisation technologies reach scale.

We continue to work with key partners across Scotland to ensure that relevant information from patient health records is available to healthcare staff when and where they need it. Significant investment in national IT systems, such as those for GP practices and the TrakCare hospital patient management system in secondary care, has improved the flow of information across different healthcare settings and services. In addition, the availability of Regional Clinical Portals, the roll out of HEPMA ( Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration ) and availability of the patient Emergency Care Summary (ECS) to Community Pharmacists, Dentists and Optometrists have all improved the accessibility and quality of electronic patient information available to frontline staff.

Further improvements will be made including the implementation of Office365 across the entire NHS. This will include the rollout of single identities for NHS staff which will simplify secure access to relevant patient information. The refreshed Digital Health & Care Strategy, scheduled to be published in September 2021, will set out ambitions for greater access to medical information both for staff and the public.

The National Care Service proposals are at an early stage and will be subject to consultation until the beginning of November. Following the consultation Ministers will take a view on the scope of the National Care Service and further work will be required to develop legislation for consideration by Parliament.

The Whole Family Wellbeing Fund is an essential component of the delivery of the recommendations of the Independent Care Review for children now known as #keepthepromise. We are committed to delivering this change in the immediate future and will work with key partners to ensure this happens. Any proposed change to the way services are delivered to children and their families will take into account the need to ensure the effective delivery of #keepthepromise for Scotland’s children across all relevant universal and targeted services.

Since 2018 Scottish Government has invested the following amounts on expanding the public and non public electric vehicle charging infrastructure across Scotland. These figures includes support provided to electric vehicle owners to install home charging points and support provided to Local Authorities, businesses and other organisations. The figures below represent all chargepoints that we have supported some of which are not publicly available chargers and as such won't appear on the ChargePlace Scotland network.

1) 2018-2019 – £13,405,324.67

2) 2019-2020 – £15,796,625

3) 2020-2021 – £14,416,073.57

The shift to electric vehicles is an important part of responding to the climate emergency and improving air quality in our cities. To help incentivise this shift, we have since 2013 invested over £45 million in ChargePlace Scotland, Scotland’s public charging network, which now has more than 1900 publicly available charge points. Scotland is leading the way on electric vehicle charging infrastructure. The latest figures show that Scottish electric vehicle drivers benefit from almost 40 public charge points per one hundred thousand people, compared to fewer than 30 in England, just over 20 in Wales and less than 20 in Northern Ireland.