Chamber and committees

Since the contents of many of the 29 school PPP projects are still to be finalised by education authorities, it is not possible to predict how many of the 300 new or substantially refurbished schools referred to in target 6 will be funded through PPP projects or otherwise.

NHS boards are accountable through ministers to the Parliament. To strengthen this, I recently announced that I would personally hold the annual performance review meeting for each health board in Scotland and that these meetings would take place in public. It is also important that we have strong local accountability and I want the NHS to be more open with local people. We now require that health boards must deliver improved public involvement and co-operateon a regional level.

I wrote to the member on 30 June 2004.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S2W-3406 on 5 July 2004. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/search.

The guidance on car park charging issued to NHSScotland in March 2000 detailed the principles of car park charges, namely:

The decision of whether to charge for car parking facilities is one for local determination in the light of local circumstances;

Charging for car parking in hospitals should not be motivated by a desire to generate income, and

Charging may only be justified if it:

is to cover the cost of providing improved parking facilities;

is to make the car park more secure, or

is to better manage existing car parking facilities by discouraging “fly parkers”.

The guidance issued on 1 April this year, and detailed in my answer to S2W-7206 on 28 April 2004, develops these principles and is much fuller. This guidance, which will cover all future car parking schemes, applies both where car parking facilities are being provided and/or managed by NHS boards and by private sector providers.

The revised guidance reiterates that car park charging should not be introduced as a means of generating income and details more fully the circumstances where charging may be justified, namely if it is to:

cover any significant costs in providing new or improved parking facilities or making existing facilities more secure (e.g. capital charges, maintenance costs, administration costs, security costs, security lighting, CCTV), and

better manage car parking facilities by discouraging unauthorised users (e.g. fly-parkers) but in so doing, measures taken to discourage unauthorised users must not be detrimental to the car parking arrangements for staff, patients and visitors.

The revised guidance also outlines more fully the principles NHS boards should adhere to where charges are made, as follows:

NHS boards must be able to demonstrate the level of income generated from car parking and how it has been utilised;

before introducing or substantially revising car park charges, NHS boards must consult with staff, the public and any relevant bodies or organisations;

sufficient car parking space and concessionary car parking rates should be available to staff and consideration should be given to providing concessions to certain categories of patient (e.g. patients attending regularly for dialysis or radiotherapy), and

a reasonable proportion of parking spaces should be set aside for disabled parking. In determining disabled parking spaces, the needs of disabled persons should be fully considered (e.g. wide spaces, no kerbs or steps, preferably under cover, and located at different entrances to the NHS facility).

The revised guidance further advises that where fly parking is a particular problem, in discouraging unauthorised users, NHS boards should investigate ways to control such parking, other than introducing excessive daily charges for all car-park users. Such options may be:

to check at manual barriers the validity of parkers between, say 7 am and 10 am (e.g. staff id, appointment card, details of the patient they are visiting); or

to limit the availability of car parking space by keeping certain car parks closed until 10 am and, say, designating car parks "staff only" and "out-patients/day-patients only", and

where there is no option but to discourage or control the level of unauthorised parking by charging excessive daily rates, arrangements must be put in place to ensure that patients and visitors who are legitimately parked in the car park all day are given a concessionary rate.

The guidance is clear that in all cases charges should reflect a reasonable balance between the perceived needs of staff, patients and visitors, the cost of car parking generally in the area, and the costs of maintaining car parking facilities, and concludes by stating that widespread charging of excessiverates to staff, patients or visitors cannot be justified.

The latest information available from the teacher vacancies survey returned by local authorities at February 2004 is given in a set of tables Full-time Equivalent Teacher Vacancies in Schools which has been placed in the Parliament’s Reference Centre (Bib. number 32903).

I intend to make an announcement shortly.

The following table shows the percentages of (a) medical, (b) dentistry and (c) engineering graduates and diplomates who were in employment at the time of the survey:

First Destination of Graduates and Diplomates from Scottish Higher Education Institutions and Further Education Colleges, 2001-02

	Scotland	Other UK	Other EU	Overseas
Medicine	92.2%	7.4%	0.0%	0.4%
Dentistry	84.5%	13.6%	1.8%	0.0%
Engineering and Technology	73.4%	19.7%	4.5%	2.3%

Sources: Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and Scottish Further Education Funding Council (SFEFC).

First destination of graduates and diplomates information is collected by higher education institutions (HEIs) and further education colleges (FECs) through a voluntary survey to individual students of all nationalities within the EU who have successfully completed their course. Details are requested about the graduate’s or diplomate’s destination on 31 December following the end of the academic session in which they qualified.

The latest available statisticsfor week-ending 9 May 2004 show that, for correctly completed applications, theaverage time taken by Disclosure Scotland to process and issue an Enhanced or StandardDisclosure certificate was 14 calendar days from the date of the application beingreceived. This is in line with the service level agreement for Standard and EnhancedCertificates. Basic Disclosures were taking 21 days on average to deal with.

To assist with the improvementin performance at Disclosure Scotland we authorised the recruitment of additionalstaff for application processing and call handling duties. Additional staff arenow also being assigned to error‑sorting duties. We will continue to workclosely with Disclosure Scotland to ensure that the improved performance is sustained.

I refer the member to the answergiven to question S2W-7960 on 17 May 2004. All answers to written parliamentaryquestions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for whichcan be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/search_wa.