Chamber and committees

I have asked John Ewing, the Chief Executive of the Scottish Court Service to respond. His response is as follows:The Scottish Court Service is currently assessing the scale and extent of the work required to bring the court up to the level of compliance required by the Disability Discrimination Act. In most courts there is already disabled access to the sheriff clerk's offices but in other cases work may be needed to extend the access to a wider range of courts, jury rooms and witness accommodation. The full extent of work needed and costings have yet to be determined. The following table lists the courts where work is likely to be required.Facilities for the Disabled

Location	Disabled Access to Jury and Witness Rooms	Disabled Access to Courts	Disabled Access to General Office
Aberdeen	Yes	Yes in Cts 2,3 4 & 7	Yes
Airdrie	Yes	Yes but not Ct 4	Yes
Alloa	No	No	Yes
Banff	Yes	Yes	Yes
Campbeltown	No	Yes	Yes
Cupar	No	Yes	Yes
Dingwall	No	No	Yes
Dornoch	No	No	Yes
Dumfries	Ct 1 only	Ct 1 only	Yes
Dunoon	No	No	Yes
Duns	No	No	-
Elgin	Yes	Yes	Yes
Forfar	Ct 1 only	Yes	Yes
Fort William	No	No	Yes
Greenock	Only 1	Yes	Yes
Hamilton	Not Ct 2, 4	Yes but not Ct 4	Yes
Inverness	Not Ct 1, 3	No	Yes
Kilmarnock	Yes	No	Yes
Kirkcaldy	Ct 2 & 3 only	Ct 1 only	Yes
Kirkcudbright	No	No	Yes
Kirkwall	No	No	No
Lanark	Ct 3 only	No	No
Lerwick	No	No	Yes
Linlithgow	Yes	Yes	Yes
Lochmaddy	No	No	No
Oban	No	No	Yes
Paisley	Yes	Yes	Yes
Peebles	No	No	Yes
Portree	Yes but too small	Yes	Yes
Rothesay	No	No	Yes
Selkirk	No	No	Yes
Stirling	One Ct	One Ct only	Yes
Stonehaven	No	No	No
Stornoway	No	Yes	Yes
Stranraer	No	No	Yes
Tain	No	No	Yes
Wick	No	No	Yes"

I have asked John Ewing, Chief Executive of the Scottish Court Service to respond. His response is as follows:The Scottish Court Service is currently undertaking an audit of the Court estate to determine the scale and extent of work required throughout the Estate to ensure compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act. Additional resources have been provided to the Court Service to enable any reasonable and necessary adaptations to proceed. The information is not collected centrally in respect of District Courts as responsibility for this rests with the relevant local authority.

In determining the level of business conducted in any sheriff court consideration is given to the wide range of criminal and civil business which may be conducted in the court. This covers procedural hearings as well as those required for determining the case. Regard is also had to the level of administrative work carried out by the court in respect of matters which may not require an appearance before the sheriff in court.

The consultation paper on the delivery of court services in the Peebles area is currently being finalised and should be issued by the end of September. It will be circulated to a wide range of bodies and individuals who have expressed an interest in this topic, including the judiciary, local magistrates, court users such as local solicitors as well as statutory authorities such as Borders Council, Lothian and Borders Police and the Procurator Fiscal Service. Copies of the consultation paper will also be sent to local members of the Scottish and UK Parliament. In addition copies will be made available at the Sheriff Clerk's office in Peebles and Selkirk for the public.The duration of the consultation period will be a minimum of 12 weeks from date of issue. The paper will contain statistical information on the wide range of business transacted at the court in addition to information on court sitting times.

The information requested is not held centrally. I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-28957 today. All answers to written PQs are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/search_wa.

The Executive has been aware of the issues relating to constraints on water and waste water infrastructure for some time. A number of meetings were held earlier this year with representatives of the house building industry, the then water authorities, representatives of local authorities, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the Water Industry Commissioner, to explore the way forward.In the first instance, however, this is an operational matter for Scottish Water. I am aware that they have been undertaking a significant amount of work in past months following the meetings referred to, to review their whole investment programme. This work has been necessary to inform them better about the investment required to ease such constraints across Scotland, and about its prioritisation.When this work is completed, I understand that Scottish Water intend to arrange meetings with local authorities to discuss their findings.

The Cryptosporidium Directions required Scottish Water to carry out a risk assessment on all its supplies and introduced sampling appropriate to the assessed risk. The Drinking Water Quality Regulator (DWQR) audits the requirements of the directions annually. Following the recent events in Glasgow and Edinburgh I have asked the DWQR to carry out a review of the detailed workings of the directions. The outcome of this review will be available in about two months. In the meantime, my initial assessment is that the investment priorities for 2002-06 given in the Quality and Standards paper published in August 2001 were broadly correct.

Yes. The Scottish Court Service will be consulting with Lothian and Borders Police on the options for future provision of court services in Peebles.

Provision of a police station at Peebles is a matter for Lothian and Borders Police. I am not aware of any proposals for upgrading or refurbishing the police station at Peebles nor of any plans for building a combined police station and courthouse at Peebles. No combined police station and courthouse have been built elsewhere in Scotland in recent years.

I have asked Tony Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond. His response is as follows:The readily available information is shown in the following table.

Date	Staff in Post	%Age
1 April 1999	250	102
1 August 1999	247	100
1 December 1999	246	99
1 April 2000	246	99
1 August 2000	248	100
1 December 2000	245	99
1 April 2001	239	97
1 August 2001	244	99
1 December 2001	254	99
1 April 2002	278	107
1 August 2002	269	103