Chamber and committees

There are no current plans to amend the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984.

Dumfries and Galloway Tourist Board received an allocation of £850,000 in January 2002, as recorded in VisitScotland's Annual Report for 2001-02. The allocation of resources to area tourist boards is a matter for VisitScotland.

Information on the number of Neighbourhood Watch schemes in Scotland is not held centrally. However, the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) has provided the following figures for each police force area:

Grampian	716
Lothian and Borders	873
Northern	25 (aiming for 50 by end 2003)
Dumfries and Galloway	428
Strathclyde	1,227
Fife	245
Tayside	368
Central	161
Total	4,043

The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 does not preclude the use of waiting time points in allocation of housing by local authorities or Registered Social Landlords. The act does, however, require that reasonable preference is given to particular categories of applicants and that certain factors, such as the income or age of the applicant (provided the applicant is 16 years of age or over) and length of residence in the area are not taken into account. Beyond this statutory framework, landlords have discretion in drawing up their system of priorities for housing allocations.

The Scottish Executive considers that the allocation of waiting time points for tenants is not in breach of human rights legislation.

For non-domestic rates, the legislation governing unoccupied property relief is contained within section 24 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1966, and the Non-Domestic Rating (Unoccupied Property) (Scotland) Regulations 1994 (No. 3200) (amended in 2000 to increase the rateable value limit for exempt empty properties to £1,700). For council tax the relevant legislation is contained in section 79 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992.

All members of the boards of Registered Social Landlords (whether tenant or local authority representatives or independent members) will be bound by their board's Code of Conduct. All board members are required to act in the best interests of the RSL and the Code of Conduct will set out what the RSL expects of its board members with regard to confidentiality, conflict of interest and collective responsibility. The use of such a Code of Conduct is designed to ensure high standards of integrity in the voluntary housing movement. The need to maintain confidentiality also has to be balanced with operating in an open and accountable manner and an RSL should ensure that information is publicly available unless it is personally confidential or commercially sensitive.

The conditional award on 31 March 2003 of revenue support to Dumfries and Galloway Council for a schools PPP project is subject to standard conditions that:the project is affordable within the limits of the revenue support awardedthe PPP option clearly demonstrates value for money against the public sector comparator when compared on a risk adjusted whole-life basisthe project is accounted for off the council's balance sheetthe Full Business Case is made publicly available, having due regard to issues of commercial confidentialitythe Project Agreement is based on the Scottish Standard PPP Schools Contract (including compliance with the PPP Staffing Protocol published on 11 November 2002)the project reaches commercial close by 31 March 2006.At the time the conditional award was made, a pre-Invitation to Negotiate Key Stage Review by Partnerships UK of the project management was under way, and the award was, therefore, subject to an additional condition concerning completion of that process. The Key Stage Review process was completed on 29 April.Other normal requirements, such as planning or school closure consents, also need to be met.

In general, it is the responsibility of education authorities to take decisions on proposals to close schools. Legislation prescribes the circumstances in which authorities cannot implement such a proposal without the consent of the Scottish ministers.In summary, these circumstances are where the school concerned is more than 80% full, or where the alternative school is five or more miles distant in the case of a primary school and 10 or more miles distant in the case of a secondary school from the school proposed for closure. There are further provisions concerning the circumstances in which proposals to close denominational schools are referred to ministers.

The Scottish Executive has no plans to review the business rate liability specifically for indoor equestrian arenas. All businesses occupying properties with a rateable value of £10,000 or less benefit from a 2p reduction in the poundage this year.For businesses suffering financial hardship, local authorities can grant up to 100% relief from rates. The Scottish Executive pays 75% of the cost of this relief. For the period 1 April to 31 December 2001 the Scottish Executive is funding 95% of the cost of hardship relief for businesses occupying properties with a rateable value of £12,000 or less affected by the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in rural local authority areas. In recognition of the exceptionally difficult conditions in the Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Border Council areas, the rateable value threshold has been raised (with retrospective effect from 1 April) to £50,000.